technique for securing guy wires to the stacks. Instead of simply drilling holes in the brass tubing, I used a short piece of tubing that was the next size larger than the piece I used for the stack. One end of it was squared and soldered to a small piece of brass shim stock. When cool, the center inner portion of the shim piece was cut away with a hobby knife while its outer edge was trimmed with a small pair of scissors in a circle shape around the tube. I was making a ring that could be slipped down atop the stove pipe. The ring was taken outdoors and
chemically blackened by placing it in a small amount of Archer’s Etchant from Radio Shack, but any printed circuit board etching solution would probably work. Be careful with this material be- cause it can hurt you if you’re careless. The ring was rinsed off in clear water and submerged in Birchwood Casey’s Gun Bluing Solution until it was black- ened. It was rinsed off and then taken back to the train room. Four small holes were drilled around the shim stock ring and foot
long
a slight distance past the edge of the boards. The rest of the building was covered with the paper, including the window openings. The excess could be cut away later with a hobby knife. Ver- tical pieces of thin stripwood were added every three feet along the tar paper to represent thin battens that would have been used to keep it in place. Also, because the interior might eventually be lighted,
the interior
walls were also covered with the hori- zontally applied stripwood.
Grandt Line windows were trimmed from their casting sprue and attached to a thin piece of double-face tape on a scrap piece of cardboard. They were taken outside and spray painted with Krylon Ruddy Brown Primer paint. When dry, they were then glazed with tiny pieces of glass cut from Wess 35mm plastic slide mounts. The glass pieces were secured in place with Dr. Mike’s No. 2 cyanoacrylate. Both the door and windows were then inserted into their respective cutouts and held in place with carefully applied dots of the cyanoacrylate adhesive.
RAILROAD MODEL CRAFTSMAN
A removable roof was made from more of the fiberboard and covered with Silkspan paper, then painted with Polly Scale Grimy Black paint. To help with the alignment of the other structures in the scene, a piece of ¹/₄″ floor underlayment was glued to the Gatorboard to locate the bunker’s stone base in its exact location back from the loading track. The mine building was tackled next. I had been given a cardboard mock-up of a mine that I thought would look good sitting atop the mountain. How- ever, it was too large, so I decided to build a smaller version. Cadrail was used to create drawings and print-outs that served as mock-ups and a fiber- board interior was glued together and covered with pre-stained stripwood. This time I relied on my traditional al- cohol and black shoe dye stain. The roof sub-assemblies are remov- able and were covered with corrugated metal pieces. Two tall smokestacks were attached to the rear of the struc- ture and bonded in place with, 5- Minute epoxy. I wanted to try another
lengths of green colored, cloth, trout fishing line were threaded through each of them. A small knot was tied in the end of each line and pulled tight up against the underside of each hole. The ring was slid over the smokestack to it’s pre-determined position and se- cured in place with cyanoacrylate. Each of the lengths of fishing line were threaded through their respective holes that were drilled in the roof, then fastened in place with cyanoacrylate applied from the inside of the building. I had to be able to remove the mine
from its mountain side base. Since the mine was destined to rest on a moun- tain top that didn’t have a flat, level area, a leveling fixture was made out of ¹/₄″ OSB (oriented strand board) mate- rial to help me create one. The OSB was cut to fit approximately in the nec- essary space, then a few ¹/₄″ diameter holes were drilled in it. The OSB piece was put in the approximate site and short ¹/₄″ diameter wooden dowels were pressed through several of the holes until they hit the rocky surface below. A torpedo level was used to make sure the board stayed level as it was moved up and down on the dowel rods. When everything was just right, the dowels were glued in their respective holes with Dr. Mike’s cyanoacrylate. The board was then removed and the ex- cess dowel material was cut off with a razor saw. It was tested fitted once again to make sure it was still level. When sat- isfied, the board was again removed and its edges were covered with clear package wrapping tape, reset in place
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