Blast furnace 5 part 2

So, here we are two and a half months later, with blast furnace 5 more or less finished, for now at least. Time to show the second half of the build and think about what project to attack next, go right ahead with blast furnace 7 or first some trains, or a smaller building? Maybe build some pipework? We’ll see in a while.

For now, let’s continue with the story of BF5. At the end of the previous post the main shape was mostly there and I pretty much ran out of CNC-milled parts, so from then on it was mostly good old time-consuming hand made stuff and sprinkling the whole thing in photo etched railings, ladders and stairs (I designed a bunch of standard stairs and railings for this project)
Meanwhile some cnc-stuff was designed to finally turn those drain pipes into actual cowper stoves, fairly straightforward stuff but involving a lot of rivets (punched in some evergreen 0.13mm styrene sheet or paper).

The cowper stoves have some hardware installed so they can be fixed to the layout using some threaded rods

Note the different stove tops: the one on the right got a new top as the inside was entirely replaced during the last furnace rebuild, the other two have their original big riveted tops.

adding some detail to the casting floor

the furnace top got some extra detail, a crane boom was liberated from the artitec etched parts archive

everything pretty much complete

Then, finally, paint! I could have been sensible and painted it at a sort of pre-planned date so I could actually make sure I had the paint I needed, but I could also paint everything a week earlier, rush things, discover I forgot to add some detail I had planned while painting stuff, run out of paint halfway as these open frame things require a ridiculous amount of paint to get decent coverage etc… Of course, the second option was wildly more attractive, so here we go.

I felt a bit sorry having to take this guy apart again. I feel he could be the protagonist of some weird movie I’d like to see.

The next day some colour was added, mostly standard rust mix (humbrol 70 with some 62) and grey (humbrol 28) on the frame. The casting floor got a bit of a concrete flavour with some cream/buff tone mixed from whatever leftovers I found on my desk. Then assembled the thing with most of the paint still kinda wet to take some pictures, because one has to live dangerously.

well… one of those pictures that made me realise my life may have gone off the tracks a little. Oh well, just pretend we didn’t see that and keep going!

Then start some detail painting and weathering. First a very simple but effective damaged paint-effect on the grey bits: just do a spotty wet drybrush with some lumpy half dried out humbrol 98 dark brown. The rusty floors got some burnt and raw sienna oil paint.

Then the casting floor got a good layer of dust and rubble using real dust scraped off a wall in ougree, mixed with water and pva glue and basically just painted on, with some loose dust thrown in for good measure. Then some drybrush on the gnawed-off edges of the concrete and some oil paint (mostly burnt sienna) on the rebar ends.

the top floor of the furnace got a similar dust treatment, though it was kept a bit cleaner.

The cowper stoves first got some spotty rust effect by applying some humbrol 100, 62, 33 and 98 with a sponge, then the usual dirt wash (humbrol black and 29), then got soaked in turpentine and I applied streaks of raw and burnt sienna oil paint and smaller streaks of black and white. Then a fairly neutral drybrush with humbrol 72 to tie everything together again and highlight the rivets and panel lines an finally some more detailed rust with colouring pencils. All very much done in a yeah lets slap this on, see how it turns out kinda way.

Then to top it off some green garnishing on top. Look mom. vitamins. mmmm. Veggies provided by martin welberg: http://www.martinwelberg.nl/

So, that wraps up blast furnace 5 for now. It’s been a really fun project, although it’s been a serious amount of work I’m sort of surprised how quickly it all came together (well, still about 3 months.)

That’s it for now,
cheers!
Floris