Friday, January 16, 2009

Another day...

... and more progress to log.
I have to admit, I think things are going really well with this. Much better than I expected, if I'm to be honest. I expected all kinds of trouble, sticking all these different thicknesses of styrene together. Such small pieces too. But everything has gone together with surprising ease. Of course I've really thought things through before I did everything and there has only been a couple of places in which I've redone something to improve things.
The fact that it isn't a slavishly accurate model helps. I only had one dimension to work with. The height of the tower is 10 metres. So everything was worked from that and I judged the proportions from photographs against sizes of evergreen styrene strip that I had to hand. So all I was doing was sticking different sized lengths of styrene strip together. They were all cut on my Northwest shortlines chopper so all the edges turned out square.
There were no special tools used at all. Just the chopper, a regular modelling knife and a pair of tweezers. So those of you who think that T gauge modelling is for the expert with a vast array of micro modelmaking tools, think again. Yes, I used a magnifier but I'd use that in any scale it makes the job so much easier.


Now, I'm started to get carried away. Its gone beyond a mere model building and into the realms of just how far can I go with this. It was when I was assembling the portico around the ground level door that I realised this fact. I was going to make up the guard rail on the roof level by adapting a plastic N gauge ladder that I had. I think it would have worked quite well. But in the end I decided to order some etched metal handrails in 1:450 scale from a ship modelling suppliers. At the same time I ordered some ladders for the outside of the tower too. These extra pieces should really help to set the model off. I did consider ordering a set of watertight doors so that I would be able to accurately model the door on the ground level. But I only needed one door. Not 20 or so like there is on the sheet. Handrails and ladders I have plenty of use for. Not so watertight doors.
Time is really flying by on this project. It doesn't seem like 3 days work. It hasn't been hard. On the contrary it's been a joy.

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