Creating a 3D 1:48 scale Model of Edward Hopper's "Early Sunday Morning" Painting

[mmarcovitch]

On a nice Sunday afternoon I sat on my special chair, watching golf and creating all the wall hangings that will adorn the interiors of Early Sunday Morning. I also have to get some figures, although that would not be prototypically accurate since Hopper is deliberately depicting a time when nobody is out or in the shops. So I would be correct in not worrying about putting people into this building. Actually, the only lights that would be on would be in the apartments upstairs. However, I will violate that possibility since all the work I’m putting into the interior deserves to be lit.

For those that watched, the Derby was pretty exciting!

[mmarcovitch]

Paint work and lining the interior walls.

All the signage is printed along with a checkered tile floor for the barber shop and parquet for the travel agency and stair well. The bourbon barrel store will have a concrete floor. Found many patterns of parquet tiles that I imported and copied many times to make a floor.

After priming the interior partitions and stairs outside with Tamiya Fine White Primer. Then I brush painted craft acrylics for the color coats. Travel agency and upstairs apartments are off white (vanilla), stair well is light yellow and bourbon barrel store is a light brown shade.

The upstairs outer walls in this image have had their “sheetrock” installed, but not painted. The bare paper color is almost a perfect match for the off-white I’m using for the partitions. The back door will be painted gray.

The open-door print was successful as well as the tiniest laptop in the world. The open doors will be used in the lateral walls that I will creat from 1/8" ply when the other walls are all assembled.

The laptop is kind of amazing. You can even see the track pad on the lower portion. It’s 0.010" thick. I’m having to revise my answer to the question, “What’s the smallest thing you can print?” I used to say, 0.030" (1/32), but with the new printer and a layer thickness of 40 microns, it’s obvious that you can print 0.010. It was so thin, I post-cured it using the UV Bondic curing LED wand. Took about 3 seconds.

[mmarcovitch]

Interior work continues—and will do so for a while more—with further additions to the Barrel Store.

I cut the 2nd floor and roof pieces on the Barrel Store end. I painted their underneaths with the off-white I’m using. For the 2nd floor, using 3M transfer tape, I cut some of the parquet floor print and applied it.

Besides wanting to hide the assembly tabs in the corner, I needed a rest room in the space. I cobbled together a couple of pieces of scrap and used Aileen’s Tacky Glue to assemble. It’s a nice product that I haven’t used in a long time since it really doesn’t work well on styrene or resin. But it works nicely on wood and sets up pretty quickly. After the glue cured, I epoxied the asembly to the proper location on the partition wall. I used inside calipers to determine the actual width the floor should be.

Here it is being test fit into the building. Used a V-Block to ensure that all was square—not that it really matters in this case.

Here’s the partitiion test fit with the rest room. Note: the outside door is now painted. I didn’t spend the time to add a doorknob or crash bar on that door.

The undersides of the 2nd floor and roof pieces will all recieve copper foil and LED circuits for interior lighting. I’ll be doing that shortly.

The 2nd floor stair well needs the parquet flooring too. It’s a tricky shape and I wanted to make a paper template to get a nice fit before cutting the printed sheet which is a much bigger pain to reproduce.

And test fit…

I spent time painting the inside edges of the window frames. This will require some back painting of the green to fix my overpainting errors.

Speaking of overpainting errors, I started painting the stair case. Didn’t get done in time for dinner, but you can get an idea of where it’s going. Instead of repainting the white, which was just the primer coat, I’m leaving it alone. The view of the stair is so limited that just having it sitting in there will be sufficient. I try to make it perfect just because I’m nuts. When I’m done it will be as near perfect as I can get it. Having a single-print object as complex as this makes for difficult painting where different shapes block access to other areas.

See y’all tomorrow. It’s a gonna rain a lot over the next couple of days. What wonderful time to bury myself in the shop

[1roughdraught]

WOW! Fantastic! Nice choice of subject matter. I have always liked Edward Hopper’s work.

[mmarcovitch]

Yes and thanks! He is my favorite American painter. I also like the Dutch Masters and Dali. As a model maker, always attempting to reproduce tiny details, the Dutch Masters resonate well with me.

This is yesterday’s post. I’ll post again later when I more stuff today.

Took a couple of steps forward and one biggie back. Many of you like to read my posts because you like how I recover from screwups. If you’re within that group, you’ll like this post.

I was doing some touchup work on the interiors of the small windows. I put the the front wall assembly on an upholstered stool next to me, but didn’t have it properly stabilized and it hit the concrete. Fractured the miter joint, broke of a large chunk of the top edge of the end and other minor damage.

Cleaned up the old epoxy on the joint face, beveled and glued the chunk back with Bondic and then epoxied it back together again. Small missing material from the miter, broken corner of the lower cornice and a chunk out of the base framing. You can just make out the hairline of the re-glued the corner.

This interior shot shows the upper repair pretty well.

And here’s the repaired part (still needing mortar lines and some color blending). This could have been much worse. Of course, I could have just reprinted the entire wall if need be, but I’m glad I didn’t have to. It’s not whether you screw up—after we’re just fallible humans—it’s how you recover.

Back to the stair. After accurately determiningy where the stair would attach to the wall, I scraped off the paint to get down to native substrate and epoxied the stair to the wall.

I put the two walls of the stair well together to get a measure for the roof plate. I also adhered the parquet layer to the 2nd floor. Cut and finished the roof plate. In looking at my design, I’m realizing that I’ve way over designed the stair ledges. They hold no real load and could be 1/3 the size. I will adjust on my next building.

At the stair well rear there is the “chimney chase” aka the wire way for the stair well (and other) LED wiring to go to the base. I printed these parts, but they needed to be field modified to fit properly. They also needed a hole to be drilled in the 2nd floor to pass the wire through.

The top needed a notch also to accept the leads. This was cut with the Dremel and carbide router blade.

Lastly, the lower section was glued it and all was painted. Technically, it had two coats, but needs a third if i wanted it to be perfect. There’s space above the lower piece to accept light wiring from the under the second floor.

Hopefull, I won’t drop any important strategic parts on the floor any more.

[mmarcovitch]

For all you folks out there there who get inspired to build some custom stuff, remember… if you’re dumb enought to deicide on an interior, you will spend more time on that than the structure, and, unless you take lots of construction pictures (like I do), no one will ever seem most of it. But you have to admit, it’s kind of cool. Doll houses are usually 1:12. The houses we build on our layouts are 1:48 and that presents interesting challenges.

Today, I didn’t break anything. That’s a good day!

I’m having to do all the lighting and wiring now when everything is apart. Some spaces are getting cool white surface mount LEDs to simulate florescent and others are getting warm white to simulate incandescent lighting.

I’ve detailed this method of model lighting in sevearl other projects so i won’t belabor it. If you’re new to the thread, go back one or two projects and you’ll get all the information.

Upstairs spaces are only getting one LED. I’m putting vision blocks so only a few upstairs rooms will be lit. It’s a different story for the store spaces. Here I want a lot of light to show the interior details and graphics.

This is the Barrel Store ceiling. It’s getting two cool white LEDs. The wiring will go down via the “rest room closet”.

The stair well 1st floor ceiling gets one warm white LED. Here its leads are directed down the chimney flue chase.

The stairwell 2nd floor ceiling also gets one warm white LED. Hallways leading to apartments are nortoriously dimmly lit compared to commercial spaces. Its leads also are directed down the chase. I’m going to glue these floor pieces to their respective partitions BEFORE gluing the partitions into the building. This is required because of running those wires so they’ll be hidden.

I forgot to print the interior window trim frames. I drew them, but didn’t finish the job. They are now draining in the printer. I will clean these up tomorrow, paint them and install them on the already completed walls.

[mmarcovitch]

I’m now realizing that, as usual, I’ve over-engineered (read… complicated) this build. I was too cute by half. My desire to 100% 3D print everything forced some decisions that could have been much simpler. Case in point; those partitiios. They’re really not structural and could have been more easily fabricated out of less technical materials such as plywood, MDF or even foam core. And it all could have been installed AFTER the perimeter walls were all tied together. I keep finding unplanned discrepancies with their fits due to the after-thought nature of their creation when I switched from Laser-cur to 3D printed construction.

Today, I finished glazing and triming out the rear windows. The digital cut windows are terrific and that’s one addition to my work flow that will not change. I put the glazing into the frame and than dab a small amount of Bondic resin in the corner tying the glazing to the frame. A couple of seconds with the UV light and the glass was secure. I then added the outer trim using rubber-enhanced CA and accelerator. I burshed the accelerator onto the sheet rock and the CA onto the trim frame. It a couple of seconds of holding they’re secure. After taking this pictues, I painted the remaining rear walls and back doors.

After epoxying the roof piece to the left stairwell wall, I completed the stairwell by gluing on the other wall. It’s dark in there, but there is lighting.

Again, I was dismayed that the left wall is about 0.170" longer than the right. I think I had a rib on one of the adjoining walls that was eliminated in one of the revisions, but I didn’t adjust the wall’s depth to account for its removal.

I will add a meaured shim to close that gap and then install this assembly on the back wall.

I will then make up the remaining 2nd floor and roof pieces. There’s a few more doors to install and some transverse walls to serve as vision blocks so the building isn’t see through. It will allow the lighting to be more specific.

[ateliernab]

@mmarcovitch

My desire to 100% 3D print everything forced some decisions that could have been much simpler.

I feel you.

I was thinking about making partitions for my shelves, thinking 3d print, make them stronger, all that…

then I unpacked a random box and found A3 sized sheets of mdf and… yeah, that’ll do fine too

[mmarcovitch]

Just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should.

I fixed the gap at the back of the right stairwell wall with some meausred ply laminatged to the wall’s edge. I ended up knocking the rear wall assembly on the floor when I rotated my desk chair not realizing there was a contact point. This break was very clean and after a little cleanup of the joint surfaces, I epoxied it back together without difficulty. The wall also cracked in the middle, but thin CA at the back rejoined the surface and it’s undetectable.

With all of the partitions now able to be fit properly, I clamped the barber shop and stairwell walls to the back wall and measured for the 2nd floor and roof plates over the barber shop. This image shows getting the depth after I had cut the width. I use a scroll saw for making these cuts and they’re all needing belt and final sanding to make them truly straight and square. I don’t have a small table saw, and the chop saw is just overkill.

The doorway into the 2nd room of the left side apartment is too low. The trim interfered with the 2nd floor plate and i had two choices: trim the door frames (very challenging) or notch the floor to clear the trim. I chose the latter. I wanted to make a back room in the barber shop like I did with the barrel store to hide that ugly, undercorated back door and to provide a hidden way to get the wiring to the basement. Made this just like the other one.

Lighting was installed in both of these new plates. The barber shop is getting three, cool white LEDs like the barrel store to simulate florescent lighting, and a single point LED light upstairs warm white. When you know what you’re doing, putting surface mount LEDs on copper foil goes pretty quickly. I still test the LEDs off and on the foil. The hardest thing to master is making those mitered corners. I learned to do that in the late 1970s when I was moonlighting as a burglar alarm installer. This was during the era when glass window protection was done by lead foil adhered to glass. You make these folded mitered corners to change direction without tearing the foil. You never know how things you learn can be used 50 years later. Of course that the same rationale I use when I put stuff away in junk boxes in the basement. “I might need that someday.”

The last thing I did was test fit the new plates. They can’t go all the way back until I feed the wiring to the basement. I’m leaving the upper floor wiring exposed, but tied to the back wall. You will see nothing up there especially when the window shades are in. The floor plates look thick, but they’re actually about 1/2 scale thickness. Floor joists plus ceiling plaster, subfloor and flooring is about a foot thick or more. This is 1/8" ply which is a scale 6" in 1:48.

Because of the open door on the left and the trim getting in the way on the right, I won’t be able to slide the floor straight in during assembly. I will have to glue to the barrel shop wall, and then bring it into contact with the stairwell as I glue the stairwell in. This stuff is very hard to predict when I designing all this. Notice the price list on the barrel shop wall. I had to reprint the original design 50% smaller. I originally wanted to be able to drop the floors in from above and remove them if necessary. That ain’t gonna happen.

Next up is painting all the interior furniture and making the base plate. As I’m building this in my mind, I’m seeing how and when the furnishings will go in. They may have to all be in place before the front wall and back wall assemblies are joined. I really don’t like that scenario, but can’t see any other way since the floors can’t be installed from the top. It will be difficult to place the furniture from the front also.

[mmarcovitch]

There must be an idiot secretly working in my shop! First up was making the rest of the floors with lighting and then painting the ceiling side with gloss white Tamiya rattle can outside. I was ready to start planning on getting it together. When I taped the building together with the stairwell assembly in place, I saw this!!

Why is are the front and back walls bulging? I’ll tell you why. Remember yesterday I had to add about 1/8" to the wall with the jog in it so it was the same length as the right side wall of the barber shop? That wall was actually the correct length. The other wall was too long. I ended up fussing with removing material on a completely finished assembly with a staircase inside. I marked the extra and cut it off… after breaking off the extention pieces that I glued on yesterday. The stairwell now fit without bulging the walls. This wall needing cutting was resin and couldn’t be put into a scroll saw. I used an abrasive wheel on the Dremel to hack it off. Crude, but effective. One problem solved…

Next problem:

The travel agency 2nd floor and roof were incorrect. Luckily I was able to cut off the offending parts without screwing up the perfect lighting circuit I has just installed.

Here’s the roof. The cuts were just next to the circuit strips.

Here it is fit in the space correctly.

The travel agency ceiling/2nd floor had to have the same modification and also just cleared the circuit paths. Both of these peices could be cut on the scroll saw with the LEDs facing up.

Then the idiot struck again! I don’t know who this guy is, but if find him I’m going to give him a piece of my mind. Just before quitting I went to fit the barber shop roof and 2nd floor—both of which were painted, wired and had their flooring applied and with a notch cut to clear the improperly placed floor ledge on one side—and found it was grossly wrong-sized!. I mean, I don’t know what this guy was measuring because it wasn’t this model. These pieces are too far off to graft an extension, and may require remanufacting both parts. That said, I may try a graft since it’s impossible to see all this anyway and I can keep the circuits intact. I would have to de-solder the LEDs since I’m running low on the warm white ones, if I’m remaking the parts.

So… if you find this guy who keep’s screwing up the measurements, please let me know so I can catch him/her in the act.

Tomorrw we’re heading to Washington University at St. Louis for the graduation of our youngest grandson. He’s graduating in Mechanical Engineering and has a job starting in July with an old, well-established engineering consulting firm in Chicago. Life is really good for him right now since his steady girl friend got the job she wanted in Chicago also. He and his older engineering brother both credit working with me in the shop as the impetus for them choosing engineering. Their dad’s a top orthopedic surgeon, but they chose a different path. My work here is done.

[ateliernab]

@mmarcovitch

Their dad’s a top orthopedic surgeon, but they chose a different path

eehhhhhh, fixing people, fixing machines, is it that different ?

in regard to your resin cutting, better this way. better have a bit too much that you need to grind off with a dremel than missing a couple of mm and having to reprint something.

[mmarcovitch]

Orthopeidic surgery is very mechanical and craft-like. Screws, rods, plates, drills, drill guides. All stuff I’m familiar with.

Yup, it’s sure easier to remove than graft.

A couple steps forward and a few back…

Measured, cut, illuminated, painted and wired the new, correctly-sized barber shop floor and roof. I was able to scavenge one of the warm white LEDs from the wrong piecses, since I am running very low on these. I needed just one on the 2nd floor ceiling. For the first floor ceiling I’m using three cool white LEDs and didn’t spend the time to scavenge those. I have many of the cool white ones.

That was a good thing that corrected; last week’s screwup. Then when manhandling the wall assemblies to further fit the partitions, the rear wall developed a small joint fracture that didn’t cause a dislocation. However, the travel agency/stairwell joint—which was dubious all along—fractured completely and did dislocate. I had to stop and repair both of these. The repaired big joint is superior to the orginal. Again I used the stout aluminum bar to ensure straightness of the wall during epoxy curing.

When the joint cured, I flipped it over and installed all the upstairs windows, starting to add the window shades. I thought I had some scale window curtains, but they were used on a previous project. I add the window trim on the front windows, not they will be seen from the other side of the building, but to give evidence of the inner window sills, when viewing from the front, so they match the other windows in the building. Those two on the right end need painting.

I cleaned up the epoxy that oozed out and repainted the cornice and we’re good to go. I also added the graphic to hide the missing paneling on that store front sill.

Just to show that my bricks, as bad as they are, are not imaginery. Here’s a view from my grandsons apartment in St. Louis. He graduated this past which is why we were in that town. I was viewing the building next store and realized that my bricks can be explained in the 1:1 world.

There’s still some more fitting to do before the partitions and floors can be installed permanently. Tomorrow I’ll install the store front windows and trace the inner profile to cut and fabricate the floor plate. I have start painting all the furniture too. I’m estimating the model will be done in about one to two months.