The Hotel Mojave | On30 Goldfield & Calico

Howdy folks, Dave here at Thunder Mesa Studio where this week I've got another structure project for the ON30 Goldfield and Calico layout. This corner here where the two sections of layout come together and meet with the backdrop has been a bit of a puzzle. I'm trying to figure out how to ease this transition and what kind of structure might look best up here. I've gone through several different ideas including putting the blacksmith shop up in this corner, but in the end I happened upon a photo of a structure in the ghost town of Calico, the real one, not the nonce version, and it turns out that putting something like that up here solves the problem rather nicely. Hank's Hotel in Calico has a downstairs that's made of adobe bricks and an upstairs made of well-weathered board and batten siding. That's a combination of materials that tells a story about life in the West and how these places evolved over time. Those materials and their color palette will also help to ease the transition between the red rocks of Calico Mountain and the man-made textures of town. So I've settled on the idea of an old run-down hotel inspired by Hank's Hotel but not an exact replica of it. And to help set the scene and the locale, I'm calling my version the Hotel Mohawk. Now very much like I did for the last structure on the gold building Calico, I spent about a day doing research and then designing the parts with my vector art program and then cutting them out on my 50-watt Flux Beambox Pro laser cutter. And once again, if you are interested in that process of designing structures for laser cutting, I do have a whole video on it that you can check out right at the link. Well, it seemed to make sense to divide the build up into the downstairs and upstairs with different sub-assemblies because they're made of different materials. The downstairs is going to be adobe and the upstairs wood. And this time I'm going back to a technique I've used before using some 3-16th of an inch thick basswood, which carves really nicely. So I can go in and add some detail to these etched in adobe bricks that I did on the laser cutter and go back and make those a little bit more rustic looking, a little bit more pronounced. I've got a little chisel blade and my wood carving knife, kind of gouging out some of these bricks and that way when they're painted it's going to look much more realistic. Adobe bricks usually are about 4 by 10 by 14 if I'm remembering correctly, though that's hardly a universal standard. Mud and straw baked in the sun. Don't get much more basic than that. Some Titebond yellow glue. Once again, these tabs that I'm applying glue to now fit inside of these slots. By the way, if I didn't mention it, the overall dimensions of this structure is 5 inches long and 3 1⁄4 inches wide. So 20 scale feet by 13 scale feet. Then there's an internal wall which is made 1 1⁄16 of an inch thick MDF. Add in and it's just braced in there with some 4 by 4s. Then I've got another piece of 1 1⁄16 of an inch thick MDF that functions as the base and that should fit on top of that. Like that. Now that the glue is drying up I can start sanding these corners and rounding them off. Having the corners rounded off is one of the most important things for this Adobe look. Then I'll use an emery board to round off the edges of the door and window openings. I'm doing a little extra step here in applying some Elmer's wood putty to these corners. I really don't want those tabs to show on the finished model. Now while I wait for all that to dry I can jump ahead and start building the windows. These are some 6 over 6 double hung windows or at least it will be when they're done. These were cut from some .025 inch thick laser board. The front door has this fancy beveled glass window. I tried to copy as close as I could from the prototype. Now I'll get a coat of primer on all these so they'll be ready to go. Okay well I think I'm ready for the final step before painting and that's to add a stucco like finish to these walls and for that I like to use this acrylic modeling paste and a stiff brush. Now if you want to try this you don't need to get a jar that's quite this big. You can pick up smaller jars and tubes at good art supply stores, hobby stores and you can find it on amazon.com. The reason you want to stipple it on is because that's what's going to give you that stucco texture and you can build it up in layers. It dries pretty fast. I'm going to stay out of the places where I've got the exposed adobe bricks and of course out of the door and window openings as much as I can and once that's dry I can take some fine sandpaper or sanding block and knock that texture back just a little bit where it's a little too pointy in some places. I'm going to be using some artist's acrylics for this. I'm mixing up some raw sienna and some unbleached titanium and if you've been watching this channel for a while you probably know that these are the two main colors in my red rock scenery on both the Thunder Mesa and the Hotel and Calico layout. I mix up different shades and have them you know made by Gallant for the big scenery areas but I wanted something that was going to look like you know the dirt and soil and rock of that area because well that's what this is made out of. Hank's Hotel and Calico has this wonderful terracotta patina to it and kind of what I'm trying to emulate here. And next comes a dark wash and this is a mixture of burnt umber and black acrylic with a lot of water. It's going to soak back into all of that stucco texture that I put in and soak back into the lines there between the bricks. Now I'll take my original color. I'm going to mix in a bunch more of this unbleached titanium to get a lighter shade. I'm just going to dry brush it on. You can see here on the back where it's just the paints just sticking to the higher spots of the texture and letting the darker color and those shadows show through. Then I want to lighten it a shade again and dry brush over the top one more time really bring out the highlight. You could also go back over some of the adobe bricks with darker and lighter shades but adobe bricks are all pretty uniform. They're usually all made at about the same time from the same materials so unlike you'd see on an old brick you know masonry wall there's not going to be a lot of variation. Now I want to paint the interior with some of this apple barrel antique white which has become my favorite color for interiors lately. Now I want to start framing in the window opening and on the prototype it has these thick beams around the windows and these thick lintels up on the top and there's this lovely dark brown you know weathered by the desert so I'm going to try to simulate that look. Got some minwax dark walnut stain and these are some six by nine lintels that are going to be doors and windows and then the rest of the window frames built up with these nice thick three by nines. Now it looks like the windows on Ken's hotel were painted white once upon a time the internal window frames anyway so I'm going to dry brush on some of this antique white kind of chipped and faded and cracked away in the desert sun. The door looks like it was painted kind of a red brown I'm going to use some of this chocolate bar do the same thing. Now I'm going back with some gray and really fade it out down here near the bottom of the door. Now I'm glazing the windows with some clear acetate this is some I had left over from another build. Apply a very thin layer of zap canopy glue to the back right here that right down on top of the acetate. Then the lower frame again might be either open or closed. I just want to have a couple of those windows open that day or air conditioning. Now I can put just a little glue on the interior side of these window frames and I just put in like that and I've also added a doorknob to the door track now. Now at the Hotel Mojave you can check out anytime you like but you can never leave door glued shut. I think the next thing I want to do is finish this boardwalk porch up front so use my little chopper here to get a whole bunch of these coffee stir sticks the length of one and one-eighth of an inch long. We'll get those stained up and put them in place. Well now I do believe it is time to get started on that second level and just like Hank's Hotel Calico it's going to be made out of wood and I've got a another big bag of laser-cut parts to help me out with that. Now in this part of the build I'm going to be using a construction technique where the outer walls are made of this 116 inch thick basswood plywood and then there's an inner core made of MDF that gets glued to the back of each piece and then you assemble the full walls. But before I do that I want to take these scribe lines that are on the front here and mirror them on the back of the false front. I was recently asked by someone a very astute question about these false front structures on um he said what he'd been doing is just uh you know doing what I'm going to do now scribing the boards on the back but he saw me adding you know like horizontal boards or diagonal boards and what I explained was that these types of structures evolved over time depending on you know the resources available and so on and so forth so very early false fronts were probably just a single width of board and then later on they would put more sheathing across the back as the style developed and then as that Victorian era really swung into high gear and then I wanted to stress all of these scribed in boards with the razor saw blade that's just easier to do and it's still flat like this and on the prototype the upstairs structure has the same dark brown weathered patina as the window frame so once again I'm going to use my Minwax stain marker dark walnut color and I also want to get some stain on these nine by nine beams which are going to support the upper story on top of the adobe structure now I can start putting these MDF and plywood sandwiches together make the walls lining it up with those crenellations on the bottom which will accept these beams later it should be a 16th of an inch gap on each side and that will accept the sidewalls and we clamp the heck out of it while those pieces dry and start on some of these other little sub assemblies like this cornice which you know I admit is going to be quite a bit fancier than the one on the prototype but I claim artistic license and these pieces are cut from some 25 one thousandth of an inch thick laser board be curious on where to find materials like this uh things like laser board for example there's a page on my website go to the model railroads tab click on that and scroll all the way down to the bottom and you'll see an area on that page called useful links and you'll find links to things like laser board o scale figures and details conversion kits for 0 and 18 all kinds of stuff that I've found useful over the years check it out now with the front and rear walls assembled I find it easier to build the sidewalls in place well maybe not easier but I find I get a better fit that way I've already put the basswood plywood wall in and now I'm going to glue in the uh the inner core again lots of clamps now I can glue that front wall in I just noticed it looks like a skull like something I would have built for gruesome gulch that'll it won't look like that once I get the beams in there but right now yeah I can totally see it speaking of those beams I believe that is what I will do next right in these slots and now the floor for this upstairs balcony glued down to the beam and then there's a beam that's going to hold the porch rafters in place and let's go right there this is supposed to be board and batten siding and that means it's time to apply a whole bunch of these one by three battens these 12 inch wide boards that are scribed into the wall put one of the window frames in place here temporarily let's see how long that is now the entire time I've been working on this I've also been putting together all of the doors and windows for the upstairs and these go together pretty much the same way the the downstairs doors and windows did except for these these are outside frame windows so the frame will sit on the outside of the building and other than that they're just the same layer of construction now I want to get a coat of primer on all these parts so I can get them glazed and painted and installed in the building but before I install those windows I want to paint the upstairs interior with the same antique white that I used for the downstairs now I'm making a floor for the upstairs out of some illustration board which I found that you can scribe and stain just like wood and then that'll get glued in at the top of these beams now I want to brush paint all of the door and window pieces with this same reddish brown that I used on the downstairs door and for the corners now switch to a stiffer brush and some of this apple barrel khaki dry brush some weathering on all of these now get all these windows glazed and installed on the structure so before I get much further on this I want to engineer a way for the upper floor to slot down into the lower floor so it'll be secure but still removable and I want it to be removable because the wiring for all the lighting is going to be hidden in the upper floor so I've decided to make some half inch tabs out of illustration board and these will slot down into the lower section and keep it in place and also prevent any light leaks between the lower floor and upper floor okay well I think we got it figured out oh yeah I love it when a plan comes together okay now I can finish up the interiors of both floors so I want to add a partition to divide this upper story into two rooms basically use some illustration board for that when things are viewed inside the structure through the windows they don't have to be as highly detailed as things that are out in front outside of the structure I find you can get away with a lot of little theatrical tricks like this one and there's still more work I want to do on the interior but at the moment I think I want to finish building this balcony I've got some laser cut pieces here some 1 16th of an inch thick basswood plywood I'm going to start by gluing these two porch rafters onto this beam and then this gets glued into that bracket that beam that I installed in front of the building six by sixes get glued in then I can put the rest of these porch rafters in then I've got this laser cut balustrade which I painted and weathered to match the doors and windows it's in here in between the six by six posts I've got a couple of blocks here to prop it up proper height and a couple little short sections for each side to finish the balcony roof I've got some one by six slats on the top of these rafters each one about six inches apart and I'm using another piece of one by six to get these to evenly spaced here for the roofing on the on the porch I'm using some of this wonderful pre-printed corrugated material from Chris Bond over at Full Circle Models this is printed paper and as you can see he's printed it with a weathered rusted pattern here and you know I was skeptical of this stuff at first but it really really looks great when it's applied to the model and I've cut these into some scale three by four foot panels and glued them on my thinking here is that you know originally this was probably a shake shingle roof on here and maybe it blew off during a bad desert zephyr and they replaced it with some readily available corrugated iron I want something removable for the roof of this little shed section right here I can access the interior so I'm creating something out of some chipboard and I'm going to build a little internal frame that fits down inside of this so I can just pop it right off then I'll finish the edges with some of that one by six and I'll use that corrugated roofing over here too it's time I cut it into some scale three by eight foot sheets overlap each one but about a scale six inches or so on Hank's place there's a couple of metal pipes that are holding up the upstairs balcony I wanted to use wood here so I've got some nine inch diameter rounds at scale and four by eight here and the tricky thing about this I'm trying to figure this out is that this needs to stay attached to the porch so I can lift that upper section off still I think I've got it figured out I think just a little dab of five minute epoxy on the bottom of each one of these posts should be enough to hold this in place okay that worked let's finish the interior first off I've got a floor got from some uh 1 16th of an inch thick basswood and I've stained it with some of that minwax early american and I decided I want there to be some stairs that you can see when you look through the windows so I designed this uh the staircase and cut it out of some 35 one thousandth of an inch thick laser board just going to put all these pieces together now some of the staircases in these old places might seem like they're ridiculously narrow by modern standards these stairs are only 24 inches wide but I've been in plenty of old buildings like that it was a different time different standards back then people were smaller yeah they get painted and weathered nice and grimy gonna go right in that corner that's how that's gonna look through the window I'm making some curtains for all of the windows both upstairs and downstairs using this white crepe paper at least it used to be white now it's a little bit yellowed with age but that fits this model perfectly some of the drapes will be open some will be closed but the process is basically the same for every window I take and fold over you know three-eighths to half an inch cut this off measure the height of the window in this case this one's for the upstairs they're about an inch and a half six feet scale a little glue at the top and at the bottom the reason I fold it over is because I found that the thickness of the two layers of crepe paper looks more realistic then when I have a set of them like this put some glue up at the top of the window frame on the inside and then a little bit down that cut edge I can just press that in place this one will be open just a little bit and then that's what it looks like from the outside fairly easy and effective now I just have all the rest of those windows to do I've got a couple pieces of furniture that I want to add and one is a bed for this upstairs room starting with a piece of foam core which is three feet wide by about five and a half feet long short bed instead people were smaller than those days I'll take my hobby knife and round off these top edges use a little sandpaper to round that off some more you know add a little frame with some four by eights this is nothing fancy just something to get it up off the floor now I want to make a bed spread just using some paper from my printer and the secret to this is some diluted white glue applied liberally to both sides and this diluted white glue while it's wet is going to allow me to form and shape this like cloth then the rest is just done with paint about an old-timey quilt pattern would be appropriate and you know eye-catching through the window then for the downstairs I built a little check-in desk out of wood from my scrap box and the lamp is from Berkshire Valley models white metal casting and paper for the ink blotter now I've got a couple of signs that I want to add to the front of the building you have a computer and even a base model inkjet printer you can create signs like this for your structures just make sure you use the right kind of paper and the right kind of setting photo quality setting and photo quality paper I like Epson presentation paper for the matte finish looks great for this kind of stuff now I want to add some lighting to the interior with these three millimeter warm white leds I like to buy these in bulk with the resistor already soldered on makes jobs like this a lot quicker and easier so for the upstairs the led fits down into this slot in the petition wall because I just want the front room lit then the wires run down through this hole back here that lines up with the stairwell wires will go through the wall above the stairwell and then those wires will attach to the other led that's down in this room here that way I'll have light in here and light in this upstairs room the front lobby will only be lit by light coming from this room through the archway door as if you know maybe it's a little past closing time and there's just somebody still working back in here when these wires go down through this little hole in the corner that's been waiting for them all this time I've added a little false wall back here to hide all the wiring from view and a place for that led to sit I had cut some roof trusses with rafters for this out of some MDF but I decided to just use the rafter tails for the most part because in this case I think that function is more important than form so I've made a completely removable roof out of illustration board it just sits on top and I can just lift it right off of there I'm going to be using these laser cut paper shingles which I've used in other projects but I've decided that some places on the roof there's going to be some repairs that were made with this corrugated tin which should make for a really interesting roof I think so okay just a couple of final details left the first is I want to add another one of these great looking grant line smoke jacks this time I want it to come out of the adobe wall so I've drilled a little one eighth inch hole right there and I've got this terrific cow skull from mini prints I'll put that on the front of the building then I've got a wooden chair this is from banta model works that up in the corner of the porch and last but not least we've got a figure here we'll call this guy Mojave Mike he's a figure from the Aspen modeling company I'm going to put him up on the balcony too I added the bottle that's carved out of a pencil lead I'm doing all of these little details in place with highly intact blue okay I do believe it's finished run the wires down through the scenery and that's going to live right there now I'll hook that up to the the 9-volt DC bus around back and we'll see how everything looks with the lights off and that's going to be a wrap on the old hotel Mojave here on the goldfield and calico layout I hope you enjoyed following along with that build as much as I did building it you know I'll be back next week with another project for the OM30 Thunder Mesa layout so I hope you're subscribed with those notifications turned on so you won't miss that in the meantime you can also follow Thunder Mesa for free over on patreon at patreon.com slash thunder mesa or on instagram at thunder.mesa and check out the resources available on the Thunder Mesa studio website at thundermesa.studio as always a very big thank you to our patreon members who help to make these projects and these videos possible until next time keep moving forward everybody adios for now