Another ground lead is soldered to the bottom of the brass tube, thus completing the circuit. It makes a very compact installa- tion. The reflector inside the light housing is wine-bottle foil, which is another good raw material to have around the shop. I used the ball end of a jeweler’s hammer to form the bowl-shape in the clay and then used the same tool to press the reflector into position. The only non-scratchbuilt
part of this project is a Dennis Brennan chain link fence kit. While I could have scratchbuilt this too, Dennis includes a very nice building jig that greatly fa- cilitates building a nice, regular, scale, and very convincing fence. I modified Dennis’ instructions a bit by using a cross-lap connec- tion between the steel rods. Den- nis had specified all butt joints, which proved very difficult and were very weak. I spent as much time repairing broken joints as making new ones. If I build an- other one, I will use brass in- stead of steel since it all has to be painted anyway, and brass sol- ders so much more easily. All fence post positions were
laid out and drilled before mounting any equipment. Fence painting was done in two phases.
Priming with Krylon gray primer was done with the fence mod- ules lying flat on a table, but fin- ish coats were airbrushed with the fence in position on the base plate. I finally glued the fence into place using Gorilla glue only after all the apparatus and bus con- ductors were in place, the light- ing installed and wired, and the gravel put down. I stuck some place holders in the fence holes when graveling, so they would stay open. The fence is quite frag- ile, and I didn’t want it getting wrecked as I was reaching in to do all the remaining work. High voltage installations need
warning signs. I found several signs on the Internet. I printed them out and mounted them onto 0.010-inch styrene with 3M 77 spray adhesive. I mounted the signs to the bridal veil chain link using some DAP contact cement pads. Hot glue would also work, but I didn’t think about it at the time.
Final Thoughts What can you learn from a
project like this? Without bela- boring the point, this project de- veloped knowledge and skills in: • Big power, transformer, and substation design
Yard Light LEDS and brass tubing were used to create the yard lights. The brass tube was used for one of the conductors. The reflector/light shield was made from heat- hardening clay. The reflector was made from heavy aluminum wine bottle foil.
• Building in brass • Precision soldering using an
RSU • Making fixtures and jigs to
do tricky operations • Building model chain link
fencing • Designing and building mod-
el LED lighting • Miniature machining work-
ing in thousandths • Honing computer skills us-
ing CorelDraw, image capture, photo-editing • Finding and using unique materials to create unique mod- els (auto body fasteners) • Challenging oneself to do things never before attempted.
Complete The complexity of the substation adds a dy- namic touch to the au- thor’s layout. Its size and visual appeal are sure to be winners when show- ing the layout to model- ers and non-modelers alike.
NOVEMBER 2015 67
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