Friday, June 03, 2016

Make it again Phil


Yesterday's post showed the back end of my model boat. You might have noticed the handrails. 

These are supposed to be (as far as I can tell) made from a single piece of wood in real life, and on the model they are made from a single bit of 60 thou plastic sheet. 

Attempt 1 wasn't quite right. The methods was fine, make the pieces with the legs facing each other on the sheet so speed up marking out. I'd even worked out that the curved inner corners could be produced by drilling holes. What I didn't do was drill enough. Trying to make them along the join line left me with handholds too shallow and a top rail far too deep. 

One of the best bits of advice I've ever read came from an old issue of Railway Modeller. Someone said that when making things, if you aren't happy, do it again. You might think you can live with the error, but over time it will niggle at you. Far better to bin the part and do it again. 

Which is what I did. The dimensions are the same, I just drilled twice as many holes, further apart. And now I'm much happier. 

2 comments:

Mr Taylor Anthony said...

Do you ever double sided tape card together to cut two or more pieces together? An old aero modelling trick that works well. You'd be surprised how many wing ribs you can make at the same time.

Phil Parker said...

I've tried this for metal parts where it works quite well (soldering is better) but for this, it was easier to mark the parts out by having the "combs" facing each other.