Scratch Built Corn Crib

I couldn't find anything out there that looked anything like the combination corn crib and equipment shed on the farm I grew up on, so I decided to build one from scratch. The design is similar to the one we had, but upsized a bit to accommodate a mounted picker which we never had, but I always thought were wicked cool. Our shed was low enough that we had to take the muffler off the Super W-6 to park it inside.

First, I ordered a bunch of lumber as near to scale as possible. For 2x4 framing, .0416 x .0625 is as close as I could come commercially. That's about 3/64ths by 1/16^th . The crib sides are 1x4 or .0208 by .0625 or just over 1/64^th by 1/16^th. Tweezer time!

I drew a plan to scale (1:64) then covered it with waxed paper so I could build the crib sides over it.

Two bays in the outside walls have slats installed at an angle to simulate the removable sections for shoveling corn out of the crib. Cut individually and glued in place. Actually took longer to do the shovel bays than the rest of the walls put together.

Here the walls are being glued to the floors. They're set up on a piece of glass and held in place with machinist's 1-2-3 blocks to get them as flat and square as possible.

One crib bay complete with the ends built and glued in. The ends for the other crib bay have been laid out and the framing glued in place. When complete they'll be glued into the other crib bay using the same method. Again, 1-2-3 blocks to square things up. The various dental instruments are being used as weights to keep things flat.

Gable ends and ridgepole glued in place. Roof will be metal, need to decide whether to use corrugated or standing seam. Not sure I have enough of either.

Turns out I had (just) enough of the corrugated roofing. I've hit it with a wash of rust brown and when it dries I'll go over it again. The woodwork was sprayed with Rustoleum Rusty Metal Primer which is a dark reddish/brown and then misted with a bit of bright red. The result is exactly what I was looking for.

Once the roof is weathered to my satisfaction and the loading hatches are added to the roof, it'll be done and waiting for enough real estate to park it on.