A Water Tank

I just bought an Evergreen Hill Designs Branchline Water Tank that was up for sale on Facebook Marketplace. This is an old-school, board-by-board kit, probably the most complicated I've built in a while -- if ever, to be honest. I'm not real sure where I'm going to use it; there's a chance it might fit somewhere on the Frazier Borate, or I might build a diorama or another micro-roundy with the water tank and some other service facilities. My  intention is that it will eventually be part of a larger L&SE layout.

4/5/24: The instructions say to start by distressing all the wood, so that's what I did, using an Xacto knife to chip the edges and scribe exaggerated grain lines. I wire brushed the parts, then lightly rubbed them with steel wool to remove any fuzz. There are a couple hundred pieces of wood, so this process took me four or five hours over three days.

4/8/24: After I finished distressing the wood, I started staining it. The instructions suggest starting with a wash of thinned Floquil Walnut Stain. Floquil paints are out of production, so I used Varithane Dark Walnut, thinned 50/50 with paint thinner. After letting that dry, I rubbed the pieces with 0000 steel wool.

Here's the look I'm going for -- a tank that hasn't been painted in a long time, if ever:

4/12/24: The pieces in the left are stained and steel wooled; those on the right have had a wash of gray craft paint diluted about 1:4 with alcohol.

I was going to let those dry overnight, then give them a final black wash of one part india ink to ten parts alcohol. But I got impatient and went ahead and applied the black wash a few hours after the gray. Here are samples before and after:

Not a real big difference. It's hard to tell in this picture, but the black does emphasize the grain detail somewhat. Truth is, I'm not entirely sold on the value of all these extra steps -- is it really that much better than the black and gray craft paint washes I've used on other recent builds? We'll see how I feel when I get the thing assembled. Since I'm ahead of where I though I'd be, I can probably start putting together the tank support structure tomorrow.

4/14/24: Worked an hour or so yesterday and the same today and got the four support frames ("bents" or "trestles") built, and nut-bolt-washer castings installed on two of them. 26 NBWs per bent, and a bunch more when I assemble them.

4/17/24: Progress on the tank support frame. I'm losing or spoiling a ridiculous number of nut-bolt-washer castings, so I ordered a couple more packs of 100. I'm not sure they're exactly the same, but I have enough of the ones from the kit to finish the framing, and I'll use the other ones for the tank, so it won't be so obvious they're different, and if anyone notices, it was deliberate.

4/18/24: I wasn't happy with the design of the kit's frostbox, so I made some modifications. The kit comes with a very nice Grandt Line door, but I felt it was too fancy, so a built a more rustic door from strip wood. I also added corner posts. I should have pre-stained the strip wood but I got impatient, so I'll probably paint it gray and weather with an ink in alcohol wash.

4/19/24: Built the tank. I'm going to leave the top open -- with a closed top, it's just a box. But it needs to have some water in it. To do that, I cut a rectangle of scrap foam to fit. Now I'm considering what color to paint it. Most likely a dark olive green, followed by multiple coats of gloss medium.

4/24/24: I've been fiddling with the "water" the last few days, and everything else has been on hold. I painted the block of foam a couple of times, testing different colors. I ended up with a coat of olive green with black and buff shading. I iinally decided enough was enough, and built a strip wood dam around it, sealed it with a couple coats of gloss medium, and now that's dry, poured a layer of Woodland Scenics Realistic Water. It's a thick enough pour that it will probably take a couple days to cure. Here's what it looks like at this point:

4/27/24: Got a lot done yesterday and today. It's close to done -- I just need to add the spout chain and weights, and build and install the water depth gauge on the side. Then just a few nail holes and maybe a couple more NBWs, and some paint touchup and weathering.

After all the fuss and delay, the water looks good to me. It doesn't show all that much, but there's enough there to give a bit of reflection from the right angle.

4/28/24: Done except for some touchup.