Sam's Structures
One thing I learned from Sam is building good structures takes
planning. One technique he used was to fit the major pieces together
before painting or gluing, using tape if necessary to hold them
together. If anything didn't fit right, out come the files, sandpaper,
knives, etc. to get those pieces to fit.
I thought I knew how to weather models, and I was on the right track,
but Sam taught me how to weather structures his way, which was
far superior. The first lesson was to have a reason for the weathering.
That is, what would the weather do to this structure over time. Why
would there be rust here, or a darkening (or lightening) of color be
there. Where do cracks usually appear. By observing the weathering of
real structures, one can do a realistic job on a model. It was all
common sense, but somehow I had never looked at it that way before. The
next lesson was on the modeling techniques to accomplish this. We sat
down together, picked a structure, and he carefully directed me
step-by-step through each technique. Did I mention Sam was a master
teacher?
Here are some examples of Sam's work. He built several structures for
my Swiss layout. Once he got going, it seemed he couldn't
stop coming up with more models I had to have. The whole village of
Muffikon arose from a simple suggestion of his that I needed to have a
small stop on my upper loop. I disagreed with his suggested location,
and countered with a village at the foot of the planned mountain. That
was all it took to get his juices flowing. See the discussion of this
in my own layout web site.
I've collected these structures based on where they will live on my layout:
Därligen
Zürich
Muffikon
Schloss Moxiberg
And finally, structures we have which won't be on the layout: Misc.