Lone Modeller's Tray

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Lone Modeller
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Re: Lone Modeller's Tray

Post by Lone Modeller »

Thanks 59North for your very kind remarks: I am pleased that you are enjoying this thread..

Foam insulation is used here in the UK, and probably in many other countries too, as an insulating filler between the outer and inner wall of a building. On modern building sites it is common to see the inner wall constructed and then these large blocks of foam laid against it. Then the outer skin (wall) is constructed so that the foam touches both. It comes in blocks about 1m square (3 ft square) and is about 4 inches thick: it is coated with aluminium foil on both sides to further improve the insulation properties and to prevent moisture getting in and passing across the cavity between the walls. It is soft enough to be indented with a spoon if a modeller wanted to create an uneven surface, and it is easily cut with a large knife such as a bread knife. It glues well with PVA (in my experience at least), and is very light. I do not know what a block would cost as my sample was given to me, but if you bought a block you would have enough material to make a number of bases! My advice would be to look around some local building sites if there are any near you and see if you could get hold of an off cut or some unused materials.
ShaunW
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Re: Lone Modeller's Tray

Post by ShaunW »

This is very interesting indeed, LM and I'm looking forward to seeing more of this base construction.
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Softscience
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Re: Lone Modeller's Tray

Post by Softscience »

Fascinating!

I also like the detailed explanations. It feels like I have a front row seat to experience how something incredible takes shape.
Lone Modeller
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Re: Lone Modeller's Tray

Post by Lone Modeller »

Evening All,

Thanks Shaun and Ralph for the encouraging remarks: I am trying to describe each procedure in detail so that others can use this to help them with their projects at some time in the future. It is good to learn that this may in fact be happening.

I applied some plaster bandages to the foam base. I laid them from the rear to the front which meant that they could be easily overlapped: the lengths were short and easy to measure and handle. This was both quicker and easier than I had thought it would be. I took the plywood sides away for this: they were put back before I took the photos. The dowels pieces at the rear will be used for posts later: they were there temporarily. I cut a length of 20 thou plastic sheet to represent the arches which are visible in some of the early photographs of the front of the hangar. I cut some slits into the foam and bandage cover so that I could push the bases of the plastic arches into it. It seems that the arches were to allow access under the hangar floor, but how far under the hangar they extended I have no idea. They will be visible when the wood platform has been constructed in front, so I have allowed for a short section to be represented. The rear will be blocked by a sheet of card which will also hold thef the foam base in place, and I will put in some curved roofs later. The front of the arches has been painted grey to represent concrete(?): the exact colour does not matter because they will be barely visible when the platform in front is finished.

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When the bandage was dry I smeared some plaster filler over it in an attempt to seal the holes. This was done pretty crudely because I also wanted to eliminate some of the prominent ridges that resulted from the overlaps. I put the plywood sides back and marked off the ground surface, the vertical edge of the wood platform which will be in front of the hangar, and the level of the hangar floor. The plywood was cut, put back and glued into place. On the right side the base of the plywood was further secured with some short pieces of quadrant: the sides were glued to the foam using superglue. The rear of the plywood forms the sides of the box which will house the battery holder and switch. I painted the ground surface with Revell Mittelgrau (43) acrylic paint - two coats - but even so there are still holes in the plaster bandage which I may have to fill and paint again.

I have also marked and drilled the holes for the platform posts. I used an undersized drill to start the holes and pushed the dowels into place to complete them. I have not put the dowels in permanently yet: there is still more tidying up to do and I have to carefully measure and cut the posts which will form the base of the circular platform first. Some of these will be very short as they will sit directly on the perspex cover for the turntable motor, while others will extend to the base. There is still a lot of measuring and levelling to do before I can begin to place posts in holes permanently.

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More details of how well I manage to stop myself from falling off this learning curve will be posted shortly.
ShaunW
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Re: Lone Modeller's Tray

Post by ShaunW »

Keep at it, LM, this is shaping up nicely. I have some similar plaster impregnated bandage that I've had for absolutely ages but have never used. One of these days I will get round to making a simple terrain display base that I can use multiple times for, say, photographing completed military vehicle builds. I've tried making dioramas in the past but never made one that I was really happy with - I should have stuck with trying but didn't for one reason or another. Making display bases and/or dioramas is modelling in its own right and can be a lot more difficult than at first thought!
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Re: Lone Modeller's Tray

Post by Lone Modeller »

Evening All,

Thanks Shaun for the comments. I completely agree with you that making a base is a very different proposition to making a model: as I am finding out through experience! Previously I have only used a bit of grass flock over a wood base to "display" my models, but I have always thought that those who make small vignettes and larger dioramas offer a better setting for their models. In this case I have enough photographic evidence to make something that will at least be a passable representation of Seemoos in 1917: well that is the plan anyway........

I have spent a good deal of time trying to insert and level the posts which will support for the various platforms. Each pair of vertical posts has a horizontal beam which has to be level, but the beams must also be level with those in the other rows. This should have been fairly straightforward but for the fact that the vertical posts which are over the top of the motor are shorter than the rest and so had to be carefully cut to size. In some cases both of the posts are short, but in others one post is longer than the other. In addition all of the supports have to be made so that when the platforms are fixed on to them they will be level with the hangar floor at the rear of the display. I have spent quite a lot of time with a spirit level trying to get everything in order and am still not sure that I have been completely successful. Fortunately most of the vertical posts are almost the same length and I think that I will be able to make minor adjustments later without compromising the finished structures. 

I also decided that the plaster bandage still had too many holes so I have put more filler over it in some areas to prevent the sand cover from falling through. I have painted the new filler but accidentally used the wrong shade of grey - it is lighter than the original. It will not matter as if any of the paint does show through the sand it will simply give a different shade to the "soil".

I have also made some roofs for the arches which will be at the back of the scene. The front of the hangar had a wall with arches in it which are clearly visible in photos taken in 1915 when a wood platform was being built.  I do not want any light to come through the arches so I have made these roofs to stop any chance of that happening. They are simple structures made from a piece of curved basswood and push moulded. I was able to cut two roof sections from each mould:

Image

These will be inserted between the two vertical sheets of plastic at the rear of the display, one of which represents the wall of the hangar which I have painted grey: I intend to paint the underside of the arches black to match the face of the rear plastic sheet and thus prevent any light from coming through. Currently the base looks like this:

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with a mini Stonehenge forming the base of the circular platform. None of the horizontal beams have been glued into place yet and the longer ones on the straight platforms have been left off because they keep falling off! The rows of three posts are for wider platforms which carried the aircraft on railway track: the narrower platform in front of the hangar was only for people to walk on 

The next step will be to add some sand which will form the groundwork for the whole display.

Thanks for looking.
ShaunW
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Re: Lone Modeller's Tray

Post by ShaunW »

Excellent progress, LM. I'm intrigued to see how this will turn out
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iggie
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Re: Lone Modeller's Tray

Post by iggie »

ShaunW wrote:Excellent progress, LM. I'm intrigued to see how this will turn out
Me too! I don't think I've ever seen such effort go into a base!
Best wishes

Jim
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"Never put off till tomorrow, what you can do the day after tomorrow"
Lone Modeller
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Re: Lone Modeller's Tray

Post by Lone Modeller »

Evening All,

Thanks Shaun and Iggie for your encouragement. Iggie, I can assure you that I have never spent this amount of time on a base before either! This is turning into a model on its own...... After all the effort so far I just hope that I do not make a mess of something and have to start again...oh no I could not face that!!

The sand ground has been applied to the base. I mixed some white PVA with water to make it more runny/less lumpy and painted it liberally over the base. Then I sprinkled a thick layer of fine sand over all and left it for a couple of hours to dry. The excess sand was shaken off and the bare patches given a repeat treatment. Where I have added the extra sand there are some lumps but at the moment I am going to leave them. There are also some low ridges which run from front to rear where the plaster bandage overlaps: I am a bit concerned about these as in certain light angles they are rather obvious. There will be a shed over part of them, and the platform which runs to the left of the turntable platform will also cover part of them, so I am keeping my fingers crossed at the moment that they will be less obvious later when more details have been added. I have also left the area around the motor spindle blank as I intend to cover that later with a disc of card. I am not sure what the exact details were under the turntable: the photographs which I have access to show almost nothing, so I do not know how the turntable was supported or how it was driven. For the moment I am supposing that there must have been some from of wheeled support and I am thinking of representing a disc of metal underneath. Who knows: I may change my mind later if I can find any more information. Some of the supports for the circular platform have been removed because they are directly above the motor and the legs are very short so they tend to fall out easily: they are being stored elsewhere until I am ready to fix them in place permanently.

I have also added the roofs of the arches and completed the plastic backing sheets for the rear of the ground. The tops of the arches are visible in the photos and were put into place after the sand cover was laid. I fixed the battery holder for the motor in a small holder made from quadrant glued to the base. This will be accessible via a hole which I intend to leave in the rear of the display, but it will not be visible from the front or sides and it will be hidden by the hangar floor.

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Thanks for looking.
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Clashcityrocker
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Re: Lone Modeller's Tray

Post by Clashcityrocker »

Lovely base. With the model and a cover on, this deseves a place in a museum.

Nigel
ShaunW
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Re: Lone Modeller's Tray

Post by ShaunW »

This is a great descriptive piece about making this base, LM and fingers crossed that it turns out the way that you want it to!
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Re: Lone Modeller's Tray

Post by Lone Modeller »

Evening All,

Thanks Shaun and Nigel for the encouraging remarks which are always appreciated.

I have been doing some woodworking which is still an experience that I am not normally used to - I usually only make moulds or small parts for my models from wood. However I can see wood in my future......


I have decided that it is time to think about the turntable and surrounding platform as everything has to be leveled from this central feature, including the hangar floor and all of the platforms and ramps. I have given up on the plywood base for turntable platform as I simply could not get a rounded shape. Instead I thought that I might try thin, (1/16 inch - 2mm), basswood sheet which I found in my local branch of Hobbycraft, there being no good model shops within 15 miles of where I live. I also spied a circle cutter - one of those cutters designed to cut accurate circles in card and fabrics and thought that I might be able to cut a decent circle with one. Here is the result:


Image


This is more than adequate for my needs so I then drew a series of lines from the centre of the circle to the edges so that I will be able to align the planks on the platform later:


Image


Next I cut out an inner disc which will be used to make the turntable on which the railway track ran:

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before I cut the turntable section from the inner disc:


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The turntable strip has been reduced slightly because i will have to put wood strip on the top to represent planking, and as the planking on the surrounding platform will extend a little over the inner edge, a small gap is needed between both to allow the turntable to rotate. Wood strip was glued to the turntable:


[url=https://flic.kr/p/EZoHGK]Image



The platform was made of a series of planks which appear to have been laid on horizontal supports between the goal posts which can be seen in earlier photos forming my misrepresentation of Stonehenge. This is not practical for me - hence the circle of basswood. I took some 3mm x 1mm Tanganyka wood strip and cut this down to 2mm pieces and some pieces which were tapered 2mm - 1mm: these were glued to the basswood disc using the lines described above to help me orient the strips to the centre of the ring. Original photos clearly show that some planks had parallel sides and others were tapered as per the photo below:


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After two evenings of cutting and glueing I had this:


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Nearly there! This got to be tedious so I decided that I would try to make the horizontal support frame for the platform which runs from the turntable parallel to the front of the hangar. This consisted of the horizontal beams which joined the vertical posts and ran crosswise, and the pieces which ran the length of the platform on top. Wood planks were then laid crosswise to finish the structure. I used 3/16inch (5mm) square section Obechi for this:

Image


but initial eyeball estimates tell me that this is going to be too deep/thick as the top of the side platform will be above the turntable platform when they should be level. I think that I may keep one layer of Obechi between the vertical posts and think again about how to mount the wood planking using thinner Obechi strip. Did I write earlier that this would be an evolving project.......?


Thanks for looking.
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Clashcityrocker
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Re: Lone Modeller's Tray

Post by Clashcityrocker »

This will be a revolving, evolving project :grin:
Very nice neat work.

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Re: Lone Modeller's Tray

Post by Softscience »

You are absolutely brilliant!
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59North
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Re: Lone Modeller's Tray

Post by 59North »

If modelling were an Olympic art form, I'm pretty sure you would be in the running for gold.
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