Saturday, November 10th, 2007
My apologies for the week break. I’m back to work once again.
Today I worked on making the window mullions for the exterior of the long sides for the gate car. I have a few more pieces still remaining. These are made using the basswood Midwest scale lumber and painting them to match the rest of the wood exterior. I am gluing the wood pieces directly to the clear styrene that is the windows using wood carpenter’s glue. This is probably not the best glue, but it works as long as no tension is applied to the glue joint. You can see in the photo that one mullion has been knocked loose and is lying at an angle waiting to be re-glued.
Sunday, November 18th, 2007
I got the seats finished and glued into place. I also glued the long side walls into place. They warped a little, but I have a plan for solving that problem. So, next I will make the short end walls. I will make the same way as the long side walls despite the difficulties with the glue not sticking to the styrene very well. I may try some other glues to remedy that - though it’s not a crisis - the mullions stayed put during the handling necessary to glue the walls into position. […]
Wednesday, November 21st, 2007
The roof is propped on top of the walls. I am beginning the short side walls now. As you can see, I’ve made a piece of track for the car to be displayed on. I decided to go with painting Studio Lascaux “anthracite” since subway tracks are generally very dark in appearance. I also decided to not add ballast as the subway tracks in NYC rarely have ballast. The track is 12 inches long, thus it extends a little beyond the photo on each side. The track is made of a bottom piece of 1/8″ thick balsa wood, which has a 1/8″ thick piece of cork laminated onto it. There is a second piece of cork underneath the track ties. The track ties are walnut. And the track is size code 70. The subway has small track, so code 70 seemed appropriate.
Saturday, November 24th, 2007
In the photo above, you can see the short end walls under construction. I made them the same way as the long side walls. These walls have more wall and less window, thus they seem to be less fragile than the long walls. Below is a picture with the end walls glued in place and the roof resting on top. The roof is not glued yet. I need to add some pieces to the corners to round them out and make them look smooth. […]
Wednesday, November 28th, 2007
The car is essentially complete, but I am going to spend the next few days adding some details to it that should give it a more realistic look. I’m planning to add wheel journals, various underside pieces, lights on top, and a roof detail. The model also needs some touch-up paint here and there. The vertical poles at the ends of the car need trimming underneath. I drilled the holes through the underside to hold them in place. And I am trying to push them into the roof piece a little so that they will stay put. They need to be glued and touch-up painted. I’m contemplating trying to add a little of the railing using a method similar to how I made the ladder for the cement silo. We shall see.
The window mullions seem to be staying put despite them being wood glued to plastic with carpenter wood glue. The addition of the Liquitex matte medium and paint at the bootom of the mullions - to glue wood to wood - is working well. One mullion popped loose, but stayed nearly in place. So I added the Liquitex matte medium and paint to the top of the mullions - gluing wood to wood - and hopefully that will solve that problem. The roof glued down nicely. I glued the top of the wood trim to the underside of the wood roof and that has good strength to hold the sides straight without allowing them to bulge out.