In any case, here is where I stand now. I spent some time creating some of the interior bins and lid portions. I then hit as many pieces as I could with flat black and flat grey spray can primer.
In the above shots, you can see I taped the outside of the walls off and primed any piece that would be inside with black to block light from escaping once lit. The bottom pic shows all the pieces for the card holder and dice bin. I attempted to glue some fabric to the inside parts of the card holder and you can see the CAA bled through a bit. In person it doesn't look as bad as it does in the pics, and in any case, no one will ever actually see it.
I decided to use some half rounds for interior wall bracing. I hope that it will give me a good base for interior detail as I hope to use this when covered as columns inside the building. In the bottom pic you can also see on the left side the angle bracing I am using to create the card holder. The fabric covered pieces will go inside that area. Also on the right side, you can see where I messed up. The chewed up area is where I added another angle piece before realizing that it was on the wrong side and had to cut it back off, therefore damaging the wall a bit. No big deal though as this will eventually be covered anyway.I apologize for the quality of the pics. They are terrible, but eventually I shall get some better ones when it counts.
The next step was to start with the exterior details, so I began creating the columns. 1/2" Half rounds for the front portion and middle of each side and 1/2" x 1/4" square for the side corners. I then used .125" x .040" strip and liberal amounts of glue to do the foundation details. Some were easy to do by just gluing it to one side and slowly bending it around while gluing. Others I attempted to use a heat gun but the heat was too much and warped the strip to quickly. I suppose in hindsight that a hairdryer would have worked better. The square parts were easily cut and glued.
Next I attached the columns to the walls, figuring that I could add the step detail to the columns just above the foundation parts once they were attached as the strip for that portion was very thin. In pic further along this detail is there but with the quality of the images, you probably can not see it. in any case this was done by gluing a .015" x .060 strip just above the foundation pieces. I then laid a .015" x .030" strip over that to create a step detail at the bottom of each column. After the fact I decided that doing this part while the columns were still unattached to the walls would have been easier.
On a whim, while buying windows and stuff online, I purchased some of this "cement". I wasn't sure I would use it at first, but eventually I realized that I would have to do something on the exterior walls to trim up the window holes. Otherwise I was going to have large gaps between the window frames and the wall. I now realize why people do this in layers. Unfortunately, I had already added the columns, so adding this on the outside was going to be more cutting and fitting around those than if I had added it prior. No biggie. I figure the columns would now have more of a "built-in" look this way. The "cement" sheet is rubbery and cuts very nicely and easily and is probably in the .010" to .020" range in thickness. I didn't want this to cover the entire wall as the columns would then look funny being smooth, so I opted to use it just along the bottom section to cover only the bottom windows. I would then add a trim piece above that and finish the top larger windows with .010" styrene. It is very hard to see in the above pic, but it is there and the styrene to cover the top windows is not added in this pic.
The final thing I want to talk about is the lid section. This will be the top most lid and is created with 3 sheets of styrene stacked on each other. The smallest (top section in the pic) will be the bottom and is cut from .040" styrene. The next two sections (under that) are .020" styrene cut about 1 mm bigger than the previous piece to give the roof a bit of molding detail. The hinge is made from double sided carpet tape attached to fabric on each side. This provides a super strong hinge that I won't have to worry about ripping or breaking. The fabric section is sandwiched between the top and bottom layer, while the middle layer had the middle cut out to accommodate the fabric. The piece hanging out the back will be attached to the inside of the back wall behind the card holder section.So that is where I am. It doesn't look like I made a ton of progress, but it took me a while. A more experienced person probably could have done this all in a very short amount of time. Such is the learning process.
My next step should be to finish covering the front wall middle section where the entrance way portico should be, prime the outside and start getting the interior walls created and shaped. After that I can start squaring this up into something that looks like an actual building. I wont be able to continue the cutting and shaping process of the top sections of the building until I have it squared up and erected as the ceiling piece I need to build off of needs to be cut to the size around the dice bin and I wont be able to get those measurements until I have it built up.
See ya next time!
This photo shows different states of progress on each wall. The solid square is the front wall scored and snapped out. I have not yet drawn lines for windows or started any cuts on this section. The top right section is a side wall all cut and glued back together. The green stuff is Squadrons green putty used to fill the cut gaps on each side. The top left section is another side wall all finished construction, glued, puttied, and sanded.
A close up of one side wall. The quarter and dime are there to show scale. Remember this is an N scale building and those are N Scale windows. The top windows are fairly large for this scale and thats why I chose them. They are the 40 pane engine house windows I ordered from Tichy.
The front wall completed. All detail pieces will be added later so that is why you do not see the columns and things yet.
The back wall completed. This wall has no windows because the loan card holder would be blocking all of this wall from the inside. No sense in adding windows here then and a lot of these type of buildings did very little on walls that were not facing the streets, but I did want to put something there to give it some interest. Since my building only had one door entry in the front, I thought a small back door would be appropriate for money delivery or whatever.
All the walls and the floor laid out. Now to start with interior bracing and get this thing looking like a building.
Here I have completed most of the interior bracing on each section. More might be added into the center of each section to provide more support but I need to wait to install the window glass first, and that only after I have painted the interior. A nice dark color (black in most cases) is suggested to keep the light inside from making your building glow. The shiny mess you see on the bottom right section is light reflecting off the glue. It dries transparent if a bit shiny.
Here is the prototype I would use to get started. The first thing I needed to do was search the Internet and hobby shops for suitable windows and doors for my bank. Once I had those, then it would be easy to start the diagram as I would have some base sizes I needed to start with. My foray to the local hobby shop (LHS), did find a good selection of windows and doors, which I purchased with the intent of using on other buildings.
Here is my diagram of the front of the Bank of Arkham. I started as close to the prototype as possible, but soon realized that using six columns and five windows on the front made the building a bit bigger than I wanted. Remember that the front of the building would need to be at least 2.5 inches long to accommodate the loan cards standing on long side inside the building, so the front had to be at least that length, but at the same time, I needed to conserve as much space as possible. Reducing the number of windows and columns on the front allowed me to shorten it up to about 2.75 inches long.
Here is one side. Since both sides are identical, there would be no need to diagram both. The back of the building would have very little detail and would, in this model, mostly be a concrete wall. I will add a small back door off to one side but there will be no windows or columns on the back. The side area is 2.25” long. Not all the detail and parts are added to this diagram as it wasn't needed here and most of the calculations were preformed on the front. The front overhang would actually be supported by the front columns (not shown) and I did not add the rounded roof from this angle.
This is a diagram of the bank looking down from the top and shows some insides. This was actually one of the most difficult diagrams to do and it is shown here only in it's most basic form. The actual diagram has a few other layers which show the lid and the section just above where the columns stop. It all fairly intricate and confusing, so I did not include that, but basically I wanted to give the reader an idea of how the interior would look and be designed.
This picture is of a bank in New Jersey in 1925 and is called the Broadway Trust Company. White concrete, colonnaded front and sides, flat roof line, very close to what I had envisioned. I did not think it would be too out of place in the town once all the other buildings were placed, and in fact, the white concrete structure would probably be good to break up some of the many brick and mortar buildings.
Here is another one of the same building sometime in the early 1900's. The nice thing here is it showed more than one side, and in better detail.
Another of the same bank at the same angle pretty much, but this one is of the building as it is now. Not much, if anything has changed, but it is in color which would be a huge help come time to paint.
Not wanting to just stick to one real life building, I found this interesting Bank from South Camden, New Jersey in 1927. Similar structure to the Broadway one, but this one provided a variety of details that might prove helpful.
Last one. This is a bank in Camden, New Jersey dated 1925. Not sure why everything that I picked out was from Jersey, but they work for me, so, whatever. I also find it amusing that all three banks have so much in common, are all located within one state, and two of which are almost in the same town! I wonder if they are all are from the same affiliated branch or something?
These are the small cards that go with the Bank of Arkham location. They are used as loan cards in the game and have text to that effect on the opposite side. There are eight of them, one for each player, but since the cards suck, we very rarely ever get them in game and as a result, they stay packed away most of the time. By the way, there are two sized cards in this game, large and small. Large cards measure 2.5”w x 3.5”h. Small cards measure 1 5/8”w x 2.5”h.
These are the money tokens. Money usually belongs in a bank, and I had originally decided to create another smaller removable box inside the bank next to the cards...
but since my game group does not actually use the money tokens and instead uses two black 10-sided dice for each player, this wont be needed after all. Too bad actually as I made the box out of cereal box cardboard and even went as far as gluing nice shiny black fabric to the inside, and was going to do something to the outside also. The money chits make good counters for other things though, and there is a rumor card that can be played that uses money also, but, again, I still feel 2 black D10s take up less room and are less fiddly than all those cardboard chits. So instead I shall make the “vault” in the bank, only big enough for 2 D10s and toss the money chits. This will remove the need to make a removable “vault” also.
Nothing really seemed right, until one day, I was in a craft store checking out magnet striping. The striping wasn't magnetic enough and would break apart with very little effort, but next to it were these little babies. Only 1/4” round and half that as tall, and they are powerful. Very powerful. Yet with a slight bend of the cardboard or plastic between them, they would easily snap right apart (do not try this without something between them as they are almost impossible to get apart this way). So I think I found our lock. Now to get started with a prototype.
This image shows that the shelves are actually 16" deep and leave about 3" inside the base for stability. They may be put on some kind of runner like a drawer to facilitate sliding in and out and provide a stopper so they can't get pulled out all the way.
This shows how the shelves will be in storage position, slid into the base. A locking mechinism will be added to the outside to keep the shelves from sliding open during travel.
This image shows just the base board without the expansion area and how it could be split in half to create a manageable size for travel and protection. The right side would be flipped over upside down onto the left side. Obviously, the shelves will be closed when this happens. The Rolling Allys would provide enough height and stability to create a closed box. only the left and right sides would remain open in this travel arrangement and those could be covered with a separate piece.
This image shows just the base board. The overall size here without shelves is 44" long x 42" high. Splitting it in half results in two 22" wide x 42" long sections that when put together would be about 6-8" thick. Very close to the original idea of a guitar case size and will still fit in the back seat of any car.