"Building A Western Town": The Sheriff's Office...

As the building of my Western Town of Rimfire continues, we turn our attention now towards that establishment of law and order in The Old West; The Sheriff's Office and Jail.

Once again, this is one of the old TCL kits that was offered by Knuckleduster before they pulled the line. Word is out though that another version will be offered "soon".

This is a standard "long kit" like approx 50 of the buildings offered, but the kicker here is that the back 1/3 of the building is done in "Stone", so as to represent the jail.

Looking at this I gave it the initial base colors of brown exterior and an antique white interior, while making the back half a dark gray to give an idea of the jail area.

A side shot of the main building shell...

Looking down on the floor. These buildings really take paint quite nicely.

One of the immediate things I didn't like the idea of was that there was only one "large cell", (kind of like a large drunk tank), and it just didn't look "right" to me. So silly me...I decided to do some customization and to make this one big cell into two smaller cells, (plus I didn't want my prisoners to have access to the barred window!)...

Yeah...We're gonna have to change this.

To be honest, this building seriously is crying out for customization.

So with a little bit of time watching "Rio Bravo" I decided to get an idea of what I wanted to do.

The kit gives an optional wall to make another room, so I decided to use that to break up some ore of the "big space".

I found some wanted posters and made some flyer boards and tacked them on.

Here's the main wall, with The Rogues Gallery...

The left portion of the wall, showing wanted flyers for John Wesley Hardin, Jesse James, Frank Doolin, and "The Terror of Hill Valley, Buford "Mad Dog" Tannen...

And a couple of more on this side including one of John Wayne's character, Ethan, from "The Searchers"...

Another view looking at the jail...

 And two close up shots of the soon the be changed jail....

A rear shot showing the dry-brushing of the gray stone...

After cutting the jail cell apart, this is how the new version looked. (Don't get used to it, because it changed again...)

One of the things I remembered from "Rio Bravo" was that the Jail had shutters on the windows to keep yokels from shooting inside. So I decided that this too had to be done.

A pic of the side-wall showing the wood and stone, and the cut shutter pieces.

For the stonework, I ran a four color scheme.

Base black, then a mixture of black and charcoal gray, (making a dark dirty gray), then highlighted with charcoal gray, (lighter color), and then a dry-brushing of Vallejo Stonewall Gray to help bring out the detail.

Not bad if I do say so myself...

It's not easy making wood look like stone...

Then I took a look at the door. 

Yeps, that needed fixing too.

So a little more wood and a reinforced door with panels was put into place.

Here's pics of it front and back...

As I said with the new cells, I decided to go ahead and redo the cell pieces. With the cell door I attached it to two wooden blanks to make a wall, and then will use the cell pieces to help form the cells.
Then it was time for a test fitting.

A test fitting of the pieces shows the building layout in it's general setup. Two small jail cells, a middle room, a larger front office. So far so good.

A closer look at the dividing wall and figure scale...

A side shot showing the layout.

I still have to make the jail cell doors, but looks good so far...

Yeps...looks like the hokey is coming along quite nicely...

So while I was working on this, and waiting for parts to dry, etc, I did a little more work on some figures.

I finished the initial painting of "The Big Man" himself, Sheriff John T.

Now all he needs is a drunk, a gimp, and a kid named Colorado....well Angie Dickinson would be nice too but I don't think that's gonna happen...

And that is it for now.
More to come, so stay tuned!