Scribing floorboards - tutorial

I scribed the floorboards for the two wood-floored rooms into the plywood base this morning. 

First, decide which way your strips of flooring will run. If you're using plywood, then I advise you to go with the grain :) (I scribed the boards on the upper floor of the kitchen wing against the grain and it's the biggest mess imaginable!)  Because the grain of this plywood is obviously along the long side, as it tends to be, my floor boards are going to run across the length of the house rather than back to front.  This is important because if you choose to have visible beams anywhere, they need to go at right angles to your floorboards for consistency.  (So, for example, my kitchen beams will run back to front.)

I used a long steel ruler and a steel knitting needle to do the actual scribing.  You need a very firm straight edge because your scribing implement (knitting needle, awl, gouge, empty ball point pen, etc) will want to follow the wood's natural grain, and we want to force it to make nice straight lines :)

Starting at the back of the base, and moving forward,  I scribed lines just as hard as I could into the plywood.  Because this is circa 1690, the floor boards don't have to be perfectly even (thank god).  Much later than that and you'll want to make your boards equally spaced. 

Then I imagined where the floor joists might be (remember, the invisible, imaginary joists run from back to front under this floor).  Real floor boards butted into one another across the joists, and it's also where they're nailed down.   To represent this, decide where your joists will be.  Place your ruler firmly along this line (in this case from from to back -- in any case, at right angles to your floor boards).  Scribe a short line across the width of one "board", then skip two boards, and scribe another short line.  These represent the ends of the boards, sitting across the joint.  You'll end up with something like the example above.  (I'm not showing you the section where I DIDN'T skip two boards, and instead went mad and scribed a whole bunch of boards that didn't need to be scribed.  Sigh.  I'll put a damned rug or something over it, but it will haunt me for the rest of my days:)

Then add the nail marks.  I did this with a small sharp nail -- pressing it into every board, because every board gets nailed to the joist. You could probably put four nail marks into the boards that have the scribed line down them (two on each side of the join) and just two marks into the other boards.  You can also wait until after you've stained and add black magic marker dots, or you can go nuts and hammer teeny tiny little nails into every floorboard :)

Next I'll stain and varnish these two sections of floor.

Starting on the William and Mary House!

I've been planning like a fiend and sketching madly for the last couple of days, and I have my plans pretty well worked out for the W&M House.  Yesterday we finally went to the lumberyard to get the first lot of materials!

I'm following Derek Rowbottom's basic plans and techniques for the country house in his excellent book, Making Georgian Dolls' Houses, but I'll be making a few alterations.

His original plans make a two storey plus attic building 38" long  and 16" deep, with six main rooms and four attic rooms.  I'm modifying it to make a 48" long building with seven main rooms and three attic rooms -- I'm adding a single storey addition on the ground floor for a kitchen, so that I can have a separate entrance hall (in Rowbottom's original, the front door comes right into the dining room :)


From left to right on the ground floor:  kitchen, dining room, entrance hall, parlour
From left to right on the first floor:  bedroom, library, blue and white room
From left to right in the attic:  servants' bedroom, hall, children's bedroom

I bought a 4' x 2' piece of good one side birch plywood, 3/8" thick.  I also bought two 2' x 8' sheets of 1 inch thick medium density polystyrene foam, since it's the material Rowbottom recommends for side and back walls.  I'm very curious to see what it's like working with this material, because everything I've built so far has been plywood all the way.  If nothing else, it should make the model lighter!

David cut the plywood to size this morning for the base:

We then made an underframe from .75" square pine and glued and clamped it in place on the underside of the base.

Here's the base on the dining room table so I can mark out the different flooring types that I'll need.  The kitchen is going to be tiled, the dining room wood (I'll scribe and stain this nice plywood), the entrance hall will be marble and the parlour wood.

Here's two short lengths of the builders' foam (we had to break each 8' length into two bits to fit it in the car :))

It's got a very useful rabbet on each edge which will mean that I'll be able to get a nice join on the base:

It's not as pretty as flowers, but I've finally started this project and I couldn't be more excited!

Tudor / Medieval wall light tutorial

I've been longing to try to make a light fixture for ages, and today I just knuckled down and did it!  It's a little crude, and I know I can make it better, but I thought it might help someone else attempt something if I wrote down the steps and showed the results :)

Here's what I used:  a ready-made 1:12 scale eaves bracket (but you could use any piece of wood or a decorative corbel or something similar), a bead cap and a screw-in candle bulb complete with wire.  I stained the bracket walnut.

I drilled a hole through the bracket.  Well, in the case of this bracket, because it has a hole in the middle of it, I drilled two holes -- one at an angle from the top of the bracket into the hole and another straight in from the back into the hole.  This actually was quite convenient because it meant I could use a rather short drill bit :)  If I had a solid piece of wood, I would have used a longer drill bit and just drilled diagonally from the top of the bracket and out the back.

I painted the bead cap black and glued it on the top of the bracket, over the hole.

I was a little bit nervous about how fiddly this next step would be, but it went swimmingly enough.  I removed the plug from the light bulb assembly, cut the ends of the wire off cleanly, straightened the wire and pushed it through the hole from the top.  When the wire got into the centre cut-out, I used a thin knitting needle to make it turn the corner and kept pushing.  Voilà!  The wire obligingly exited the bracket at the back :)  I'm sure that the next one I make, it will be possible to hear me swearing all the way from Canada!

And here's the socket in place -- a bit gloopy from the glue, but just as planned.  You can see a bit of white wire coming through  the centre hole of the bracket, but that's easily fixed.

You can hardly see the wire now, because I've pushed a little glue up to the top of the cut out hole, glued the wire in place and painted it black!

Now to make the light socket look more like a candle. I would have used a bit of drinking straw, if I had had any around.  Instead, I rolled a piece of light card tightly around a thin paintbrush, tested it for fit, and then glued it together to form a tube.  When dried, I slipped the tube over the socket.  I may add some decorative white glue blobs to represent candle wax (considering I leave white glue blobs whereever I go, it would be nice to have some that were MEANT to be there :))

And here's the fixture stuck to the wall with Museum Putty!  Of course I need to decide where it's going to live, drill a hole, glue the fixture to the wall, refit the plug, etc., but I'm pretty pleased that I've finally actually made my own light fixture, blobby though it may be!

Now I need to learn to solder!

Kitchen at twilight

The light was so beautiful yesterday afternoon that I had to take a few photos.

The shot above is of the upper floor.  Two days ago I cut and installed the plywood for the first floor.  I was very glad I made a template of the left hand corner of the floor first, because it made making the cutout for the spiral stairs much, much easier!  Now I'm going to work on finishing the upper floor, cleaning up the window cut outs, finishing the walls and installing the shutters. Oh, by the way, the door you see in the photo above will be for a garderobe or loo!

Hooks for kitchen utensils

I wanted to hang a few utensils up on the side of the charcoal burner, so I made three little hooks out of 18 gauge black wire.

Fortunately my charcoal burner is made of balsa wood so I only had to press the hooks into the soft wood!  Otherwise I would have drilled little holes.

So now the cook has a place to hang her frying pan and strainer!

1:12 scale rustic ladder tutorial

I need a couple of small ladders for my storeroom in the Tudor castle, so I decided to make that my project today.

Materials:

2 10 inch lengths of pine (or balsa or basswood) 3/8" x 1/8" (2 25 cm lengths of 1 cm x .3 cm)
bamboo skewers (or toothpicks)
white glue, craft or xacto knife, drill

I cut my side rails from scrap pine David had around the workshop, but you could easily use dimensional balsa or bass wood.    Shave the edges off these side rails -- the more you shave, the more rustic your ladder will be :)

Tape the side rails together and drill holes for the rungs.  I drilled roughly every inch or so, starting about two inches from the bottom. 

I cut eight lengths of bamboo skewer, each just shy of 2" long (5 cm).  I sharped both ends of each length of skewer to form tenons that would fit in the drilled hole.  This isn't strictly necessary if you drill holes large enough to take the skewer's diameter, but I like the look of the hand carved tenons.

Assemble the ladder.  I dipped one end of each rung into white glue, and put them in place along one side rail.  Then I put glue on the other end of each rung, and put the second side rail in place, pressing very firmly so that the rungs would end up more or less equal in length.

I painted the ladder with a weak mixture of water, white and burnt umber, and here it is in place in the storeroom!

Handrail for spiral staircase

I was just about to glue everything in place when I decided that I really wanted some sort of handrail on this staircase :)

Here's what I used:

I used two sizes of wire, 20 and 24 gauge (I couldn't find my 24 ga gunmetal, so I used bright silver.  If it bothers me, I'll paint it!), fine gunmetal finish chain and square section toothpicks.  I painted the toothpicks brown, then drilled holes in the first step and every other step after that.  I put the toothpicks in place, then made a little loop of the silver wire, put it through the chain at an appropriate point and glued it (with Quick Grip :) to the toothpick. Then I made a larger loop of the thicker wire to add detail and to help keep the smaller chain-holding wire loop in place.  I did that 10 times :)

The above photo shows the view from the front before I glued the charcoal burner unit in place.  This is the last time I'll be able to see the stairs like this!

The above photo is one of the possible views of the staircase now that everything has been glued into place.  It's from the left side door.  Ignore the chain dangling down in the photo -- that's the leftover chain at the top of the staircase which I'm keeping until I see how much chain I need for the final handrail support on the first floor.

And the final photo is what is visible of the staircase from the front of the kitchen wing.  I'm really glad I added the handrail!

Export china pattern cushion, 1:12 scale

Thinking ahead to the time when I have a blue and white room in my William and Mary dolls' house, I went looking for suitable needlepoint cushion patterns.  I couldn't find anything that really grabbed me (although I do love Janet Granger's Willow patterned kits), so I looked at a piece of late 17th century Chinese export ware and pulled a detail from the background.

This motif is pretty typical of the kind of blue and white export ware that was imported by Europeans from 1600 on.

This is my first piece of original needlepoint, and it was so much fun to make it up! If you like it, you're most welcome to download and use the .pdf chart below, as long as it's just for personal use :)  It would look lovely in reds and pinks, too, and it's much easier to stitch than it first looks, because almost everything is straight lines.  You just have to count like the dickens :) The example above was stitched on 26 ct linen, but it would still be in scale up to 22 count. 

Blue and White Export China Cushion Chart - .pdf file will download automatically and should open with Adobe Reader or Preview (on the Mac)

PS:  I'm sorry I haven't posted about the giveaway, yet -- I'm working hard at my Mum's roombox, but I promise I'll post something soon!

Barrels of apples and potatoes for the castle storeroom

Here's what the storeroom is looking like this morning:

A couple of nights ago I made apples and potatoes while watching The Sweeney on dvd :)  Here they are in their barrels (I have to paint the iron rings on one of the barrels, but couldn't wait to post ...)

The potatoes are based on the technique Alex Zohar teaches in this video from Victoria Miniland.  The apples were made using Sue Creaser's instructions in her book Food displays.

Making Tudor leather miniatures by Glenda Howell

In case you haven't seen Glenda's post on this subject, I thought I'd share it here with other Tudor and medieval miniature aficionados :)

Glenda's article on making Tudor leather miniatures has been reprinted in the latest edition of Dolls House and Miniature Scene magazine, June 2010, issue 192.

If you (like me) don't have ready access to this magazine in local newsagents, miniature shops or bookstores, you can order it online from the publisher's website.  I just did and I can't wait to get it.  I've got bags full of leather scraps from other projects, and look forward to making buckets, tankards and other leather goods :)

Hydrangeas out of season :)

I made up the Bonnie Lavish hydrangea kit last night.  (You were right, Janice, it was fun!)  Of course I clearly picked one of the most fiddly flowers in creation with which to begin my adventures in 1:12 scale flower-making -- gluing tiny little flowers onto tiny little stems was making me a bit batty by the end of an hour, but it's very satisfying and I can recommend the kits.  The instructions were a teeny bit sketchy (I'm a Virgo and I like things to be clear :)  but it all worked out okay and, like Janice, I got six blooms, enough for two small plants. 

They will eventually go in two planters I've ordered, but for now they're living in the kitchen.  I don't know if people in the early sixteenth century picked flowers for pleasure rather than medicine or herbs, but I love flowers in my own home, and I like the detail they add to a scene.

You can buy the kits directly from Bonnie Lavish's web site, or from other retailers.  I happened to buy this kit at a discount from eBay seller littleplaceminis.

Egg carton stones

Yesterday I decided to finish off the fireplaces with the edging I'd been planning: egg carton stones.

I link to some great tutorials from This Post, if you want to see people do this really, really well, and paint them, and give you directions and stuff :)

This isn't really a tutorial, because there's not much more that I can say about this topic than:

1. Get a paper egg carton (preferably with a flat top)
2. Cut out shapes
3. Glue them in place
4. Have a gin and tonic (or refreshing beverage of choice

The process of cutting out shapes to fit around these fireplaces was a bit like being given a jigsaw with missing pieces and then cutting replacement pieces out of egg cartons.  I'm sure there's a better, more methodical way to do this than the way I did it, which was to eyeball it, cut out shapes, and keep paring them down until the pieces either fit or I totally ruined them.

Actually it was kind of fun!

Here's what the kitchen looks like with the new stone edging around the three hearths.  (Actually this photo drove me insane, because the edging around the bake ovens was concave on the left side, and I trimmed it down with an exacto knife until it looked less wonky :)  I don't actually like the job I did on the charcoal burner unit very much, so I'm not going to take any close ups of it!

 

The rest looks okay.  I even like the colour at the moment, although I may mess with it later.  This stuff is amazing -- the texture is absolutely perfect for stone.  I'm sure most of you know Cynthia, of Cynthia's Minilife, who has transformed a Beacon Hill kit into a stunning Second Empire mansion.  One of the things that makes it so gorgeous are the egg carton stones she's used on the exterior.  Check it out, if you don't already know her lovely blog!

Lights in the Kitchen!

I love lights.

I love well-done lighting in the real world (whether on stage or in a living room), and miniature lighting has always captivated me in inverse proportion to its scale.  The instant I see little lights go on, my brain switches immediately to "child".  In a good way :)

I have learned, in my brief time doing dolls' house scale lighting, that sometimes it goes ridiculously smoothly, and other times it's a pain in the arse.

For some reason, the little fires in the kitchen decided to be the latter.

The fires themselves are fabulous.  I'd like to learn to make my own, but until then, these are my favourites.  I bought two identical ones from this eBay seller, Kerby Lane Miniatures -- of all the commercially-available dolls house flames/fires I've ever seen, these are the nicest.  (When they have them for sale, you can usually find them by searching eBay for "dollhouse flames").

They don't come with a plug, which is fine by me.  I'd just have to take it off and put it back on again, and the little plugs are my least favourite part of wiring.

For good reason :)

I got all my holes drilled, I moved my circuit board and transformer to the table on which I'm working on the kitchen.  I got the little wires pushed through the holes.  And I started to put the little plugs on the little wires.

Both units put up a struggle.  I couldn't get brass pins out of the plugs.  Then, when I could get them out, I dropped them and couldn't find them and used bad language and had to find another.  Then I had trouble stripping the wires without cutting them, then I had trouble getting the brass pins back into the plugs, and then the damned things wouldn't light up :)

But, finally, both units were correctly wired, plugged in, turned on and everything was magical!

I really like the effect of the flame unit in the enclosed bake oven -- I'm so glad I actually made separate little boxes for each oven!

And this photo shows all three of my new arrivals:  the flame unit casts a nice glow on the fireback.  The little cauldron is hanging from the chimney crane.  The chimney crane doesn't swing, which was a bit of a disappointment, (because we all like moving things, eh? :) I was also at a loss how to install it so that it both looked somewhat believable and held the cauldron roughly over the centre of the fire.  Finally I cut a tiny triangular section of basswood, glued the crane to it, painted it black, and then glued it in the upper back corner of the cob irons.  It looks quite convincing, even close up, so I can live with it :)

I can't wait until tonight to take night photos!

Spiral stairs painted

It's so good to have the spiral stairs done!

I painted them yesterday and this morning.  Here's a photo showing why it was very convenient to have constructed the stairs independently of a base :)

Painting was so much easier this way!  If they had been glued in place, I suspect a great deal of bad language would have been used ...

And here's what they look like now, after some extra coats of paint:

I received some lovely goodies in the mail yesterday -- my fireplace crane, a little cauldron and the two fires I need for the kitchen.  I'm all ready to build the final wall, install some lighting and finish up the ground floor of the kitchen wing!

Spiral stairs and other delights :)

Thursdays are always busy days here, because that's the day the KnitWits (the four girls I play with) come over. We did accomplish a few things, in between several hands of Happy Families (Evangelista won them all -- well done!) and celebrations of Fred's birthday (she's officially a tween now, a label she cordially detests).  Well, she's twelve, she's entitled :)

Tiddles and I worked on the spiral staircase.  I had cut a 1/4" dowel roughly to length, and I made a temporary base it could be stuck into so that we could construct the staircase out of the castle, and then move it when we'd worked everything else out.

I was using the rather thin suggestions for construction from Geoffrey West's book  Tudor dolls' houses.

This is a close up of it after I put it in the castle this morning, but it gives an idea of the basic construction.  We cut 1 3/4" lengths of dimensional balsa (the balsa was 3/4" x 1"), shallowly sliced off one corner, used a rounded file on it to make it fit better against the curve of the dowel, and glued these lengths on top of each other.  (If I had been clever, I would have sanded every piece perfectly before assembly -- now I have to sand it afterwards ...)

It was very hard to start the build, because the darned thing kept toppling over!  Finally Tiddles and I decided to just glue up the bottom five or six steps and leave it alone for a while, while we had a snack and played cards.

When we came back to it, I got the bright idea of using Quick Grip glue (our unofficial sponsor -- someone from the company, Karen, actually left a comment on my earlier post about the bake oven construction -- it was like a visit from a celebrity :)  which worked a treat.  I still just glued stairs on in groups of six or so, but it was certainly stickier!

This morning I drilled a hole in the base of the kitchen floor where the stairs will go, and tried them out for size:

Looks pretty good!  It's got to be sanded and then painted to look like stone, then I have to figure out the cut out for the upper floor, which may tax all my spatial abilities.

Note:  it would be more in scale if the lengths of the steps were longer, but I was building this to fit in a very small space.  I've been up some pretty small spiral staircases in cathedrals and so forth in England, but I suspect there aren't any quite as small in diameter as this one!

In other news ...

I made one door for the bake oven -- this one didn't have to be removeable, because I intend it to be closed for display, but what the heck?  It is!

And Tiddles sewed on some lengths of trim to her tapestry, made a hanging rod with bead finials, and hung it up, proudly, in the Great Hall for all to admire: