PHPaul

Thanks. The amazing work I see here is a little daunting, but I see it as a challenge to take my work up a notch. I'm at the point where the overall theme of the diorama is done and now I'm adding little details and scenes to try to bring it to life. Little things like the lawn mower and little red wagon in the yard and (as I can afford it...) figures like the dogs and cats, some birds, etc. Preiser makes really nice stuff but it gets expensive quickly on my budget.

I don't know if this is old news, but it's something that just occurred to me to try. I was yakking over the fence with a visitor when I got to looking at the moss growing out of the cedar boards. This time of year, the stuff is everywhere and comes in a wide variety of forms and colors. Very detailed and visually interesting. I grabbed a putty knife and scraped a couple of samples off and set them on top of the furnace to dry. After a little trimming for size and structure, I glued them to my 1/64th scale diorama as Hosta plants around the house. I really like the look. Not sure how durable they're going to be, they might dry out completely and turn to dust. If so, I'll try some different ways to preserve them.

Night shot. Lights in house and barn are white LEDs running on 3v. Yard light is a modified HO scale street light.

Not a hard sell, I'm a confirmed tool junkie...?

My other hobby is building 1/16th scale agricultural models out of brass. I'm forever wracking my brain to come up with ways to hold things while soldering. This is going to make my life MUCH simpler. Thanks!

I built my own variable speed microdrill using a computer power supply and the motor and speed control listed below. DC Variable Speed Control Mini Drill Motor and Chuck

Small world. I went to HIgh School in St. Johns and have a brother living there.

Welcome! What part of Michigan? I grew up in Clinton County, near Fowler.

Dad was colorblind. Our two main tractors were a McCormick Deering Super W6 (Wheatland version of a Super M) and a John Deere B. I spent boucoup hours on that B cultivating corn and soybeans in low gear at half throttle...? My little slice of heaven has a Kubota, a Pasquali and a John Deere lawn tractor.

Just to give you an idea of working in 1/64th scale. The scene is an inside joke among farmers. Certain years of International tractors were prone to failures of the Torque Amplifier which required splitting the tractor to repair. Much like Chevy vs. Ford, farmers will argue for hours about IH vs. John Deere.

Nice! It's the little details like that that make or break a model IMHO.

Thanks, Landman. This is the farm I grew up on in the 50's and 60's. (Pic is from late 40's as near as I can tell). I spent a lot of time looking for that house kit, it's quite similar to the one I grew up in as well.

My youngest daughter is a pretty talented artist. She's going to do a backdrop scene for me. I'll mention that! ?

Thanks, all! My experience with HO helps a lot, but being dang near 70 isn't helping as much as I'd hoped...? More patience, but less visual acuity... One of my little joys is making detail items out of whatever I have laying around. For instance the cattail leaves are little slices of green insulation off some 18 gauge wire, and the seed heads are dabs of brown "puffy paint" on some magnet wire. Reeds/dead weeds are snipped off the end of a whisk broom. The corrugated portion of a plastic (gasp!) drinking straw makes a great culvert when stretched out and hit with some silver paint. House, barn and grain bins are kits, all the other structures are scratch built. Trees are stranded copper wire armatures, a little solder, some brown paint, some spray adhesive and static grass. Little dabs of red enamel for the apples.

Thank you!

Little better focus.

I see I need to figure out how to manually focus...

As mentioned in my New Member Intro, this Winter's project is a 2' by 4' farm diorama in 1/64th scale to take advantage of my collection of 1/64 farm toys. It's pretty obvious that neither my building skills nor my photography skills are on a par with some of the stunning examples posted here, but practice makes perfect. I'm trying to dust off what little photography skills I have and take my Nikon P510 out of Auto/Snapshot mode. It's coming back to me, but slowly...very slowly. Here are a couple of the not completely horrible shots I've managed so far. Constructive criticism of both the diorama and the photography are invited.

Since you insist....? Some of my favorites in farm toys. A 1/16 Ertl John Deere Compact kit-bashed to match my 1:1 JD750. Loader and rotary mower scratch built. Backhoe also scratch built. A Tonka truck resto-mod with scratch built snowplow. Current pastime, a 2 foot by 4 foot 1/64 scale farm diorama

Hi, Paul from Downeast Maine here. I'm 69 and twice retired. Once from the Navy 1969-1990, and completely in 2012 after a career in various forms of maintenance. As a kid in the Golden Era of Muscle Cars (graduated High School in 1968) I built a lot of 1/24 and 1/32 cars and trucks. As an adult I was into HO scale model railroading for several years. For the last couple of years, I've been building 1/16th farm equipment out of brass and restoring/resto-modding Tonka toys. I enjoyed the scenery and structures part of model railroading more than actually running trains (one reason I got out of it) and this Winter decided to try my hand at a diorama in 1/64 using the Ertl farm toys I've collected over the years. I hope it's okay that I joined for the diorama forum rather than any extensive interest in model cars. I've been perusing the diorama section as a guest and I can already see I'm WAY out of my league here. Fantastic stuff folks! I've already stol...uh..."borrowed" a few ideas. I can post a few pictures of my humble efforts if/when anyone is interested.