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Simple brick walled space for pics


Gluhead

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The door hardware was just painted with acrylic black, shook up in a bag of real rust dust while still a bit wet, then given a blackwash to knock back the bright orange. I'm working on the electrical stuff now, on which I'm pretty sure I'll use oven cleaner and a wash or two.

Give it a go...they're really fun. The techniques are pretty easy once you get your head around them...although some steps are time consuming. I'd recommend going just a little bigger than this one, which is 12x7.5. A couple more inches each way would allow for a lot more flexibility with the photo angles. Once I go back and wrap up a couple vehicle projects, I'm going to do another one of these for an exterior setting.

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No doubt, Brad...I definitely need to build one. Probably not for this display, but absolutely for the big build. I grew up in a small auto body shop, so the ticks and purrs of these suckers is firmly embedded.

Is there a thread for your shop that I can dig up? The search can be a bit on the funky side here.

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Thanks, Mark!

I'm using Jo-Ann Fabrics brand craft acrylics. I was skeptical as they are only .59, but they've proven to be pretty decent, both on the brush and airbrush. I used their burgundy with just a couple drops of brown for the base color, then once that was dry I set up a palette of half a dozen other colors (red, purple, yellow, green and more burgundy and brown) and just mixed up random shades as I went over the walls hitting random bricks. Some bricks got wetter, thicker coats but for most of them I just kinda grazed over the brick enough to color the whole thing. Finally, I went over the whole of it all with a pretty dry brush of the brown. The flour mortar treatment also helped give some variety.

Play around with it...I bet you can get some great looks going within just a few minutes. :)

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Thanks, Jim. I appreciate it.

Let there be light! Okay, well...at least something for light to shine from...

Dio1_SimpleBrickRoom_40-vi.jpg

Dio1_SimpleBrickRoom_41-vi.jpg

I took a bunch of pics while I was making the shade, but managed to do so with the memory card sitting in the computer instead of the camera. Doh! I annealed aluminum printing plate and mini-metal-worked it out. It's got a good many slight imperfections...which are fine with me. Gives it a nice worn-in look. Next I'm at the lhs, I'll pick up a bulb for it.

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Yep. Flour mortar. Just shake flour over the whole thing and rub it in, knock off excess and blow/brush off whatever else is left that you don't want. Beautifully inconsistent...which is of course just what we want. If it won't stick where you want it, running a little glass cleaner into the lines gives it something to hold on to. Plaster of Paris is another way to do it...same application techniques.

The printing plate is exactly what it sounds like...offcuts from plates for a printing press. Check around for printer who will give you their scraps. The stuff is great! Brad (gasser59) turned me on to it, and I keep stumbling into new ways to put it to use.

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Glu - your electrical stuff is over the top. I'd like to hear more about this annealing process you did with the printing plate because your light shade looks amazing!!

Here's a link to my dio thread. Keep in mind I did the bulk of it over 20 years ago. I think another one is in my future.

http://www.modelcarsmag.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=42060&st=0

Keep posting your progress.

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Great...thanks, Brad. I'll check it out after the belly stuffing this afternoon. :)

Annealing this stuff takes very little. I waved it over my soldering torch for about 30 seconds per side, just making even passes back and forth to get it all. It gets pretty soft. The thinner stuff was too thin and tore under the stress of working it into a dome, but the thicker material was good. I'm pretty sure I could have gotten a deeper dome if I'd tried. I may yet.

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Brad, that garage rocks! Being started 20 years ago doesn't seem to have had any ill-effects on it at all. Great vibe and tons of cool details. Love it.

I've only airbrushed it onto foam core so far, Charlie, but it did seem to flow pretty well out of the brush, for the most part. It did get a little spitty at times but that was more my own fault than the paints. I thinned it with rubbing alcohol on this piece, not being sure how much of a factor soak-up would be...but it turned out to be a non-issue. Next time I run it through the airbrush I'll cut it with window cleaner. Should flow a little smoother.

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I bet! That's one thing I definitely lack...any abundance of scale tools. I'll have to remedy that when I get to the big build.

Not much new tonight other than a bunch of nasty little tedious carp out of the way. Took a little head scratching to figure out how to make those little sleeves without destroying them in the process. Finally figured out to score the aluminum tube first then let the drill separate the pieces as it bored the inner diameter larger. Good little trick to remember for down the road...I'm sure it'll come in handy again on other things.

I need to scratch up two outlet boxes, then I can start painting and weathering this stuff.

Dio1_SimpleBrickRoom_42-vi.jpg

Dio1_SimpleBrickRoom_43-vi.jpg

Dio1_SimpleBrickRoom_44-vi.jpg

Dio1_SimpleBrickRoom_45-vi.jpg

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for the next one, remember the Z brace on the door goes from outside top to hingeside bottom. that way, when the door starts to sag, and they all do over time, the Z brace comes under compression and somewhat arrests the distortion.

Edited by southpier
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Thanks, guys. I appreciate the good words.

Yep, more printing plate. Cut a strip, and bend a 90 near one end. Then I taped a scrap piece of the rod they'll be used with to a wood stick, and with the 90 up against one side of the rod just bent it over and pushed the other 90 in with my fingernail. A quick push in on each 90 with the end of a file to make it nice and crisp, drill and trim, and that's that.

Funny you mentioned that, Joe! You're completely correct. I actually built doors for two years. I started to lay this one out as a proper z-frame, then while looking at pics of sliding barn door hardware (which I almost did for this), I came across one with this design and thought it was really sharp. So I went with it. :)

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Thanks, Jim. Glad you like it.

I just have one thing holding me back on finishing it all up - we have no oven cleaner in the house that I can use to weather all this aluminum! Who'da thunk'it, eh? I guess that's what happens when you have a self-cleaning oven. So, next trip to the store...

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