The Helldorado Mine | Gruesome Gulch | GGRR 19

foreign [Music] Howdy Folks Dave here at thundermases Studio where I'm starting in on another project for the gruesome Gulch layout since the very beginning I've envisioned an old abandoned mine up here next to skull Butte something like a mine gives both the town and the railroad a reason to be here it kind of fleshes out the story so it's not just a random Ghost Town out in the middle of the desert what I have in mind is something small and rather caricatured similar to the other structures here in The Gulch but with a mine shaft that'll go down and tie everything together with the caverns so come along with me now as we design and build the hell Dorado mine for Gruesome Gulch like all of my builds uh this one is going to start with a drawing and you know a lot of times I'll do that drawing in a software program do it digitally in something like Adobe Illustrator or photoshop something like that but this time I I'm going to go back to good old analog we're going to use some blue line graph paper a ruler and a pencil to get started on this so it looks like we're going to have a head frame that's about 28 feet wide at the base and then a little over 20 feet tall I'm going to use this drawing as a template to work from probably going to build the uh the head frame right on top of this so I'm going to go ahead and ink it in so I can see the lines a little bit better great advantage of having a full-size drawing like this to work from is that it tells you right there exactly how much Lumber you need and the sizes and even the angles that they need to be cut by so I'm going to gather up all of this scale Lumber and pre-cut and pre-stain everything so we can jump right into Construction this set of Parts here that I'm using to build the uh the Hoist Shack that goes at the back of the mine might look a little familiar to you if you watched my build video on the Blackjack mine which I did for the the Bandit Canyon Railway project it's exactly the same set of parts in fact these go back all the way to the Big Thunder Dynamite Shack which I built for the Thunder Mesa lab I've distressed and cut all of the lumber that I think I'm going to need at least to get started but I've decided that I want the shack itself to be about a scale foot narrower than it is so I'm just cutting out one of these boards and then just gluing it back together these pieces are cut from some 1 16 of an inch thick Basswood plywood which is a great material to work with to stain all these pieces I'm using the same two-step process that I used over on the Dead Eye Saloon because I want that same kind of dark brownish gray patina that you see on old buildings in the desert and the first step is to go over it with a this is a Minwax early American wood stain marker then once that's had a chance to dry go back over everything again with my India ink and 70 percent isopropyl alcohol stain now I can finish setting up my drawing as a jig I've glued another piece of foam core down here to act as a stop now I'm using some clear packaging tape laying it right over the top of the drawing so that when I glue the pieces together they won't stick to the paper I'm going to notch this upright just a little bit so that this diagonal piece will lock in cut down just a little bit take your hobby knife and a flat file and to assemble this I'm just using some good old yellow Carpenter's glue position this upright piece first I'll use some dress pins push down into the foam core to keep it in position just line it up right on top of the drawing I'll set this aside for a minute let that dry and I'm going to go ahead and Assemble the Hoist check now lift this up just a little bit I've got it propped up with a piece of 4x6 so I can put this piece in on the other side behind it so I've got one side done and I'm ready to build the opposite side but the challenge here is that it needs to be a mirror image so how do we do that well first of all since these this is a 12 by 12 and these are eight by eights this is four scale inches wider so if I build it flat like I did that one this will actually be positioned in the wrong place so the solution is to take a piece of four inch wide stock this is some four by six and lay it underneath here like so and then we put these pieces on top and that should position it in the right spot relative to the bottom beam and then we just put the cross braces and the odd and the opposite side of where I put them on that one and you've got your mirror image now to put these two sides together I've decided to do a little cheat I've created a base out of some chipboard which is the same dimensions as the footprint of the head frame with the 12 by 12 cross pieces in now I just need to glue this side in this just makes uh everything a little bit easier keeps everything positioned properly the right distance apart and then when it's installed on the lap um it you know all of this will be covered in ground cover so you won't see the cardboard at all and another piece of eight by eight goes in between here tie these two uprights together I'm adding a pair of angled two by six braces that come down like so and then I've got a four by six that slips under here on each side goes all the way across and then the top beam which is another piece of eight by eight now I'm just building up around the mine opening with some cribbing there's some eight by eights overlapping at the corners I've got this propped up because I need to add these two diagonal braces all right that one here another one right there and finally got a pair of eight by eight supports here for the sheave wheel and I want those about a scale five or six inches apart so that looks pretty good now I'm assembling the sheave wheel and I'm going to build it all as one unit sliding the pillow block on here to the other end of this piece of brass wire that way I can paint the whole thing and it wants and install it all at once now I'm going around and drilling some holes and adding some that bolt washer castings and likely locations this little brace needs a couple to put those in there with a dab of CA on the end back here where the Shack's going to be I won't actually be able to see any truss rods so I'm not going to bother to actually model them but up in the front they would be visible so got some music wire drilled the holes all the way through now just cap it at each end with one of those Square nut bolt washer castings now I want to create some iron straps that'll wrap around this top beam here just an extra reinforcement so I'm going to use some bristol board I've cut it to about a scale six inches wide I'm going to paint it that dark brown now I've drilled some holes and added nut bolt washer castings on both sides I want this this wheel to look good and Rusty I'm going to kind of dry brush on some burnt sienna and orange and I can just snip this right off the wire and glue it into place a little bit of CA I think now I want to do a little bit of work on the shack just finished building the window and painting in it it's a dark brown and I dry brushed it with some lighter Browns and Grays to better match the wall now I'm got some acetate glazing and I'm just breaking the window I'm just applying a little bit of Zap canopy glue this stuff to the back of the frame I want this window to be so dirty that you can't see through it so first step is going to be go over the back with some Rust-Oleum matte finish give it a little bit of tooth and some dirty Gray colored shocks on the back and we'll spray it again I think that'll work now I can trim it out with some 1 by 4s now I can trim the door side in just the same way and I'll add a z brace to the door just just because I like the way they look foreign two parts of this thing together glue The Shack in I just want to add a piece of eight by eight as the ridge beam for the roof or my winch cable I'm going to use some number 10 crochet thread but I'm coloring it with a brown Sharpie which will give it a nice Rusty look I can thread this through the sheave down into the structure I cut a hole in the bottom I can run this down through I'll just put a little dab of CA on the Wheel and put this over on its side and use just a little bit of CA and a little square of Gaffers tape to hold that in place and I want it to look like the cable has snapped and is just hanging loose so I'm painting it with some diluted white glue so this crochet thread will stiffen and hang straight down I also want to fray the end a little bit for the roof I've cut a couple of chipboard panels and temporarily tape those together to make sure they fit the way I want them to on the structure also painted it dark brown underneath and now I've got some some plastruct corrugated roofing material and I'm cutting this into a three foot wide strip and I'll take and cut these into probably eight foot long so three by eight all right I've got nine panels and that's going to be more than enough go ahead and get some gray primer on these and we can get this roof finished while the primer dries on those panels get a couple other bits of business done I want to make a smokestack coming out from the steam engine that is presumably inside of this little Shack and for that I've got a piece of straw this is from a juice box and a bamboo skewer cut the angle here at the bottom to match the slope of the roof and I'm going to put this bamboo skewer inside I'm going to pot it in with some Sino acrylite now get some paint on this now I'm using some 2x6 to frame in this hole this opening where the hoist cable comes through the roof now I can glue this side of the roof on I do want to have a light inside of the building um just a lone yellow flickering LED that's what this is a three millimeter flickering LED and so the about the only place I can put it where it won't be visible you know through the windows or through Cracks around the door or something is up here under this under the roof so I'm using some 3M foam tape this is the industrial strength variety and bend that down a little bit put some black Gaffers tape over the top to secure it even more food s now I can just finish trimming out the rest of the roof with some more 2x6 finish up the paint job on these corrugated panels I've got some orange and some burnt sienna acrylic paint and I'm just going to take a little piece of this is just regular yellow kitchen sponge and go over each one the sponge gives you a nice random pattern and I'll just continue to go over each one of these until I get it the way I want it so to apply these corrugated panels I'm just brushing some Eileen's tacky glue on the back over here with a smoke Jack comes out I cut a hole right through here and I just colored that black with a black Sharpie so when I put this over the top it will look like flashing showing through underneath for this next row I've got to cut these sheets in half so they're basically four by three feet but you see what happens it shows this white plastic when you do that but a real simple solution just to go over it with a brown Sharpie just like that and I can go ahead and put the stack in too while I'm working over on this side all right I think we got the roof for now and if you've been waiting for a sign this is it it's time to add a little signage to the building I uh as usual created this graphic and uh Adobe Photoshop using some CG wood textures that I downloaded from the internet to make it look like a wooden sign and use several different techniques filters one of these days I'm going to do soon I'm going to do a video on how I create these signs in Photoshop because usually you guys just see the the tail into the process when I'm putting it on the building so I will spray some glue on the back of this and then we'll laminate it to this little piece of Bristol board and I'll glue this one to the back of that one now I'll use my watercolors and paint the edges of warm gray so it looks like wood now I'm going to mount this on a piece of two by six and this one is going to be right up here top of the head frame and with that the structure is basically done but it's going to need a lot more weathering before I put it on the layout nothing says abandoned old building like boarded up Windows so the first thing I want to do is put some 2x6 across this window here I think I've been boarded over I'll break one of these add some nail holes yeah I think I want to break one of these diagonal supports there would almost certainly be boards across an open mine shaft like this to keep unsuspecting folks from falling in just using some old coffee stir sticks for this there that tells a little story over here I want it to look like the door maybe was boarded up something has gotten in well now I Want TO gray this down a little bit like dirt and grime is splashed up onto the building over the years and this is this is Advanced you might not want to do this with your models but I've done it before so I think I can get away with it this is some Rust-Oleum aged Gray and I'm not going to spray it at the model and spray it around the bottle so it just comes up onto the bottom and of course you can do this very effectively with an airbrush as well now it's time for some chalks I'm going to start up here on the roof work my way down and around start off with some Rust colors some orange and terracotta great thing about chalks is they go right where you need them when you're doing corrugated like this goes right down into those grooves where the rest would be and I'm also doing this to dull the shine the acrylic paint tends to have a little bit of even when it says matte it's still going to have a little bit of a shine to it I want to go over all of the metal on this not just the roof throw a little black in there and darken things up some soot from the uh smokestack some more rust here on the wheel and the winch line hoist line and moving right along We'll add some dirty grays down around the bottom okay I think that's sufficiently gnarly looking a coat of uh clear matte finish on that with the above ground portion of the mine essentially finished now I want to turn my attention to the mine shaft itself which will go down down down into cadaver Caverns the first step is creating a base for the mine out of some one inch thick extruded polystyrene foam the same stuff that the rest of the layout is built out of and I'm finishing it with all the same painting techniques got a coat of the the scenic base coat on there and now I'm going over it with a black wash to darken everything up back in all the cracks and crevices then I want to go and dry brush over all of that with some lighter Shades of Gray same way I did with the rest of the scenery just using some granite gray and some dark blue gray mixed together go over all of this Bring Out The Rock texture and the highlights take some of this unbleached titanium and mix that in fix a great highlight color warms things up just a little bit it's more makes it for more of a warm gray and I'm just spreading out a little bit of Eileen's tacky glue this structure down to the base make sure the opening lines up with the mine shaft there we go now I want to backfill in all around the entire structure with my usual dirt and rocks that I use all over the gruesome ghost layout these are cinders black and gray mostly there's some bigger rocks in there here and there and I'll use some diluted white glue to hold all this in place this is just regular white glue diluted three to one with water and while that ground cover dries I want to continue to add little bits of debris broken pieces of wood are always good and the fun part is that it's almost impossible to overdo piles of debris like this the more the better I want to have a lot of old rusted iron too so I've got some bits and pieces from my scrap box that I can throw in here little gears and pieces of machinery all right we'll set this aside let the glue dry on all of this and I can work on the rest of the mine shaft I've cut a hunk of two inch foam for the lower part of the mine shaft so the mine's going to sit up here and the shaft will go down this will lead down into the caverns and then disappear underground down there and now I just need to texture this rock surface and use a wire brush I cut all this out with a hot wire cutter just to get the shape right now I can use my heat gun to finish this off and you know no matter how many times I do this technique it always looks like magic [Laughter] all right now I can paint this up just like I did the base now I have a pair of five millimeter orange Amber flickering LEDs and these are going to go down in the bottom of the mine shaft all the way down where they won't be visible you'll just see the glow coming up so it'll give the look of uh you know Fire Down Below as if the shaft goes all the way down to well you know where so here's the bottom of the mine shaft it'll come down come up here straight down into here and so I'm going to mount these LEDs in here now with some of that 3M industrial strength mounting tape like that any final blending or weathering of the Mind can be done over here on the layout in fact probably be better that way so I'm just going to go ahead and glue the whole thing right into place make sure that lines up with the mine shaft just finishing up the paint job on this little section of mine shaft I wanted to add some some veins of ore running through here so I use some Vallejo silver metallic paint maybe it's mithril who knows maybe they delved too greedily and too deep and that's why the town is cursed who knows just uh a little bit of extra storytelling there now I'm adding some eight by eight Timbers here and there make it look like more like a mine than just a hole in the ground perhaps this was you know had some nice Square set Timbers at one time but uh it's all broken down now so it's all kind of falling into ruin and disrepair okay I think that's sufficiently terrifying let's go put it in the scene I'm gonna blend these parts together a small batch of sculpt the mold and then I'll uh paint it all to match well it wouldn't be an old abandoned mine without some bats and these are some little 3D printed guys from miniprints.com highly recommended I have mounted them on some pins so I can put them here around the mine shaft like they're flying around the glue on the end here just push that right back into the foam foreign detail is going to be a skeleton another skeleton also from mini prints and I've rearranged his limbs so he can be hanging on the Rope up above the uh the open mine shaft right now I'm using some acrylic modeling paste to add some rags ragged clothes to him just building it up in layers and then when it's all painted it'll look like he's got Rags hanging off his bones there we go now I'll do a dark wash over him to tie everything together and bring out the details and put a little drop of CA on his hands and he's going to go right here [Laughter] oh I love it when a plant comes together [Music] thank you [Music] and that's going to wrap it up for the hell Dorado mine here on the gruesome Gulch layout there's more coming from gruesome Gulf so don't forget to like subscribe share hit that notification Bell if you want to see more you can also follow Thunder Mesa over on Instagram at thunder.nasa and see what's new on the Thunder Mesa Studio website at thundermesa.studio and if you really like what we're doing here at the channel and want to show you support you can head on over to patreon.com thunder Mesa like these nice folks did and show your support there until next time keep moving forward my friends adios for now [Music] thank you

Channel: ThunderMesaStudio

Views: 5,074

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Id: 6jKJq_oNM74

Length: 32min 1sec (1921 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 14 2023