Tilting At Windmills; With or without the smock...

[THE DC]

To increase the look of the mill I cut out the white-space on the lightning rod on the mill. The effect improves the dimensionality of the model and only requires a little Exacto knife work. I then mirrored the piece and cut out its mate, gluing it to the back of the main part, providing an improved look from both sides. Its a small bit but I think helps the kit's appearance quite a bit for the little effort taken.

Cut out the rectangles on the side of the steeple, as this will permit your joining the smaller sail framing later.

The other aspect of the kit is that the roof folds over, making the one side look a bit off. The shingle on the folded side will just fold under the frame, losing detail. To compensate, I recommend printing another copy, on normal printer paper, then folding the veneer over the old roof and gluing it to the top, over the original printing. This will allow for your roof shingles to hang over on both sides now. Don't forget to touch up under the shingles with marker to make the effect thorough.

[THE DC]

To increase the look of the mill I cut out the white-space on the lightning rod on the mill. The effect improves the dimensionality of the model and only requires a little exact knife work. I then mirrored the piece and cut out its mate, gluing it to the back of the main part, providing an improved look, from both sides. Its a small bit but I think helps the kit quite a bit.

Cut out the rectangles on the side of the steeple, as this will permit your joining the smaller sail framing later.

The other aspect of the kit is that the roof folds over, making the one side look a bit off. To compensate, I recommend printing another copy, on normal printer paper, then folding it over and gluing it to the top, over the original printing. This will allow for your roof shingles to hang over on both sides now. Don't forget to touch up under the shingles with marker to make the effect thorough.

[THE DC]

Giving the model movement...

The windmill sails should be glued to the wheel frame, all facing in the same direction, with sail down. A duplicate sail-frame should be applied to the back of the sails. The front of the wheel should have two, layered pulley shapes attached to give texture to the front go the sail wheel.

A single rolled sheet of paper, or thing wooden rod, should be glued to the pack of three pulley-shapes, which should then be glued to the back of the sail wheel.

At the same time, a rod should be extended into the head and glued to a frame piece at the base of the head, with another structural piece on the other side. I used an old straw for my rod.

The blades can spin on the rod on the head and the large rod extending out of the base of the head can permit the entire upper story with the blades; the head, to rotate now.

[THE DC]

If you're building as the plans provided, just assemble the cellar to the body and glue the head atop the cellar-body complex.

[THE DC]

If you've been following the optional steps, the top of the body needs to be punctured in the center to permit the main shaft to embed into the body and into a lower frame you need to cut and glue into the bottom with thicker cardboard.







The rod, which is glued to the head, should slide down into the punctures you've made at the upper body ceiling and the lower frame hole, allowing the straw to spin. This will allow you to turn the head about the body, while the sails can spin on the head rod. You now have smock mill movement!

[THE DC]

Sorry I have been absent a couple of weeks. Been on the job!


I wanted to follow up with the mechanical description with some pics of the finished model and some final thoughts.



The kit turned out alright. It's a simple kit with some good properties, as well as some things I would suggest be changed. First, let look at it done with some commentary...


The final kit is pretty clean and adding a few optional tidbits improves it a bit. The kit, as suggested builds as a simple model. Adding plastic for the windows, detailing the sails, and movement to the head and veins, all made it a bit nicer than the basic build.

I found couple of images on line of other people's builds of this kit and you can see that its a clean build without the enhancements. I am glad I put some of the extra detail into mine, however.



The first three pics are my build, and the second two are builds my other modelers that I found.

[THE DC]

Here's a few details about the finishes kit:

The sails were worth the extra effort of layers and managed paper thickness choices.

attachThumb164057

What I wanted to accomplish was the illusion of wooden framework, covered with a different layer of canvass to make up the sail. I curved them according to the wind direction and made each sail sightly different, layering folds to add dimensionality to the final product.

attachThumb164056

The sails can now be viewed from both sides and have detail discriminating each form the next.

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I think the added effort makes them believable in miniature.

attachThumb164055

[THE DC]

A few more details to share.


The framework of the directional sail looks better when cut out and pieced, instead of just folding up a solid piece.


Splicing the lightning rod on front and back, makes the little touch of the eliminated white space.

The sails linkage looks better in three dimensional layers.


The plastic windows look better than the hand drawn versions in the kit. All that was needed was careful cutting of the window sills and affixing the plastic behind them.

[THE DC]

I'll crash out now [3am here!] but I'll get back with some final thoughts on this thread.

[Don Boose]

I've enjoyed your thoughts, the information on your modifications to the model, and the information about the kit and the original.

You've built a very appealing model of this classic windmill.

Don