Sunday, December 18, 2011

Much Frustration!

Ever since I finished the staircase, the mansion building process  has been a nightmare!  First of all, as I feared, the walls and the floors started to warp.  I tried many known methods to un-warp them, which worked, but only lasted temporarily. I gave up after many attempts.

Ugh.

I believe one of the reasons why the wood is so stubborn is the paint. As the paint dries,  it shrinks slightly, causing the wood to pull and bend in this shape. I think this goes the same with glue.  All I can do now is to hope that I can fix the issue when I start gluing the pieces together. Fingers crossed!

I started the wall papering process using the free images from www.microjivvy.com. It's a tedious job, but it's going rather smoothly.  I also glued all the windows and doors.



However, once I got to gluing the walls together, that's when everything went down hill.  First of all, I glued the walls together on the wrong edge! However, by the time I realized it, the glue has already set. I gently tried to take them apart...until I heard a sound any miniaturist would cringe to: "SNAP!".  I froze for a moment  until I realized I broke part of the wall and the window! Noooooohohoooo!!!  In a panic and on the verge of crying, I managed to glue the broken pieces together. It was quite dramatic!

The piece I broke. Can you tell?

The directions for this kit are very unclear and hard to understand, which cost me this mistake!!  grrrr....

I hope this is the first and last downfall for this project.  I hope everything will go smoothly from here on. Aaaah...1/144 scale definitely challenges my patience, haha. Now I know why there isn't much people who work with this scale.

The base foundation



5 comments:

  1. It is frustrating when this kind of thing happens the moisture in the paint causes the grain in the wood to expand and open normally when it closes this is what happens, dry heat especially radiators or direct sunlight is another main cause, im guessing once you glue the pieces because they are quite thin they should go back, and as for the piece you repaired it now looks like new again.Well done!

    ReplyDelete
  2. If I get a section that warps really bad, I something flat on it then something heavy to hold it down. Also, if you put the corner pieces on before you glue the walls together, that helps. That way you can hold the wall flat while the corner pieces are drying.

    ReplyDelete
  3. @ Miniature Treasures and Lori: Thanks for the great tips! I feel encouraged now :-)

    ReplyDelete
  4. You are so freakin adorable. Don't worry, it's going to look fantastic when it's all done. You will see. We knew it was going to be a very tedious job. You are doing great so far.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Greetings! Very useful advice within this post! It is the little changes that will make the most important changes. Thanks for sharing!

    www.caramembuatwebsiteku.com/tips-tentang-struktur-website

    ReplyDelete