windmill kit

N Scale Architect - Nansen Street Models
Windmill Kit NSM 006

The Z scale kit comes as two pieces of photo etched brass and some small pieces of brass pins and collars.  The main sheet, shown in the photo to the right, is approximately 1 3/4 x 2 5/8 inches.

I painted both sides of everything but the base with Testor's silver paint

to make the windmill look more like it was made of steel. I painted the base with a coat of white acrylic paint. After this had dried over night I used Woodland Scenics "concrete" with a little "stone gray" from the Woodland Scenics Earth Colors Kit for a second coat.

I began assembling the windmill following the instructions, although I started several steps separately instead of just going 1, 2, 3... so that I could be working on several parts of the windmill while glue was drying on others. The results of several days work (not much can be done at any one sitting) is shown at the right.

The last step involved dropping the windmill and it's pipe down through the top of the tower. Unfortunately, there is nothing to hold the bottom of the pipe in the center of the base. And it's hard to get into the tower to try to glue it. So I bored a hole in the center of the base using a small jewler's screwdriver (a small drill bit would have been nice,) dropped the pipe down into the hole, and glued it from the bottom.

The completed windmill (The blade turns!) is shown at the right. To give you a feel for its size, the base of the windmill is on a nickle. The windmill is about
2-inches tall from top to bottom.

Windmill In Progress
Completed Windmill