Frazier Mining Supply

This week's project has been Frazier Mining Supply, another cardstock building based on Clever Models' McElders Cycles kit. I'm pretty happy with the results -- much more so than my first effort, the Maintenance Shed.

The borax mines in Lockwood Valley were part of the Frazier Mining District. The Fraziers were a prominent local family that owned a gold mine on the opposite side of the valley. There's a Frazier Mountain, and the nearest town of any size is Frazier Park. And, of course, the biggest borax mine in the area was the Frazier Mine. I'm calling my little mining operation the Frazier Borate Co., which was the name of a holding company that owned some of the borax mines for a time during the early 1900s.

Build Notes:

The false front is a shallow box with a printed front and back with about 1/8 inch of space between them. I filled most of the empty space with balsa strips that I had on hand. The doors were a project in themselves -- there are four layers of cardstock in each door, plus window glazing, plus four little hinges and the framing. 

I made the sign using Microsoft Word. I wanted it to look like the sign was painted directly on the front wall of the building, so I did a screen grab of the siding from the kit PDF, then pasted it into a Word document. I changed the color using the picture adjustment tools in Word, used "Add Shape" to add a frame (to disguise the fact that this is not actually part of the original wall), and fooled around with colors, bevels and shadow effects until I liked the result. I tried the frame in both red and grey, and after consulting with my wife, went with the grey version. The words were added using Word Art. I made the red slightly transparent so the clapboard texture would show through a little -- it also makes the lettering look slightly faded. I printed an extra copy of the frame and glued that on top to create more of a 3D effect. 

I used the wood pattern roof underlayment as flooring, laminating it to a sheet of heavy card from a cracker box. The floor is edge-glued to the walls, recessed about 1/16 inch from the bottom edge, because the walls will slightly overlap the foundation.

The building comes with a loading dock and a stone foundation, which I did not use. The dock will be used with a different building. This one will sit on a simple wood foundation.

Because I'm not using the tall foundation, I had to relocate the side door higher up on the wall, which was easy enough. I didn't cut out the transom windows on the side door; they are very small and would be a pain to cut, and that side will face another building anyway.

I did cut out and glaze the window on the other side. The glazing is clear plastic from a takeout container from a local restaurant. The mullion (the narrow piece between two panes of glass) is a bit of 1/32" wide, white ChartPak tape applied to the glazing material. I cut out the window shade and glued it inside the glazing. 

With the front doors open the building needed at least a rudimentary interior. I glued Clever Models "studs and plywood" texture to the inside of the side and rear walls. This adds some strength to the structure. I'm using 65 pound card, and a single layer tends to warp, as I found with the Maintenance Shed. With two layers, it's a lot more solid. I made an interior dividing wall of the same material, added a counter from another Clever kit, and printed out a couple of small posters and hung them on the walls. There are lots of cast or 3D printed detail parts available, but they are expensive, and honestly, it seems a bit ridiculous to spend money on interior detail parts when the building itself cost less than $5 for the "kit" and maybe a couple bucks more for the paper and ink, so I went looking for freebies. I found some clip art of mining tools, and printed some as a wall display behind the counter. I also cut out some shovels and a pick and put them in a barrel -- a downsized version of the barrels from the Backwoods Locomotive Shed. I may also add a pot-bellied stove inside (I found one on a dollhouse site) and a smoke jack. And of course, it needs a shopkeeper behind the counter.

The roof initially was the distressed tarpaper pattern material that came with the kit, laminated to more cracker box cardboard, with a fascia made of spare trim material from the kit. I reinforced the roof with some balsa strips, since it was warping a bit. I wasn't thrilled with the look of the tarpaper, so I printed strips of tarpaper roofing from the Maintenance Shed and applied that -- someone once observed that we spend a lot of time looking down at the roofs of our buildings, so it's worth a little extra effort to make them interesting. I have left the roof removable for now since I want to add more interior details and maybe even lighting. 

Other than the foundation and maybe some more interior detail, this one is pretty much done. I plan to mount this and other buildings on small sheets of foam core board with basic ground cover. These mini-dioramas will eventually be glued in place on the layout and the scenery blended together.

Here's a picture of the "official" version of the building from the Clever Models site, just for comparison:

Probably the biggest lesson learned between my first build (the Maintenance Shed) and this one, is that 65 pound card isn't sturdy enough, even for small buildings, in O scale. Two layers laminated, with a little strip wood bracing, is much better. I bought some 110 pound card and will try using that for my next project. 

I'll also add more layers to things like the fascia boards and the cap on top of the false front. The fascias are a single layer of card and are very flimsy; the cap is a double layer, but still looks thin. Again, the 110 pound card should be better, but I'll still probably double up on the layers.