Making a post & wire fence, plus another boardwalk!
This is one of the jobs that has been going on for the past few days, but there wasn't really enough to show per day to warrant spending a whole blog entry writing about it. However, today I made enough progress to show my latest fiddly nightmare!
As you can tell from the post title, I decided that a post and wire fence was needed to mark the boundary of the grounded carriage house. The first part was easy; cutting up lollipop sticks into fine posts using the handheld chopper tool, and then painting them with my usual method. The difficulty suddenly escalated when it came to attaching wire, as I had originally intended to drill tiny holes in each post to accept wire. I soon realised that even if I could find a drill bit small enough, I still didn't have a chuck small enough to take it.
Given that around here (and probably all over the country), most post and wire fences have their wires actually attached to one side of the post with galvanised U shaped staples, I figured I could do something similar (albeit without the staples!).
The first step towards this was clamping the beading wire under tension to the glass work surface (which has made taking photos pretty difficult, sorry!). My first attempt (above) wasn't particularly successful past the first wire; I was going to need to find a stronger and better way to do it as the wire would keep coming loose once I tried to adjust the tension on one. The tension was crucial to getting the wires at the correct spacing (see the cardboard jig below:), which were measured out to prototype heights.
In the end I had a cunning plan; first I'd cut up a lollipop stick and create grooves of the right spacing with which I could wrap the end of the wires around. This turned out to be a much more successful method, but threading the posts behind the wire and keeping them in the right place was proving more tricky:
And then it occurred to me that using Blu-Tac to hold the middle of the wire runs down between each post would not only help keep the wires aligned, but the posts as well:
With that settled, I thought I'd go for as simple a method as possible, and settled for experimenting with PVA glue to hold it in place. After having left it to fully cure for two days (whilst I painted the layout fascias etc), I came back to it today to check its progress.
Remarkably, every single wire and post has held in place; and because the PVA dries clear, there's no mess. Ecstatic with that result, it was time to turn my attention to the area where it would be sited. Whilst I was marking out the hole locations for the posts, I realised the large timber baulks that sit underneath the carriage were both uneven, and partially floating. In an effort make them sit better, and bed them into the layout, their position was marked before moving them; when I could then dig a trench for them out of the sand. The leftmost one in the photo below was perhaps the one furthest out - you can see just how much its had to be buried:
But rather than complete one of the jobs on my ever-growing list, I added another one! It occurred to me that the resident (i.e. me in this fictional world!) would probably not be allowed to traipse onto the railway in order to get to the property, so I would need an alternate route. After having roughly marked on a scrap bit of card the most logical place for it (at the lowest point of the sand dunes), it was time to make an angled boardwalk:
As you can see, I also happened to find a left over wooden jetty support from when I was making the harbour; this would be perfect for the corner sitting above the pond:
The mess underneath the boardwalk shows that some of the sand dune needed to be cut away to fit the wide boardwalk. I later smoothed up the remaining hole and mess with some Polyfilla. (It'll be left to dry/harden overnight before I paint it and cover it with sand). Anyway, the test fit above proved that the left handrail would need to be modified at the rear so that there was less chance of it getting damaged when the backscene gets slotted into place for exhibitions. As the sand dune was relatively high here, I decided the easiest solution would be to have this handrail drop down to the base. It remains to be seen whether the same treatment will be needed for the other side, but for now it stays as-is.
To finish off the boardwalk, it was of course time to paint it with my usual method. The above photos came out a bit too vivid (my own fault), but in reality it's a nice muted wood colour. Note the light sand colour added onto the end of every plank to give that sunbleached look. It looks a lot more effective in person than it does in the photo above!
So that ends today's progress, and with the porch having had its concrete foundation bedded in, it was time to let everything dry overnight. I had planned to fit the guttering and such onto the carriage, but that can wait till tomorrow!
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