Laser cut buildings - Water tower base
Entry posted by Fen End Pit
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I finally got around to doing a bit of modelling, inspired by a thoroughly enjoyable day on Saturday exhibiting at the 16mm show in Peterborough.
I've been working on drawing up the water tower from Thaxted based on the drawing available from the GERS. Having had lots of goes with the little goods hut I had worked out most of the gotchas with the cutter and so the parts which were cut were pretty much right first time. OK, I'll admit I drew the windows frames too far apart by .5mm so I needed to cut them into two parts and take a bit out of the middle but hey, who's counting. The resulting 'kit of parts' looks rather good. I was amazed by how thin I could cut the glazing bars in the windows and I am carefully sanding them to reduce the thickness of the material a bit more.
I also tried the 'engrave' option to put a slope on the plinth. The successive passes of the laser reducing the area being engraved each time can make a half reasonable slope. I did the engraving first followed by the half cutting of the bricks so the mortar joint wasn't lost by the engraving process. I painted the MDF with a sealer before I put it together.
Assembly was quite straight forward, I've found that taking a fraction off the back of the 1.5mm MDF at the corners and making the last stretcher a little over long means that you can stick the corners up and then lightly sand any brick ends which are sticking out. I reduced the depth of the string courses too, the MDF sliced easily with a scalpel leaving a section about 1mm to stick to the wall.
This tower had a very simple tank that was curved around the bottom and at the corners. I think I've worked out how I'm going to try and make it. Current plan is to cut a base in 3mm acrylic and curve the corners to make the bottom of the tank. I'll then cut two more pieces just a fraction smaller which will act as formers for some thin brass sheet. - well it is a working theory until I find it doesn't work.
The base in now hanging in the garage having received a coat of primer. I've also painted another 'spare' section of wall to practice on before I move onto the main event.
I've been looking at the pictures of Thaxted and there are no signs of any ladders or other fittings, I can just make out what appears to be the top of a pipe in one photograph. If anyone knows what it would have looked like from above that would be great! My proposed layout will probably have the tower situated quite near to a bank of trees, would that have meant a roof was likely?
You can see a picture of the tower in service at http://img.geocaching.com/cache/62f0ae62-8978-4dab-8ef4-0aede5cbdcc7.jpg
Your comments, as always, are most welcome.
David
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16
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