Wednesday, 17 February 2021

No Cutting Corners

 

A start is being made on my mission to scratch build 'Carnforth' buffet car 114 for a customer.

The most difficult part of this trio of FR carriages is representing their big windows which have a very obvious frame with rounded corners.

The solution I hit on when I made my own fleet of these around 20 years ago is to create the window apertures as usual with vertical and horizontal pieces of strip, with the square corners.

Then I take a very thin piece of strip - in this case 0.10" x 0.30" which when fixed on its side stands slightly proud of the 0.20" thick window pillars.

I curl that around the inside edge of the window, glueing it only along the straight edges with the smallest drop of solvent and letting it naturally form an arc in the corners.

With some very careful cutting with the scalpel I can made the two ends meet so precisely that you can't see the join unless you look really closely.

It takes a little while to do each one but I think the effect is worth the effort.

Afterwards I will use Milliput to fill the cap in the corners and once its painted you'll never notice.

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