A Faller-inspired Kit-bash (Part 4)

Wow! 20 days since my last post! Well, it is summer, so I'm sure that most of you have time filled with more seasonal activities as I have (yardwork, in fact, which sort of bites!)!  Progress has been a bit slow on the Faller building.   The major work that I've completed is to get three 'support floors' glued in place along with one of the building sides so that now all window sections are now attached solidly to each other, and I can start on fitting the rest of the 'blue fascia' sections to the other side of the building front.

The rest of my hobby time has been spent wandering into the 'train room', looking at the building in its current state, then walking away.  I am actually thrilled with how I think this is going to turn out, its just that the number of 'projects' needed to be done to this building are more than my rather short attention span is capable of at the moment!

Next up is adding the blue fascia, adding the rest of the floors, the interior lighting, and interior details! Whew! 

A Faller-inspired Kit-bash (Part 3)

Last week I applied the black spray paint on the interior of the acrylic window sections.  After the black paint spent several days drying, I started to put together my various sections to start to get a better idea of what this building would look like.  

In fact, it also means some decisions need to be made about the style of the building.  Since my 'blue facade' sections are only about half the width of my entire window (in other words, my building will be twice as wide as the original Faller 2293 building), I had to decide how to 'connect' these sections.  I decided to split the front windows and actually have the left side gently 'lean' forward and extend above and beyond the completely perpendicular right side. 

This will probably make more sense with the photos that with my explanation!

After applying the long, narrow triangular sections that will create the forward leaning facade (let me tell you, cutting these was a pain!) I was FINALLY able to mock up a building section with the blue sections.  The idea is to use these sections across the entire facade; taking advantages of the 45 degree angles from the original kit to join these on my corners.

I also found a new adhesive that works really fast on the acrylic and pvc that I am gluing for this project.  I picked this up at the plastics shop where I get a lot of my acrylic and other materials.  I decided to try this stuff out as it was a really big tube at a pretty low price!  Its from a company called Scigrip and is clearly meant for "industrial applications" (the instructions even say so).  So I assume if you are concerned about harmful (more harmful) chemicals around your house, avoid this stuff. OTOH it works like normal plastic cement except a lot faster!

In the above (and to the right in a below photo) you can see my work at placing these blue strips as precisely as possible at the top of the black sections.  I used the Scigrip 16 glue in a small cup and a disposable brush and 'painted' on the glue.  This tends to give me much cleaner results that trying to apply glue direct from a tube.

Once the front face was set, I could add in the sections with the corresponding 45 angles from the Faller 2293 parts.  Once these set up on the side, I can trim off the excess.

In the below photo, the side pieces are trimmed and I am now mocking up the blue sections for the right side of the building front.

There you have it! Another visually boring post! I'm hoping next week that I'll have at least a few photos of something that I think will be pretty cool!  Thanks for reading!

A Faller-inspired Kit-bash (Part 2)

An update on the Faller 2293 Office Building inspired kit-bash that I started last month....

Painting!  And some pretty boring process pictures that will hopefully explain more than me having to write about what is really a fairly boring and time consuming part of the building process!

Well, anyway, the top photo and the one below show the first color that I used for the facade sections - which was Tamiya AS-8 "Navy Blue" - and is clearly way too dark.

The photo below shows the completed silver 'window frames' that I masked with Tamiya 6mm masking tape.  Applying the silver paint (actually, Model Master 1451 "Aluminum Plate") in several very light coats helps to minimize bleed-through.  On top of these the plastic facade sections will be glued.

I then resprayed these sections with a lighter, greyer color; Tamiya AS-19 "Intermediate Blue".  Although it looks not-at-all 'blue' in the below photo (!), I think it did turn out to be a better color!

While the facade sections (which are the original 'blue pieces' salvaged from the original 2293 kit) now look about ready to start applying, more work is needed on the windows.  Not very visible in these photos are the cuts in the acrylic sheet I made to create different sections for the windows.  I don't know how to explain it better, but I think it will be apparent on my next post!

What I did decide to do was to put down some black paint on the opposite side of the silver window frames.  There are two reasons (maybe more) for this: I did not want to put masking tape across the silver paint as I am concerned the tape will lift some or all of the silver paint off the acrylic.  Second is that I think the effect of the opaque, black window section will look better on the back side of the acrylic, and will look a lot like many modern buildings do (which don't tend to be full glass from floor to ceiling). 

 Again, several light passes with the black paint....

 Until at last it seems that the color is on thick enough and opaque enought.  After the tape is removed, this is what I have left:

I think once the blue sections are applied this building will start to take on something of its final look.  I am wondering if this building will resemble its inspiration more than did my original attempt!  Hopefully the next post will have photos with a clear idea of what I am getting into!