Adam's Dairy Farm



		Micro Structures Adam's Dairy Farm Kit # Z980-Barn Adam's Dairy Farm consists of a photo-etched brass barn, horses, cattle, and board fence in the 7.75 x 5.5-inch sheet shown at the right. There is also a sheet of clear plastic for window glazing.
		Because the cattle and horses are two-dimensional I will be using Z scale cattle from Faller and horses that came with the used Marklin freight train set. Based on my experience with the brass sleigh,I decided to paint the kit before starting construction. This worked out pretty well. I put on a thin coat of acrylic paint.The first coat generally did not provide complete coverage.

		I waited for it to dry about a day, then applied a second coat which gave good coverage. However, the acrylic paint does not seem to adhere to the brass especially well - it would rub or scratch off fairly easily, so that touch ups were needed after assembly. The State of Ohio's Bicentennial Celebration was in 2003. As part of the celebration, a barn in each county was painted with a banner announcing the bicentennial. I took a photo of the barn just a few miles from where my mother lived, cropped and worked on the banner to get rid of the background with Adobe Photoshop. I reduced the picture size so that it would fit on the end of the barn. I printed it out in color onto HobbyCal Inkjet Water-slide Decal Paper. I followed the directions for wetting the paper and placed the decal onto the end of the barn. After drying overnight I painted over most of the decal with Model Master Flat Clear Lacquer Finish. This protects the decal and makes the background transparent.

		Because the banner with the words "Bicentennial" was supposed to be red,white and blue, I did not paint over the white part, allowing it to remain white. I iscovered that the image on the decal paper is very tender - the left part of the O in Ohio had been broken up as I brushed on the lacquer finish. I think this can be avoided by using more lacquer on the brush and not brushing so much. After the lacquer had dried I retouched the O with blue paint.