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Hooper & Co Diorama


Anglia105E

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Work has been temporarily put to one side, while my daughter is home from London for the Christmas period..... she is only here for 10 days, so my self-employed computer business is on a back burner also, and scale model car building will be minimal, as will diorama construction.

These following photos show the Victorian terraced houses diorama brought down onto the work bench, and you can see the Hooper factory building right at the back. The tree and the tree bench is part of the 1:24 scale Hooper diorama, while everything else is 1:43 scale.

David

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Wishing everyone on Model Cars Magazine Forum a Merry Christmas Eve........ and here is a photo of the Hooper factory front wall, with the lettering for ' HOOPER ' painted onto the centre block in Vallejo Prussian Blue acrylic, and also the Royal crest at the very top.

David

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Work is progressing on the sign-writing for the Hooper factory front wall, and on a different subject, a photo taken of our Christmas Day walk in the grounds of Chatsworth House in Derbyshire, late afternoon....... the photo is taken with the same Kodak camera as is used for the diorama photography.

David

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Surprisingly, I did manage to get quite a lot of work done on the Hooper factory front wall........ in between Christmas festivities, of course!

The following photos show the lettering and further painting, as well as the doorway and the doorstep for the main entrance...... so now the door can be constructed and fitted. I have placed an order on Ebay for a SHELL gas pump in 1:43 scale by Vitesse, which is being shipped from Portugal, and I shall scratch build a concrete island for the pump to stand on. The pump model will be converted to a British petrol pump for the ESSO company and repainted in the 1950's colours, before placing the concrete island on the forecourt in front of the factory building.

David

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9 hours ago, tbill said:

Beautiful work!

Thanks, Tom........ I am determined that this should be the best of the four dioramas that I have built so far, and the factory diorama baseboard will link up with the terraced houses baseboard to form one diorama in effect.

David

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Work continues on the 1st January 2020........ a new year, and a new door for the factory.

After careful consideration, I decided not to attempt painting the doors by hand, but instead I photographed the 1:1 door in my local town, using my mobile phone camera. This building used to be a Bank, but is now awaiting it's new owners. I cropped and reduced the photo using Microsoft Paint and Microsoft Word, before printing the image on 210 gsm card. This was cut to the precise size of the doorway and cut into two doors, which were PVA mounted onto my backing card that has one door in the open position. The whole doorway assembly is glued to the rear face of the door aperture. Quite pleased with the result, which I think works.

David

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Wow David!? Just discovered your thread. It'll take some time to go through your pages & I'm looking forward to it - brilliant stuff. It's not geographically correct, but the Wallace & Gromit music suddenly turned on in my head...

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4 hours ago, Gramps46 said:

Good idea on the front doors, it really worked well.

Thanks, Gary..... the photographic method always feels a bit like cheating, to me..... but in this case the hand painting approach would not have been as effective.

David

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4 hours ago, landman said:

I find that photographs fit the bill often, especially if they show some relief. The ones you picked are perfect for that application. Probably period correct too.

Thanks, Pat..... and in this case the photograph was taken by myself, using the old bank building in my local town. This building is not quite as old as Art Deco, but the doors seemed to be suitable for the Hooper factory entrance.

David

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This morning, the 1:43 scale petrol pump arrived from Portugal in the post. The SHELL gasoline pump is actually American, and the company is Vitesse of China, but the product is made in Portugal..... I shall have to change the paint scheme to the British ESSO brand, for petroleum rather than gasoline, and the US $ needs to be in pounds sterling, but otherwise this pump should appear to be period correct for the 1959 factory forecourt.

David

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Assembled the rear wall of the factory building, which is identical to the front wall in construction but with no lettering or doors or windows. There will be styrene square tubing beams inside the building, linking the two walls together in parallel. Need to measure and cut to size, 6 side walls and 5 roofing panels, made from the same thick card that I have used so far.
I ended up using super glue and not the hot glue gun, but might have to use hot glue for the cross beams.
 
David

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All of the 6 side wall panels, and the 5 roof panels have been carefully measured and cut to size. On the right hand side of the factory building, as you look from the front, there are windows to add at the sides, also a door, some skylights and some lettering.
This building feels like I am working on a ship, because it is long and narrow, with a structure comprising girders and panels. The whole structure is light but strong, and probably weighs not much more than a 1:24 scale kit built car.
 
David

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Pretty much a full day's work today, constructing the windows for the right-hand outer wing, and also the right-hand inner wing of the factory building. Those distinctive corner windows of this Art Deco building have turned out rather well, although I say it myself! Hopefully, I have managed to get the spacing and layout of these windows as close to the original full size factory as possible, making best use of the few reference photographs that I have to work from.

The next stage will be to paint the panels in clotted cream and fix them in place using super glue. I prefer working with styrene cement and PVA glue, but the super glue will be necessary to achieve the overall strength of this structure.

Thanks for looking at my ongoing project, guys...........

David

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3 hours ago, tbill said:

Looking good!

Thanks, Tom...... and here is the latest addition to the 1:43 scale vehicle fleet, which is an Austin Welfarer K8 Ambulance, by Oxford Diecasts and seen here in London County Council livery. This ambulance should photograph quite nicely on both the Victorian terraced houses diorama, as well as the Hooper factory diorama.

David

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10 minutes ago, tbill said:

Out of curiosity, what will be the full ‘foot print’ of your entire project? 

Both of the 1:43 scale dioramas have a baseboard that is 75 cm x 75 cm, so when they are placed together as one diorama effectively, the footprint of the completed project will be 75 cm x 150 cm.

The 1:24 scale diorama will be displayed on the same table at the annual RREC show in June 2020, alongside the two 1:43 scale dioramas, with the footprint of the larger scale baseboard being 36 inches x 31 inches.

The other 1:43 scale diorama that I built was sold to a French gentleman from Paris, at last year's RREC show.

David

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