Sunday 12 February 2012

Shopping around

At last, I am in a position to start building up the shop walls to form a space. After so long preparing endless separate components, it is reassuring to see something of the volume of the model taking shape.

Starting with floor section I offered up the rear wall for accuracy prior to making the first joint.

















Weights were used to keep the light material of the floor nice and flat, whilst  try squares ensured the wall was perpendicular.

Devron two-part resin adhesive was used to achieve a strong bond which would set in 5 minutes.



The wall panels were prepared with mitered edged to avoid an unsightly joint revealing the material thickness which is difficult to mask. Such fragile material is easily damaged when it has a sharp, mitred edge exposed during extended storage,another reason I wanted to proceed to this stage of assembly as soon as possible.

When this joint was set firmly, I prepared an end wall for fixing.

















Although it is a good time now to build up the right hand end (shop front) I need to plan very carefully, when to put the second long wall in place because there is some optic fibre lighting to be plumbed in and that has yet to be designed - I will need a lot of access. Just seeing the shop actually occupying a volume is very reassuring for the moment.

The foam material is great stuff to build with, but is rather easily damaged on the edges, so I plan to make a thick foam temporary base to use for handling the model during the construction.






















One thing I did not take account of is the relatively translucent nature of thin sections of foam. So in areas that have not been clad with timber, light can be seen through the fabric of the building.

My novel design for see-through bricks























Even though the wall cladding eliminated most of that translucent property, the tiny gaps between each plank shows light through. It became necessary to take the unusual step of grouting my timbers.



The excess filler was removed before becoming fully set.




































When the excess filler was cleaned up, it was just a matter of applying a further coat of wood stain to restore the appearance.

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