The model begins

So Christmas is now just a memory, with the new years' day still to come, I can't stay away from the workshop.

In order to get a feel for how the interior of the shop will be exposed for viewing, I decided to take a chainsaw to the rough maquette. This led to a pretty rough-looking outcome, but it was pretty helpful in determining where the cutaways should be to render good views of the essential internal details.

Roughly cut apertures to help to get a feel for the cutaway interior views.

I am spoilt for choice as to where to start, but I have decided to go straight in and start on the shop portion of the model, from the ground up.

I put a lot of thought into what to use as my base material for the floor. The plinths (especially the large shop and forge component) are starting to get a little heavy - and that's before the rather large acrylic cover is accounted for. It was always going to be a two-person lift, but it's now going to be a two strong-person lift. With this in mind, I need the actual model components to be as light a possible, whilst remaining strong and stable. I ruled out card type options because of possible humidity/distortion effect, and after considering thin MDF, I settled on 6mm thick balsa sheets laminated to give the overall floor area I required. The balsa planks were laid out crossways to the direction of the floor board so as to even out any effects of distortion.

At this stage, as there are no walls to stiffen the panel up. I laid a reinforcing brace along the back wall, this will eventually be built upon to form the core of the rear wall cupboard and shelf complex.

The actual interior floor space of the shop is elevated above the exterior "porch-like area", which is in turn elevated above the pavement level. This was achieved by cutting away that area from the 6mm thick balsa and replacing it with some 3mm Foamex plastic. With careful cutting of the shapes, a simple butt-joint proved plenty strong enough without the need for any reinforcement requirements.

I chose 1.5mm thick obeche as the material for fabricating the floor boards. This material is one of the few things I have managed to slice up on the rather under-powered Proxxon mini circular saw. However, when the saw is not protesting with an ear-piercing screech, it does make a very smooth finish.

The position of all support beams were marked out on the substrate to ensure that every plank joint and fixing nail fell in the right place.

I had imagined that I would actually pierce the planks with fine wires to give the impression of nail, and experiments showed that short lengths of guitar string (a plain G) would give a very good result. I then realised that I need over 1800 nails - life just isn't long enough for that.  In the end, I decided to use the finest dressmaking needle I could find and fit it into a pin vice. This made a very handy tool with which to emboss holes to represent the sunken nail heads.

The underfloor heating grilles are indicated by insetting small tiles
of embossed aluminium, recycled from the cladding from an old
briefcase, left in the garden to rot for over 4 years.

Shop ground floor timbers nearing completion. This shot shows the two 

columns of underfloor heating grilles and the staining and antiqueing

colur sequence.