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Small town garage diorama


Sixties Sam

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Hi, guys. I just built this garage diorama. It's essentially finished, but more detail will be added as the mood strikes me. The walls are foamboard with brick paper glued over it. I bought the windows and doors from Colorado Structures. The floor is painted plywood. I found a batch of resin accessories on ebay, including the gas pump, a 55 gallon barrel (which I turned into a stove), a gas can, and a trash can. All the signs came from pictures online.

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There's a rock cliff behind the garage. Rock formations are cast from plaster and painted. The junk car bodies have been in my parts boxes for 40+ years! The diorama is built on a styrofoam base. The garage was patterned after several old garages near my home.

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Here's the barrel stove and heat deflector (alum. flashing). Pipe is a bendy straw.

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Top view. The roof lifts off. I'll add more details inside later. Sticks in the lower left hold the garage door in the open position.

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Edsel and 56 Ford drag racer junkers rusting away.

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This was fun to build - took about two months between model builds. I hope you like it. Comments welcome!

Sam

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Looks very realistic. Great Dio.

That barrel stove is a awesome detail. Any chance you could post up a tutorial on building it?

ra7c7er, The stove is pretty simple. The front plate, door, and hinges are just pieces of styrene with the corners rounded, glued to the barrel. I drilled some combustion air holes under the door. The door handle is thin craft wire with one end wound around a piece of music wire. I drilled a 1/4" hole for the pipe, and made a flange from one of my blood sugar test lancets, and glued it on. The barrel supports came with the resin barrel, so I just glued them on.I sprayed it all with flat black, then stuck the stovepipe (a cut down bendy straw) in it. Here's a pic.

Sam

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:)

excellent..

the 2 old cars at the back of the garage give it great Character..

:lol: maybe a few loos items are them would nail the "just left there look.."

inspirational dio... I want build one.. ;)

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I love the brick work! Could you post a tutorial on how to do bricks because i can quite figure out how.

Cole, the bricks are just paper, they're not 3-dimensional. I found a sample of a brick design on Google, and printed several sheets of it out. I had to experiment with the scaling to get the size right for 1/25 scale. Each brick is about 3/8" long: about 8" in scale. The paper is glued to the foamboard walls with Elmer's spray craft glue, which is really sticky. Don't get it on your hands! I cut the window and door openings in the walls first, then glued a sheet of brick over the whole wall. Then I cut out the brick paper from the openings with an X-acto knife. The wall corners are mitered, so no foamboard edges show. It was not too hard to do. I randomly scuffed the brick surface with sandpaper to make it look a little bit worn and dirty.

Sam

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