Replicating Jacobsville sandstone

The mineral house I am fabricating was one of a number of buildings in the complex which is serving as inspiration for the copper smelter I am building, was built of type of native stone known as Jacobsville sandstone. This stone can be found all along the south shore of Lake Superior from the Keweenaw Peninsula west to the Apostle Islands and north across the big lake to Isle Royale. Varying in coloration from a light salmon pink to dark red with striations of vanilla, it was a very popular building material in the late 1800's and early 1900's. Shipped throughout the country, New York's famous Waldorf Astoria hotel was perhaps the most famous structure built from the stone until it fell out of favor as limestone gained in popularity. While not of the mineral house itself, the photo below serves as a good example of this particular variety of sandstone.

I burned the midnight oil last night figuring out how to fabricate walls to replicate this specific stone. Digging through my material stash, I found a single sheet of molded styrene that I picked up earlier this year in a "scratchbuilder's lot" on EBay. As seen in the very poor quality photo below, some of the stones stood unrealistically proud and were very "globular," so I went at them with a file and sandpaper. Once I got them where I wanted them, I built a mold and cast a resin trial wall section. Feeling the result could work, I began constructing a prototype sidewall. The window openings were made by drilling, opening up with a hand-operated sheet metal nibbler and then filing to final size. I then carved the edges so the stones continues around the corners. Sills and lintels were cut from styrene with the lintels made as circles with the inner radii cut on the drill press with a forstner bit and the outer radii cut on the band saw using a cobbled-up circle jig. Finally, before turning-in I epoxied everything together and gave it a shot of primer.

This evening after arriving home from work, I spent almost three hours painted everything. (Thank God for downloadable audio books!)  I feel good enough about the end result shown below that I will begin work on the remaining three walls this coming weekend. The prototype for this particular structure had a slate roof. Hopefully the laser cut roof strips that I ordered yesterday will be here in time!

 

Here's a photo of the virtually completed structure with the exception of  detailing and weathering. I feel the effect replicates the prototype pretty well and comes close to justifying the effort that went into creating the castings.