Gold Tooth Mine Build Part 1: Headframe Assembly | Latigo Boomtown

Howdy folks, Dave here for Thunder Mesa Trains. Welcome back to the studio where I am back from my summertime break, relaxed, rested, and ready to jump back into all of the projects I've got going on around here. And at the very top of my list this week is a structure build for the new boom town of Latigo. That's the expansion for my OM-30 Thunder Mesa Mining Company layout, which is going to go right behind me here. Now, I first talked about this new section of the layout back in June and how each of the new structures designed for the town of Latigo will also be available as limited run kits from my new company, Thunder Mesa Kits. Well, the wait is over and today we're going to be building the first kit available from Thunder Mesa Kits, the Gold Tooth Mine. The Gold Tooth Mine is a freelanced design, but it's based on some fairly common building techniques and practices from the late 19th and early 20th century, so it should fit into just about any kind of railroad set in those eras. It has a fairly modest footprint of just eight and a quarter by three and a half inches and represents a head frame over a deep shaft mine that could have been used for gold, silver, copper, or other precious ores. And before you ask, no, it's not available in HO or N scale. Thunder Mesa Kits only manufactures kits in O scale at this time. As I mentioned, these Gold Tooth Mine kits are only available in limited quantities and for a limited time. They're only being manufactured from July through September 2026 and, you know, when they're gone, they're gone. But as of this recording, there are still some kits left available on the Thunder Mesa Kits website, so if you don't have one yet, you can go over there and pick one up. That's at ThunderMesaKits.com, and I will put a link in the description down below. Now, there is a lot of ground to cover with this kit, and I want to show the entire build without leaving anything out, so I've decided to break it up into three videos with each installment fully covering a different phase of the build. We're going to start today by building the mine head frame, which is really kind of the bones of the entire structure. And I want to take my time with all of this, because if you're watching and building a kit of your own, I want you to be able to follow along without any problem. Part two of the build will follow up in a couple of days, and then the third part will drop soon after that. Now, with all that out of the way, let's go ahead and open up the box and see what's inside. Now, I just grabbed this particular box at random right out of the pile that's waiting to be shipped out, so this should be exactly the same as any other kit ordered off the website. First thing we want to do is cut through the label down here so we can open it up. Right on top here, we have the instructions. You can see there's lots of photos in color. There's illustrations in here. There's 15 pages of instructions. All of the parts called out there. Some full-size templates. This is the main full-size template that comes with the kit. This is for the head frame, which should make building that a lot easier. Then, right on the top here, we have the package of characters from Characters Count Miniatures. This kit comes with three exclusive characters from Scott Eastburn's Characters Count. These are 3D-printed little figures, and they are just fantastic. This bag's got the trim pieces and the battens for the board and batten siding, glazing for the windows, window frames, laser board parts for the sheave wheel and for the door handles and things like that, nut bolt washer castings, some crochet thread for the mine cable, and the stencils are all in there. We've got a bag of some MDF parts. These are roof trusses, and this long skinny bag has all of the basswood pieces for the post and beam head frame. That's going to be fun to put together. Got some corrugated roofing. Cool thing about this stuff, this is pre-printed with this pattern. This comes from Full Circle Models. And then in this bag down here, we've got the roof panels and the walls for the main mine structure, and those are cut out of some 1 16th of an inch thick basswood plywood. But according to the instructions, the first thing we want to build is the head frame. So let's open this bag up and dig into these parts. And I recommend keeping all of the other parts together back in the box until you're ready to use them so nothing gets lost. Now the first order of business with these head frame pieces is going to be to clean off some of this char from the laser. Anytime you've got pieces this thick, this is some 3 16th of an inch thick basswood, you're going to get a little bit of char on there. It's kind of unavoidable because it spends longer on the laser. So it has more time where, you know, we make these parts basically by burning the wood. So yeah, you're going to get a little char on there and I'll show you the method I have come up with for cleaning it off. First I take a straight razor blade or this is a utility knife blade and run it along there. Now we don't need to clean the char out of the little notches and things where the pieces come together. Just off the parts that are going to show. See how that takes most of it off right there or a lot of it off. And then I've got some 400 grit sandpaper that I've taped down here to my to my work surface. Any flat surface will do. A lot of people like to use glass. And I'm just going to sand off the remainder of that. You want to use a fine sandpaper. You don't want anything too coarse that's going to take off too much material because then the pieces aren't going to fit together as well. There we go. That piece is looking a lot better. Just need to do all the rest of these. It only takes a minute or two but it's definitely an important step in the process. And about an hour later I've got all these pieces cleaned up. As you can see I'm not too precious about it. Sometimes I'll leave little bits of char here and there because that's just going to look like you know weathering when the whole thing's put together. And now I want to identify all of these pieces and where they go on the head frame. So get the sandpaper out of here and clean this up a little bit and I'll show you how I do that. This is a full-size template that comes with the kit and all of the pieces are called out on here. So all you have to do is lay the pieces on top to know what goes where. As you can see that's part A right there. B and there will be two of each of these. You know one for each side of the head frame and then this angled piece looks like it goes this way. That's C. You can see how they fit together. That sort of post and beam joinery. E and this looks like F. Then we've got the pieces over here in figure two for the the sheave yoke assembly. There's the top and there's the bottom. There's the two uprights. Then I've got some one eighth of an inch thick basswood. These would be six by sixes and no scale. Then all the rest of these pieces. These are going to be for this bracing up here. Then you've got the cribbing for the the mine opening down here. We're going to set all that aside for now. So that's how you identify all the pieces for the head frame. It looks complicated when it comes out of the bag but once you set it up like this you can see it's actually pretty simple. Right now what I want to do is distress all of this wood and get some stain on it and then we can start on assembly. I like to take a fine tooth razor saw blade and just run it with the grain like so on all of these pieces. That's going to make them look a little bit more old and weathered and it gives something for the stain to soak back into also when we stain it in the next step. When I built the pilot model I used minwax stain touch-up markers for the head frame. I talk about those and recommend them in the instructions but this time I'm doing something a little different using some of my shoe dye and rubbing alcohol stain. The way I make this is you get a bottle of this kiwi black shoe dye, pour all of it out into another container so there's just the residue left inside and then fill this container back up with 70 percent isopropyl alcohol, shape well and you have a wonderful silvery gray stain which does a great job of replicating the look of you know old timbers like this and of course the built-in applicator on the bottle makes staining all these pieces very very easy. Now with that stain dry I want to go ahead and both sides of the head frame right on top of the drawing. Take some clear packaging tape and lay that down on there and this is so when I glue the pieces together they won't get glued down to the paper and now on top of that I'm going to add a couple of pieces of double stick tape. So put one right here, down here so that way when I position the beams in place they'll stay right where I put them and for most of the assembly on this kit I'm going to be using some Titebond original wood glue. This is the water soluble glue. I like to use the water soluble that way if I make a mistake you can wet down the joint and pull the pieces apart and fix it. If you use the outdoor Titebond glue you're pretty much stuck with that joint forever. It's kind of hard to mess this up. I just want to lay that right on top of there that's beam A. Line that up with the drawing underneath and see how the slots all line up and then the first piece that gets joined to that is B like so. See how the slots line up but the only way you could mess this up is putting it on upside down or backwards so those slots don't line up properly. Applying the glue with a toothpick just press that down in there and then we've got this 45 degree diagonal piece C which fits right in here like this. Going in alphabetical order the next piece is going to be D. Bevel down at that end that's to meet with that cross piece G later on. With wood glue you always want to put a little bit of pressure on the joint you know just gently push against it so you get a nice nice bond there. Then comes E and F. Now as soon as that glue is dry I can pop that off of there and build the other side in exactly the same way. A, B, C, D, E, and F. Now with both sides of the head frame built I can tie them together. It's really important that this assembly be square because well the entire rest of the structure kind of depends on it. So I'm going to tape it down to my cutting mat here and I'm lining it up with that line and that's going to help me keep this square as I glue these pieces G, there's three of these, into place. And it doesn't really matter which end you start on. I'm going to start on this end down here. This is a half lap joint right over the top like that and then when I've got this other side lined up square I can tape it into place. Make sure it doesn't move around while I put the other pieces on. It's also a good idea to dry fit the top beam of the sheave yoke assembly that's part H. Make sure that's all aligned properly. Now I'm going to deviate from my own instructions a little bit and show you a little trick because I know what's coming next. In the instructions it says to glue H on top of the head frame like this and tie the whole thing together. You can do that now and follow the instructions to the letter if you like but let me show you something that might save you a little time because we need to drill some holes down through both H and this piece J which is the bottom of the sheave yoke and I'm going to tape these two pieces together aligned like that. The instructions tell you to measure in 23 32nds of an inch from the end of H here for these holes and this is for the truss rod. It's going to go down through here. You can measure or you can just line it up with the full size drawing of the sheave yoke and mark exactly where those holes are going to go. Now I want to drill down through both of these pieces at the same time going down as straight as I possibly can using my twist drill and a size 72 bit in here but I don't want to go all the way through the bottom piece. I only want to go you know maybe half to three quarters of the way down so I'm going to mark the bit. I don't want to go any deeper than that. Again trying to go as straight as I possibly can. I find it helps if you start in an upright position like this and then turn it sideways so you can see that the drill bit is going in perpendicular. Now when this is all assembled the upper and lower holes should line up perfectly. Just a little tip that might save you a little bit of time and now I can glue H into place up here on top of the two uprights. Now the instructions call for us to finish the rest of the sheave yoke. We've already drilled the holes so I can skip over that part and just glue these uprights which are part I into the bottom of the yoke which is J and they just fit right down into these slots and now I can go ahead and glue this into this. Squeeze the sides here because that's that's just a butt joint on that bottom beam. I'm breaking into bag number two here and this one has the music wire in it and that's what's going to be our truss rods so I need to cut two lengths of what does it say about one and one eighth inch long. I'm going to measure that out one and an eighth. There's one and there's two and these go into that top hole straight down and into that bottom hole. You shouldn't need any glue to hold these in if you didn't drill all the way through. You want to make sure that there's no wire sticking up above the top because we're going to put some nut bolt washer castings up there to finish that off and the NBWs are also in this bag and I want the big ones with the with the big square washers on them and I'm just going to quickly paint these a dark rusty brown with some Rust-Oleum dark brown camo spray paint. Use my sprue nippers to get a couple off of here and I can just put a tiny dab of cyanoacrylate in the hole. Push that nut bolt washer casting down on there just like that. Next come these two six by six angled pieces under the yoke. These are the pieces that are labeled K on the plan on figure two. They're cut at a 45 degree angle so it's kind of hard to mess it up. They really only fit one way and now the instructions say to lay the head frame on its side and measure down one and five-eighths of an inch from the bottom of the top sill here and this is going to give you the position for this cross piece which is L and that's some 1 16th of an inch thick basswood right there. Let me show you a little trick again something that's going to save a little time. I went back to the full-sized template and measured this distance right here from the bottom of L down to the bottom of the footer and that's about four inches so cut a piece of cardboard which is four inches by three inches and I'll just use this to line that piece up. Line that up with the bottom clamp it in place so it doesn't move around and now I can take this piece and align it with that. I've also used the full-size template to mark how far this overhangs. It's about a scale foot on the bottom. This would be super easy if this went on the top but it actually goes underneath like this. I'll just get a couple of dabs of glue in the right spots on this which is going to be there there around the back side line it up with my cardboard. While I'm over here on this side I can go ahead and add this brace also this is N and the end should line up flush with the bottom of this and the side of that on the inside. Now I can flip it over and do the same thing on the other side and the last piece of timber for the head frame is this piece M which goes right in here and tucks up underneath those two diagonal pieces again hanging over the same amount on each side about a little over a scale foot. In the same bag with the nut bolt washer castings is this piece of 25 one thousandth of an inch thick laser board which has the windows and the door hinges and the flashing for the smoke jacks but it also has these laser etched iron braces so I'm going to cut those out and I'll get some dark rusty brown paint on these along with the small nut bolt washer castings which are going to go up here. Figure three on the plan calls for nut bolt washer castings in these locations here here here and here two in each spot on both sides so I need to drill a little holes right now and we'll get those installed again using a size 72 bit in my twist drill and I only need to go in about a sixteenth of an inch and there should be just enough of these to get this done provided I don't lose any so I like to cut them off the sprue with my hobby knife grab them with my tweezers get a little dab of cyanoacrylate on the end and then push them into that hole. Tiny details that add so much to a model like this. Now I flipped the head frame over and added all of the nut bolt washer castings on the other side and now I've got these iron brace plates these laser cut laser etched iron brace plates and I painted those kind of a dark rusty brown but before I install them I want to do a little dry brushing on here I've got a light tan and this is to bring out the etched in rivet detail that's on here most of that paint off the brush by rubbing it on some cardboard just lightly bring out those rivets rivets or bolts I suppose they would be and those get glued on right here where the upright meets the diagonal piece and that should look pretty much just like that now I've gathered together all of the parts for the the sheave wheel and the sheave block it's going to hold it right up there I've got some 35 one thousandth of an inch thick laser board for the parts of the wheel itself and the the plates these are laser laser etched plates for the sheave block more parts for the sheave block here in this uh 16th of an inch thick MDF and we have the axle which is this little short length of brass rod so the first thing I want to do is assemble the wheel cut these other parts out of here and then we'll get all of these parts pre-painted before assembly now sometimes when you cut these parts off of the the carrier sheet you'll get a little booger right there I just sand that off with an emery board it's nice and smooth and the first thing is I want to glue these small circular hubs to the center of the spoked wheel on each side just use the 1.5 millimeter brass rod to make sure that's centered on there you can use a toothpick as well now one side of the spoked wheel has a line etched in and that's to help you align the outer rim that goes on there like that so I use a toothpick to add glue to the inner surface of that rim and then line it up with that etched line on the inside clean toothpick is also handy to clean up any extra glue that's squeezed out now with the first side properly lined up on there it's fairly straightforward to flip the thing over and line up the other side with the first kind of turn it in your hand like that to make sure both of those rims are aligned now for the sheave blocks I need to cut out these two pieces from the 16th of an inch thick MDF these pieces are door handles so we won't be needing those until a little bit later on in the build again I want to clean off that little booger there you can do this with a hobby knife or a flat file and then the little tabs on these blocks get glued into these slots on these base plates push them in just like that clean up the extra glue and make sure they're totally flush on the back here you might need to sand that a little bit but that looks pretty good now I need to cut a piece from this 1.5 millimeter brass rod for the axle needs to be about 5 8ths of an inch long right there there we go now I can prep these parts for painting take a little piece of painter's tape sticky side up right there right there right there and for the wheel got it on a toothpick put a hole through here jam that down in there and that way I can paint both sides at the same time now once again before I install these pieces I'm going to do a little bit of dry brushing on here bring out the details I don't think anything helps these pieces to look like metal more than a little bit of light dry brushing with tans and grays and rust colors and now I'm using a very light tan this is called light mocha now I want to measure down 3 16ths of an inch from the top of this upright in the sheave yoke this is piece I and put a pencil mark right there one on each piece because now I'm gluing these sheave blocks into place and they need to be centered on these upright pieces line the top of that with my mark very important that these are perfectly aligned or as perfect as you can get them now I want to take my 1.5 millimeter brass axle run it through one side of the blocks hold the wheel in the center here and push it through the hub out the other side and into the other block now if you don't need your wheel to turn you can put a little dab of ca in there and lock all that in place then you might want to touch up the paint and axle a little bit some of it gets scraped off when you're pushing it through there and there is the completed head frame and that ought to do it for part one of the gold tooth mine build I'll be back in a couple of days with part two where we'll cover the walls and the doors and the windows the paint scheme and all that good stuff and we'll follow up on that real quickly with part three where we'll finish up the roof and the cupola the figures and all of the final details so I hope you'll stick around for all of that and until then you know you can also follow Thunder Mesa for free over on Patreon that's at patreon.com slash Thunder Mesa or on Instagram at Thunder.Mesa or you can check out the resources available on the Thunder Mesa Studio website at ThunderMesa.Studio and you can find the kit still available on the Thunder Mesa kits website that's at ThunderMesaKits.com as always a huge thank you to our Patreon members who help to make all of these videos and all of these projects and these kits possible until next time keep moving forward everybody adios for now