Fly's Studio: Part 1 - The Parts

In case you are just joining us, this series of articles chronicles my real-time adventures preparing and painting Old Glory's Fly's Studio from their OK Corral series of 25mm Western buildings. Because the entire process is an experiment, you'll get to see my successes and mistakes along the way. To see the entire series of articles, click on the Fly's Studio link.

On May 31 I placed a large order with Old Glory, taking advantage of their 60% off cowboy sale. My box weighed 14 pounds! Along with many West Wind cowboy figures, I ordered several buildings, including a newer modular building and some older resin buildings. The first building on my worktable is Fly's Studio (MW101), a nice small building with a real boomtown look to it. Though concerned that it would be scaled for the smaller 25mm Old Glory Warpaint cowboys, I quickly discovered that it scales perfectly with all my West Wind Victorian and Western figures. It also fits in well with my Arnica buildings. Would I pay $32.50 retail for this building? No. For the price I did pay, I would have liked another. My town of Guntown needs all the buildings it can get!

The Components
When I ordered the kit, I expected it to come with walls and roof sections that I had to assemble. This is how my Arnica buildings came, as well as every model railroad building I have ever assembled. I was surprised that the building has only two basic parts: the building itself and the roof. It also comes with an interior wall that slips into recesses in the base board. Yes, the interior walls and floor are detailed, a nice touch. Rounding out the components are three solid metal doors (I only picture two here) and two thin dowels representing porch posts.

The doors are slightly shorter than the doorways, but this doesn't detract from the kit. I could easily scratchbuild some doors, making a front door with a window unlike the included metal version, but I'll stick to the included versions.

The dowels, however, need to go. They just do not work as porch posts. I will either construct new posts out of styrene or simply leave the off. For ease of play, I am leaning toward leaving them off. I know that within 10 minutes on the table, I will bump my figure into them or drop the roof on them, snapping them off at the base. (Yes, I am slowly overcoming the model railroad detail freak in me and becoming a gamer!)

Prep Work
As soon as I inspected the Old Glory buildings, I realized that the resin would take some serious clean up work. Not to insult Old Glory, which makes a fine produce, but I expected this. My Arnica buildings, on the other hand, had literally no flash and dried goop to scrape. I figure a bit of roughness in the model will add to Guntown's hardscrabble look.

Today, I cleaned the roof and the front as best I could. Later this week I will finish cleaning the building, wash it, and then prime it with black gesso. In Part 2, I'll explain why I choose gesso over black spray primer.