Doors and Windows Fit! Finally...

It took a whole day, but the door finally fits as it is supposed to. We still can't figure out what the problem was, aside from the paper clay that wrapped the sides of the buttresses, but even with that gone, the door would only go in on a slant, top to bottom. The sides of the door were shaved just a little, but the threshold kept moving, making it near impossible to make the thing go into the prepared opening in a straight, proper manner. Then it suddenly fit....

The door will be framed on the back of the room box with plain painted boards, as that side is not likely to be visible. I hope that the door will stay closed when the box is picked up, and if not, I'll have to fix a barrier across the back. The last thing I want is for the door to break if I ever get to display at a show again.

The window "glass" is still missing, so I'm going to try to cut a new one from plexiglass, using a circle cutter I acquired years ago, primarily for cardboard. I'm hoping that scoring the half circle will make it possible to knock the half-round window pane out with a  minimum of trouble. The windows all have arches for the back side, although another one has snapped; that will be glued up overnight. They tend to break at the base of the arch, on the grain of the wood.

That blank wall on the left is crying for some of the tools to be hung up; perhaps I'll hammer in some tiny nails tomorrow. I say hammer in, but in fact I drill the holes and then glue the nails in with a tacky glue/super glue double dip. The ones I put in months ago have stayed put so far.

 

Just When You Think You're On Your Way!

Well, I did finish the hot plate and propane tank, although I still need to dirty up the tank, as it looks far too new right now.  A few rusty spots and a nice brass label ought to improve that situation.

However - the door won't fit, apparently the frame is now a little too wide for the buttress wall. That means I have to sand the paper clay sides down until the door fits. I had hoped to carefully insert the door from the top of the wall, but....somehow, it won't come off any more! I removed the screws holding it in place, and can only assume that I allowed the wood glue for the paper clay wall to get under the wood of the fake slanted roof wall. Sigh! Or perhaps it is the paper clay that caused the problem. Oh well, back to the drawing board....

I've also managed to mislay/lose one of the half-round window plexiglass pieces, despite being oh-so-careful in storing them in their original packages. The Carpenter-in-Chief says it is probably on my work table or in that general area somewhere, but I despair just a little: my garbage can is a bit  too close, and the garbage went to the dump already. I might be able to cut a new plexiglass window, as I do have a circle cutter. I hope I still have lots of thin plexiglass to experiment with.

The tea kettle could also stand a little evidence of use, and I should probably add an enamel-ware coffee pot. Other than that, the outside of the room box has been painted, the roof panel has been cut, and when I have had a good cup of tea I'll attempt to transfer the beam layout to the roof. Then I can get all gluey putting broom straw in place.

Someday, I will finish this project!

 

A Couple of Other Finished Things

We did have a meeting today, and I finished a couple of small things for the wooden shoe factory, like the shovel for the fireplace ashes, and the two-burner hot plate for making tea and coffee. The wire is to become the hose for the propane tank; I have to finish the fittings on that, and then coil this bit of black wire to look more like a propane tank hose.  

Bits and Pieces....

 ...on their way to becoming something.

We have had to cancel three mini meetings in a row, which means I haven't actually made anything in that time. I have completed several pieces of sewing that had been sitting for months, and sent them on their way, and have begun some knitting to tide me over a two-day meeting I was supposed to attend. Covid is quite bad here right now, so I begged off those meetings. However, I did do some of that knitting.

So be patient, my mini friends, I hope to be back in the mini groove in a couple of days!

Making It Look Used

The floor has been finished to look like an earthen floor, and the walls are being aged and dirtied to show evidence of  long-term industrial usage. We didn't have our meeting today, but hope to get together on Monday to make up for it. By that point, I hope to have the aging finished.

At this point, the windows have been fitted but not yet fixed. I need to make the corner wall and the wall with the stove rather more cream in colour, to match the other wall but will have to check it out in daylight to determine just how much colour to add. The bricks need mortar lining and colour washes to make them more realistic.

The paper clay shrunk rather more than I had planned for around the curves of the windows, so I filled in with paper clay "worms"; it wouldn't do to have light showing around the window frames. Soon I'll have to work on the lighting....

 

Oops, I Did It Again....

It takes me far too much time to get up the courage to do certain things, and one of those things was to do the remaining stucco walls for the wooden shoe workshop. Yesterday, I decided enough was enough, and I put stucco on the remaining walls. 

Only the wall holding the stove needed doing, but the chimney of that stove is made of a plastic drinking straw, dowel, and cardboard. It was difficult to get it to stand straight, as I was worried about messing up the paint job if I tried to bend the straw in a bit. I said a prayer or two, stuck my tongue in the corner of my mouth, and just did it. 

Today, I did some small touch-ups, like filling in a little paper clay around the chimney where it goes into the wall. That dried quickly enough that I was able to paint this afternoon. And I will explain the oops for this entry; I forgot to allow a clear space for the beam at the top of the wall, which meant I had to cut, pry and sand the dry paper clay just as I had to do with the corner of the dividing wall. Guess I didn't learn.....

The floor in this part will be painted rather than done with dry wall compound, as miniature things have no weight whatsoever and would not stand straight on what would undoubtedly have been an uneven floor. The sealer will go on today, and I'll try to get the painting done tomorrow. The doors and windows haven't been placed yet, they are where they're supposed to go only. In order to install the door between the buttresses, I have to take the slanted beam and reed wall section off. That will happen probably after the floor is done. And I just realized that the door would have been difficult to open on a floor that was even a tiny bit higher than the bottom of the door....

The walls will be dirtied and aged once the floor is painted. Stay tuned!

A Repair I Would Not Have Attempted Until Now....

This is the head of a wood chopper's ax I picked up many years ago, at a Craft Fair in Duncan, B.C., where I was visiting my father and my younger sister and her family. I don't know who made this ax, and I don't actually know what the axe head is made of - possibly polymer clay - but the haft of the ax went right through the blade. Naturally, it broke while this little scene was at a show. 

I am proud of myself; I drilled out the stub of the haft, carefully made the pin in the haft a tiny bit longer with sandpaper in order to give it a bigger holding point, and glued it in place. Into the other end of the ax head I inserted a tiny peg sanded down from a wood toothpick (not a bamboo one!), to look as if the haft goes right through the ax head.

Where, why and when this little scene was made has escaped me; I think it may have been at Camp MiniHaHa, or perhaps at a miniaturists' get-together. The lichen and moss on the stump are real; the turkey-tail fungus on the side are made of pine cone scales. The logs are scattered about, some quartered or halved, others whole. The landscaping includes mosses, grasses and tiny yellow flowers, as well as sawdust. I just love this tiny vignette! A miniature doesn't have to be BIG to be good! I do, however, still have to find a permanent home for it, to prevent further ax handle disasters.

Making the tiny tools for the wooden shoe factory has made me more confident in how I use my pin vise drill. I am now comfortable changing drill bits as I go along, to enlarge a hole if needed, and miraculously for someone who is straight-line challenged, I can drill straight!