Hurst Boiler and Welding by Bar Mills Pt. 1

As I mentioned earlier I am back to where I started, i.e. building a Bar Mills kit. No, I am not building  Wanda's again. I have built two of them and I don't see myself building yet another. Well, not in the nearest future at least. However, I've got an idea while writing this. Wanda's could be turned into nice waterfront structure on a pier. I like it. I may build yet another one after all.
Since the theme of this post is Bar Mills related, I want to mention their upcoming Christmas kit. It is going to be some kind of monstrosity consisting of 10 structures. The price tag is around $400. This is some serious money! Some older FSM kits demand that much. Also some craftsman kit manufacturers have been inching in that direction for some time but they aren't even close yet. I am wondering if this is going to create a precedent for all of them to take big step and significantly increase their prices. Anyway, I hope I won't like this new kit or I will have to get it.
Let's talk about Hurst kit. This is the first kit I am building that has Bar Mills specialty shingles. FSM Elijah and Roth had them too but they were brown color and may have been upgraded version. The shingles in Elijah kit were individually laser cut while in Hurst kit they are separated by printed lines only. Anyway, in both cases they look way better than traditional Campbell ones. The idea behind it is quite simple. Print shingle texture on a piece of paper and then laser cut. One thing is a mystery though. Why would the instructions tell to paint them? That doesn't make any sense. Why would you want to hide printed texture? Also, as I mentioned earlier these aren't individually cut shingles like the white ones that come with other kits. Painting would hide separation lines and the whole thing wouldn't look right. Let me check the pictures in the manual. Yes, the pilot was built with individually cut shingles. Now it make some sense. It is possible that folks at Bar Mills used white ones for the pilot and the changed their mind later. Anyway, if you are building this kit, ignore this part of the instructions. Don't paint the shingles. However, with all of this said, I still painted them. Perhaps, stained would be better term. I used oil washes of different shade of brown to paint some lines because all gray looked too boring. I didn't try this on some scrap piece. I took a risk, did it and it turned out nice. After I glued the shingles down I dry brushed lightly with gray craft paint to highlight the edges. The keyword here is lightly. I think some people misunderstand the concept of dry brushing. I've seen many models with white paint simply mopped over everything. Take a look at the picture below and decide for yourself whenever I am right or wrong.