Carpenters' Hall

Carpenters' Hall at 320 Chestnut Street in Philadelphia is an important historic site, and among other claims to fame was the meeting place of the First Continental Congress in 1774. The first thing a modern-day visitor probably notices upon entering is a display case near the center of the hall, housing a 1/24 scale diorama showing the building under construction in 1770. The diorama was made at the Hagley Museum about 40 years ago, and as closely as possible its construction matches that of the real thing, with wooden framing held together with dowels and wooden shingles being laid on the rafters, cedar shingles, and copper flashing. Tiny clay bricks being unavailable, the masonry is made of sheets of plaster with silk-screened bricks separated by scribed mortar lines. Nice little touches include a workhorse-powered hoist, scaffolding, workmen wearing three cornered hats, a well with a hand pump, an outhouse, and even a dog chasing a cat.

Before I got started. South face. See the dog and the cat?

Just this past week, I had the opportunity to work on this diorama, because the Carpenters' Company is celebrating its tricentennial in 2024 and wanted its model restored for the occasion. I jumped at the chance to do this: I'd never worked on a museum display before, so it would be a valuable experience. Also, I wasn't totally unqualified, since I had refurbished plenty of models and dioramas before.

On a previous visit in December I had examined the display case and come up with a plan to disassemble it to permit access to all four sides of the diorama. The hall is normally closed on Mondays, but in the winter it is closed on Tuesdays as well, so the task was to get as much done as possible in two days. Disassembly (and reassembly) required two two-by-fours fastened to the top and four tall people lifting the top off the case by the ends of the two-by-fours. Arrangements were made for the four tall people (including me) to come on January 8 and 9. My plan was to get there by train, walking the remaining six blocks or so, limiting how much I could carry. The week before, I made up a list of needed tools and supplies and bought whatever I didn't already have, and the night before fit it all into two carrying cases.

I took along a power drill, drill bits and screwdriver bits, some lengths of scrap wood to screw to the top of the case for the two-by-fours to be attached to, and drywall screws. For the work on the model itself, I took Q-tips (not enough!), toothpicks, pipecleaners, pipettes, paintbrushes, two airbrushes (Paasche VL and H), an assortment of Vallejo paints, mediums, and flow improver, an air compressor and regulator, AK diorama paste, lightweight spackle, and matte scenery glue and static grass from Woodland Scenics. If this list sounds exhaustive, it isn't, because there were other odds and ends that I found room for, like packing tape and twine, and other things that slip my mind now.

Wiping dust from the scaffold.

The morning of January 8, I arrived at 7:45 and got to work readying the top for removal. Once the top was off and the plate glass removed, I got to work cleaning away the accumulated dust. The model was sealed up fairly well over the forty years, but extremely fine dust had made its way into the display case, coating the horizontal surfaces. The layer of dust was less than .001" thick, and I got much of it off with a long paintbrush, with which I could reach pretty far into the model, and a vacuum cleaner, which I used to draw the airborne dust away (as well as directly vacuuming the ground surface where it was safe to do so). However, I've noticed in cleaning models before that dust can really cling to painted surfaces, as if it's chemically bonded (maybe it is!), and some of the dust simply couldn't be removed. This was particularly the case on the window sills, so I repainted those. They were a warm white, a paint color that I matched by adding a tiny amount of yellow ochre. A chalky white paste had been smeared on various horizontal surfaces to represent spilled mortar (a trough for mixing the mortar is on the ground, next to a pile of sand for mixing with the lime). The white stuff came off easily, so I tried to clean around it. 

Adding a dark wash to the joints.

The scaffolding was represented by long twigs lashed together with string, which I took to represent long, narrow poplar trunks tied with rope. As I wiped away the dust with damp paper towels, it became evident that the scaffolding had a coat of grey paint. I couldn't tell how much of the grey was dust and how much was paint. I'm not sure why they painted it grey, except perhaps to represent weathered wood. Wiping off the dust took much of the paint off. This left streaks, and to me the resulting effect suggested poplar trunks that had been shorn of bark. so I left it that way. Some of the lashing around the joints was dark, making it more apparent how the scaffolding was constructed, so I added a wash of burnt umber to all the joints, wiping away the excess.

Greener greenery, and a wetter well. NE corner.

The groundwork of the diorama was a fairly uniform shade of brown, including the back dirt piles. My experience digging holes leads me to expect a brown top layer and lighter, reddish or yellowish subsoil, so part of my preparation for the job was to find out what the actual soil colors would have been, in order to represent them more accurately. For this, I enlisted the aid of an archaeologist I happen to be married to, Dr. Ilene Grossman-Bailey. She searched through a geographically-linked index of archaeology reports (which a mere civilian like me can't access), and found a 2022 report on excavations at Carpenters' Hall done by Richard Roy of AECOM. She asked a friend at AECOM for a copy, and within a day I had the answers I was looking for. I found a good paint match for most of the subsoil below the pre-1770 surface was Vallejo 70.921, "English Uniform," so this is the color I airbrushed them, adding a little white to add highlights in a second pass.

The bosses confer. North face.

Unfortunately, my airbrush started giving me trouble, so boy was I glad I'd brought a spare! I switched from my VL to my Model H for the rest of the groundwork and foliage, and fixed the VL the following weekend. The problem with the single-action H is there's no using it like a spray can like I would on a model, starting next to the model to avoid sputtering on it and sweeping across. Instead, I had to two-hand it to shoot air on the target before adjusting the paint flow. Fortunately, painting groundwork and foliage is forgiving. Speaking of foliage, the model builders at the Hagley museum had added grass in clumps. It looks like static grass, but as far as I know this product has only been around for about ten years, mainly used by model railroaders. The clumps looked a little sparse, and their color was none too healthy, so I squirted in some scenery cement and stabbed in clumps of static grass in places where the grass would be more lush, such as around the well. I brightened up the old foliage and made the old and new foliage match better by airbrushing with various shades of green, starting with a light yellow green then changing to darker tones. I also dabbed in some acrylic medium on the well platform under the spout, so it looks like the well has been used recently.

A wagonload of shingles. SW corner.

No modeling experience is without its lessons, which is one reason I undertook this job. Working under a deadline, it's really important to relax and do it right while sticking to a schedule. I tried to make the most of the two days, but in retrospect I think I rushed some things a little, like painting the groundwork, with the result that it didn't come out quite the color I intended. A literally painful lesson, which I got while carrying my heavy stuff back to Jefferson Station in a driving rainstorm after a long, tiring day, is to make sure my stuff is easy to transport. The carrying cases were just about ripping one arm out of the socket, then the other, while my umbrella kept getting turned inside out. Either a backpack or a wheeled suitcase would have made the walk a lot easier. Another lesson is to make sure to have adequate lighting. The hall has rather poor lighting, coming from two candelabras (plus a desk lamp I was able to cadge). This was okay on Monday, since the hall also has nice large windows. However, those windows have shutters, and not just for show. They are kept closed at night and in inclement weather, and the weather that Tuesday was some of the most inclement in a long time. As a result, I had a very hard time seeing what I was doing (another reason I had trouble getting the groundwork the color I wanted).

The most excuse-our-dustiest part of the diorama. SE corner.

Shinden, minus one Godzilla

 Godzilla Minus One is one of the best movies I've ever seen! For me, a small part of the movie's appeal is the appearance of the Kyushu J7W-1 Shinden fighter. It happens I built the 1/72 Hasegawa kit some years ago, but didn't have any pictures of it on this blog. Not to blow my own horn, but I'm pretty happy with the job I did on it. As of this writing, it's on display at AAA Hobbies in Magnolia, NJ.

It's mainly painted with Model Master Enamels, with the green/gray camo scheme applied with my Paasche VL. To give the hinomaru decals a painted-on appearance, I painted over them lightly with the base color.

By the way, I found out at Aviation of Japan that you can see the replica Shinden used in the movie at the Tachiarai Peace Memorial in Fukuoka (story here).

 

Lost in Space Chariot (D&H 1/35 kit)

Just completed, the 1/35 Chariot by Doll & Hobby Georgia. I'd say more, but busy getting ready for Wonderfest.

 

Revell "Astronaut in Space"

Here's Revell's 1/12 scale astronaut from about 1969, in this case a 1990s repop. Given the EVA equipment, the chest mounted ventilation unit and the hand-held maneuvering unit (HHMU), this could only depict Ed White on his Gemini 4 spacewalk on June 3, 1965. It was the first spacewalk by an American astronaut, and White enjoyed it so much he said having to get back in the capsule was the saddest moment of his life. He would lose his life on January 27, 1967, in the Apollo 1 launchpad fire that also killed Virgil "Gus" Grissom and Roger Chaffee.

The kit came out after this tragic accident, and doesn't mention White, instead presenting the figure generically as an astronaut. It's based on Revell's previous 1/6 scale Gemini Astronaut, and has a similar clever design to show the astronaut on a spacewalk. My goal was to do present White on his spacewalk and paint his G4C spacesuit in accurate colors, but without doing all the work of fixing the umbilical, which is simply wrong. I also wanted to make the figure's face visible through the gold-toned visor, using a bit of artistic license. The face doesn't look much like White, but after I lightly airbrushed the inside of the visor with Vallejo Liquid Gold, it's hard to tell.

After applying white primer, I preshaded the suit with Polly Scale blue in the folds--shadows should be blue in low earth orbit! Then I airbrushed it with Tamiya white with just a little Testors Turn Signal Amber and thinned with isopropyl alcohol, using my Paasche H. This looked fine before I sprayed it on, but it came out too yellow, so I mixed up some burnt umber and clear flat varnish, and shot that over it, followed up with very light drybrushing with Vallejo white. The helmet is also Vallejo white, the straps Polly Scale blue, drybrushed with the same tone but lightened, and the gloves are painted a mix of Testors white and steel acrylic, with the black areas painted with Vallejo black lightened with grey. The HHMU is painted with more Vallejo Liquid Gold (it comes in silver, too). Various parts on this and the suit are anodized blue and red, which I represented with red Sharpie.

I did basically no modifications, with a few minor exceptions. The designers seem to have rotated the arms as an afterthought, so the seams on the sleeves don't line up with the seams on the shoulders, as I think they should. To fix this, I filled the upper part of the seams and rescribed them. The two antennas on the left wrist broke off, so I replaced them with wire. A plain black rectangle is provided on the decal sheet for the name patch, so I drew a black rectangle with "E.H. White II" in white lettering in Autocad and printed it out on plain paper, then glued it on the chest. It's a little oversized, but if it were any smaller the text would probably not be legible.

It's possible I'll redo the umbilical at some point in the future. It plugs into the wrong place, the instrumentation port above the inlet port where it should plug in. There's supposed to be plumbing or wiring connected to all three ports on the front of the suit and to the ventilation unit and the helmet. The kit represents these features either inaccurately or not at all. If I do replace the umbilical, I'll probably use steel wire and add weight to the Gemini capsule base.

Headpiece of the Staff of Ra

"Make the staff six kadams high..."

Here's something from last year that I forgot to post about until after it got put away with the Christmas decorations. It's a pretty simple resin kit that I got off eBay. Being a prop replica, it's 1:1 scale, and it consists of three parts: the headpiece itself and two gems. The work involved gold leafing it (after applying a coat of gold paint just in case), then some light weathering before gluing in the gems. My wife Ilene is a big fan of the movie, so I gave it to her for Christmas, expecting that she would use it as a tree ornament.

"...and take back one kadam to honor the Hebrew God whose ark this is."

 

Goodbye, Rory

This is nothing to do with modeling, but modeling is making, and making is how makers express themselves. When I got up this morning, I had no idea I would be making a coffin for a cat. Rory spent the night outside - the weather was very mild, so we thought nothing of it - but he died unexpectedly during the night. He was eight years old and in the prime of life.

So I made him a coffin, and we buried him in the backyard. There was no way I could just put him in a hole in the ground, so I had to make him a coffin. It was my way of saying goodbye.

Happy Halloween!

I provisionally called this model done today, since it's Halloween and the trick or treaters were going to start coming soon, and it's a spooky house model. It's the Polar Lights "House on the Hill" previously released as the "Bates Mansion" from the movie Psycho. I don't care particularly about it being the house from the movie, but I was nuts for haunted houses as a little kid, so I built it all decrepit looking with many layers of weathering. There are more things I want to do to this, but they'll have to wait.