Winch and Crane

Jon,
Were they 1/12 scale perhaps? That does seem the most common doll's house scale, but a number of suppliers also offer 1/24.

Either full, 3D bricks, or brick 'slips', as Mike suggests.

I have some of both and they scale to a little under 9in length.

Can't recall where I got them from, but googling produced a fine selection of suppliers, including-

page5.htm

I have no experience of that supplier, nor any idea how they compare, but offer it as an example only.

I've played around with slips then grouted the result, and it is very satisfying actually.

Yours
Jamie

I think you can get brick dust and stencils, perhaps @oldravendale could be persuaded to ask Mrsravendale, who I believe did her last dolls house in this fashion...?

Steph

Steph is quite correct. See Stretcher Bond Stencil, Brick Stencils, STR from Bromley Craft Products Ltd. for starters, but this company do any number of different bonds etc. They also do specific stencils for G and O gauge - I asked them to a couple of years ago and they obliged.

Now, if you are set on using real bricks I appreciate that these won't help, but if applied to a timber substrate (my wife applied to a dolls house for which I built the carcass in three ply many years ago) this process creates very convincing bricks. This house is actually 1/18 scale, just to be awkward, which means that everything has to be built by hand - rather like S gauge I suppose - and individual bricks have been picked out to create some variety. When she did this brick surface the system was only available in 1/12 scale, so the bricks are actually a bit overscale for the size of the house. I'd not vouch for the accuracy of the brick joints at the corners though - this was rather made up as she went along.

The chap at Bromley is jolly good to talk to as well.

Brian

Brian
Your wife made an excellent job of laying those bricks, she must have the knack, the courses are perfect!!! My compliments to the chef .

Jon

this
Stacey's Miniature Masonry
is the website of the supplier of the bricks in Jamie's link. I've seen them on the shelves in that shop. They do look quite good, but I'd recommend you try and see them for yourself before buying a house load.
I've seen the stencil method referred to by oldravendale demonstrated at a show. It's fine for stretcher bond, but with Flemish or English bonds the corners get a bit interesting. I don't know how the template maker deals with them.

Jon Nazareth said:

Brian
Your wife made an excellent job of laying those bricks, she must have the knack, the courses are perfect!!! My compliments to the chef .

Jon

Click to expand...

Steady hand/eye coordination, I suppose. I wish I could do it!!

The great thing about this system is that it's so quick. Paint the subject a mortar colour, lay on the stencil with a mount adhesive, mix the splodge and trowel it on. The only issue comes with the corners which may involve some cutting of the stencil and matching up brick courses.

However, Jon, on reflection this may be an expensive way to go when you only need to create a base for your crane. If you are doing a whole building, then it's worth consideration. And once you have the stencils you can use them for ever.

Brian

Here's a mock up of the cane and winch on it's proposed plinth, I've added the picture of the original to show it's position in relation to the track and to my set up. The plinth looks very big but it may tone down once the brick has been added and some grass et al placed around and on it. The original looks very strange to me as it would seem that loading/unloading was difficult. If I can manage it, i'll upload a picture showing the full layout to show what I mean. Back to the above, I'm going to have a go at cutting the top corners off the base so that I can move the whole thing a little closer to the track without touching the sleepers. As it is, the crane hook is on the centre line of the track but this is with the base touching the sleepers.
I'm still thinking of whether to use the plinth and have the crane at ground level but this will mean that the hook will hit the top edges of this wagon. I'm not at all sure of what would have happened in practice so, any comments would be very welcome.



Well, I've managed to upload the original picture but not quite sure why the others have repeated themselves

Jon

The original looks a good bit taller than your model. It seems to be of the order of 2.5-3 times the height of the labourers whilst the model appears a little over twice their height. That is probably going to lead to all kinds of problems!
Dave

Dave
You are quite right. I took all of my measurements from the drawing that I had and I think that it was a bit on the small size hence the problems. What I should have done was to make a simple card mock up and compared that to the track and wagon height and altered things to suit. Hey ho, as they say, next time....

Jon

Ah, people were shorter in those days!

Mike

You know it wouldn't look wrong if you were to simply extend the length of the main jib, which would allow hook to reach beyond track CL at a greater height - and only one piece to re-make!

Tony

SER main line picture - Smeeth maybe Jon?

Phil

Edit to correct myself - it's Pluckley (which you already knew!). There's a side on picture of the upper part of the crane (taken in 1874) in the background of a photograph on plate 104 of the Redhill to Ashford book from Middleton Press. The picture is credited to Lens of Sutton. Might be worth an enquiry to the Lens of Sutton Trust who now have the photo's. Peter Fitzcuck (a wild guess at the spelling) is the contact.

Another Edit! The picture is on line here.

Tony
I did think of that but the whole jib is glued together and I'm not sure how it would fare if I tried to pull it apart. With those thoughts in mind, I'm pressing ahead with the brick plinth and fingers crossed that it works out okay.

Jon

First of all, sorry that they are a bit dark, they looked fine before I uploaded them, honest. I may add another showing a close up of the brickwork and surface.
The plinth is made up from a base of 25mm mdf with scribed styrene glued around it's outer edge. The brickwork is English bond with the headers and stretchers, picked out in enamels, with a different colour for each course. To me the brick colour is a bit too dark but well, next time. The mortar and for me it had to be a lime mortar, is made up from a mix of Cotman's watercolours, Chinese White and Naples yellow run into the brick joints. This I left to dry before wiping it off with a folded piece of kitchen roll moistened, surplus water squeezed out, folded flat again before carefully wiping the surface, it worked very well. The surface of the plinth/platform was coated with a matt varnish and while wet, covered with garden soil that was baked in the oven and then put through a very fine sieve. It was left heaped up until the varnish had dried, next day, before the surplus was brushed off into a container ready to be used again. I purposely allowed the varnish/soil to spill over onto the top coarse of bricks. I will try adding some grass/greenery around the parts of the winch and crane that are in contact with the soil to blend the whole thing in a bit. Apart from the painting of the operators, the only other thing that I will have to do is make up a set of steps that will make getting onto the plinth a bit easier for them.

Jon

The brickwork picture hasn't come out that well although, once again, it looked quite good before I uploaded it. The problem that I had with the mdf, is that it shrank on two occasions. After the scribed styrene was glued on, it was left for a day or two before being painted as there were other things to attend to. When I returned to it, I noticed that it had shrunk in it's thickness. I sanded the walls level, scribed the top of the plinth with the final coarse of headers and then painted it. A couple of days later once again, when I returned to it, it had shrunk again but, I decided to leave it as it was and live with it.
Thanks again to Jamie, for cutting out the sides of the winch for me.

Jon

Just a couple of pictures with people to show up the cranes size.

Jon