Look! Round Corners

So this is how I begin turning that basic bodyshell that I showed you in the last post into something that looks a lot more like a Tin Car.

To my mind there are at least three very distinctive features of these carriages: the domed ends to the roofs; the ribs on the bodysides; and the rounded window frames.

When I first made these carriages I reproduced the corners by gluing in small triangles and filing them down with a round file.

These days I'm a little more ambitious and if I can I like to try and represent the metal rim of the windows.

To do that I take a very thin piece of strip - just 10 thou thick - and a tiny bit wider than the bodyshell, so 30 thou against 20 thou for the first layer of the bodyshell.

What I do then is to curl it around inside the square hole, a bit at a time, letting it form a chord across the corners and then very carefully chopping the ends so them meet precisely along the bottom edge.

Next, I will fill the small gaps in the corners with Milliput and then add the horizontal rail and a small vertical piece in the middle of each of the large windows to represent the sliding ventilation panes.

Because I have used 30 thou strip they are just a tiny bit proud and, I hope, will look quite effective.