The Old School at Noville 1944

Hi Guys

I am waiting on some stuff for my next dio and in the mean time I thought I would share some photos of a build I did a while ago.

This was my first attempt at a dio and the be honest I did not know anything about military modelling or how to go about building a diorama. The only reason I built it was that I volunteered to test some moulds and build something with them for a friend who's company makes them. He used may photos on his website and I wrote a tutorial for him, so he at least must have liked it.

The techniques I used were just made up as I went along so this is no master class but you may find them interesting.

As I did not know what I was doing I thought I would try to replicate a photo I found of the Old School at Noville 1944 /1945 after the Battle Of The Bulge.

This is the original photo.

I will post some photos of the build process shortly.

Hope you find them interesting.

Lou

Thank you Johnny

Well lets get started.

One of the moulds I was given was a wall section mould.

This is what it makes.

The section of wall in the photo was cast using terracota coloured plaster. This plaster comes pre coloured and has an iron powder mixed in with it. The iron powder can be made to rust and makes a nice red brick colour (the section of wall above has had the gaps filled with polyfilla mixed with yellow ochre powder pigment to simulate mortar).

On to the build.

The base was made from 25mm polystyrene stuck to MDF.

The wall sections have been stuck together with Water Resistant PVA either side of 0.4 mm birch ply cut into strips (used by model plane and boat builders). The ply is very thin but very strong.

I did have a problem with the Water Resistant PVA. Unlike normal PVA it stains the plaster, not good if you do not intend to paint over it .

There is an obvious historical mistake here regarding the construction materials I have modelled and the construction of the real Noville school house and virtually all the buildings in Noville.The problem was I had to work with what I was given and I liked the old photo so much I decided to ignore it.

Thank you for looking more coming soon.

Lou

When all the wall sections were assembled it was time to make the ground floor floor.

I first drew the floor full size and printed it out. I then cut the wood to size (I used normal soft wood you can buy from any DIY shop, riped it down with a table saw and made the final cuts with a miniture proxxon table saw).

The wood was held down to the drawing with double sided tape and glued together with PVA.

Have installed the floor, plastered the walls in this room using dry wall and tapped the joints.

Still loads of work to go but this is how far I had got.

All comments welcome.

Lou

Lou

Glad you decided to put this up. Very impressed with the colours you've achieved and the plan made and used for the floor.

Cheers

Tim

Thanks Tim

Here are a few more pictures of plastering.

Surprising how much wood and plaster goes into a building.

Lou

Right up my street this, Lou. I'm going to enjoy watching this come together.

Cheers,

Ron

I`m in too!!.....Looks fantastically realistic,following all the way!

Cheers,

Andy

Thanks guys

Just a bit on how the lathes & plaster ceilings were done.

The lathes were made from 0.4 mm ply cut into small strips. I cut them on a cheapish paper guillotine.

I had made a lot of these floors by this point and was getting a little lazy. The gaps between the lathes was getting a little too big.

Before plastering the lathes I stuck small ply packers on the corners.

Next I marked out the area of the floor on a cheap plastic kitchen chopping mate and smoothed some plaster over it (any smooth flexible surface will do).

Next I pressed the floor into the plaster and weighed it down. If the gaps between the lathes are too wide the plaster will fill the gap between them and the floor boards (not very realistic if you break the floor up and can see inside).

Before the plaster dried I cleaned around the edges.

Flex the mat when the plaster has dried and you should have a nice plastered ceiling.

I remove this one too soon and some of the plaster came off.

Unfortunately I could not come up with a method to add smooth plaster to the walls so had to have them make a plaster sheet mould which I used to cast the 8'x4' dry wall sheets. These turned out quite good because the plaster sheets once attached held up the floor above.

I have added wooden window frames (made much the same way as the floors), skirting boards, painted the plaster on the walls (stained with a tea bag) and started adding a bit of rubble.

All comments and any questions welcome.

Lou