St Cuthbert's Construction Begins

[iL Dottore]

There are some people who can reclaim some scrap wood from a skip and turn it into a beautiful square and level baseboard. I am not one of these people. So when it came time to begin construction of the baseboards for St Cuthbert’s I realised that I could either do it myself or get in a pro. I looked at the DIY option first, whilst it would be (conceptually) relatively straightforward to build something using the Barry Norman block and strip approach, I would have been dependent upon both good quality wood and reasonable carpentry skills (of which I have none). Therefore, at the time, the only alternative seemed to be the use of a local carpenter. I visited the Swiss carpenter who had done extensive work to our house armed with numerous British books on baseboard building; I explained my requirements to him and waited for his offer/proposal. A few months later, I received his proposal: a solid shelf to fit around the room, supported by brackets! And at a price that made it financially as well as operationally unfeasible.

 

During my annual pilgrimage to the Warley MRC show at Birmingham’s NEC, I stumbled across Brilliant Baseboards – essentially an ‘Open Grid’ baseboard kit, Intrigued by the concept I asked after cost and finding the costs reasonable, inquired about shipping to Switzerland. Fortunately for me, the Post Office’s Parcel Force service had started to ship ex-UK and the rough estimate of transportation costs which, although higher than for the UK, as part of an entire package (baseboards and shipping) still came to a third of the local carpenter’s quote. Given that I can source the parts for legs locally, I didn’t get any legs for the boards.

 

The kits arrived in good condition (given the distance shipped) and apart from the one of the end “fingers†being broken off a cross beam in a half-baseboard pack (repaired quite easily), the only damage incurred in shipping was minor and cosmetic (a few dents, dings and splinters).

 

 

I got my tools together....

 

 

... and got cracking!

 

As suggested in the instructions, I began by covering my work table with old newspaper. Whilst my approach was neat with a minimum of glue overspill, there were still a few errant dribbles of glue and the newspaper prevented the baseboard from being stuck to the work table.

 

I began with a test fit. If there was any hinting of stickiness or binding during the dry assembly run, I didn’t try and force the beams together, but rather used the sanding wand with coarse grade sandpaper to sand back the slots to remove any sticky spots, constantly checking for squareness, until the baseboard was assembled. Satisfied with fit and squareness, I marked one end of each of the cross beams to ensure that when gluing, they were refitted the correct way around.

 

 

With the full baseboard I began by taking out the left-hand end cross beam and then using an old size 11 cheap, poor-quality paintbrush, I carefully ran a bead of glue each slot and painted the inside of both sides of each slot with the glue. The beam was then slotted back into place, taking care to ensure squareness was maintained and once satisfied with the squareness, I ran the brush down each corner to smooth out the glue blobs, which was then followed by a wet rag which removed any excess. The process is pretty much the same for the full baseboard and the half-baseboard, although the latter does require careful attention to squareness.

 

 

 

This was repeated multiple times until I had pile of baseboards.

 

 

Completed assemblies were allowed to dry for 24 hours and then (quite literally) ripped off the work table! Although using the paintbrush to smooth out any glue leakage and using the wet rag to remove any excess did get rid of most overspill or dribbles, some spillage was unavoidable, leaving bits of newspapers glued to the bottom of most of the corners of the baseboards (easy to remove!)

 

After assembling and letting the boards dry, I placed one in situ (on top of a cupboard where it will finally live) and it looks pretty good (and also confirmed that I had gotten the assessment of model railway room dimensions versus number of baseboards needed correct). Now all I have to do is seal all 10 baseboards and start bolting them together.

 

 

Any thoughts or suggestions regarding sealing the baseboards? Thanks.

 

F

[Donw]

I would opt for varnish.Quick drying would be an awful lot quicker but doesn't seal as well. Is the layout in a damp location? If you have a suitable work space ( dry warm empty garage) and equipment you could spray them. A friend wanted a sutable compressor for airbrushing bought one that came with a small sprayer for car work ideal to do the baseboards. Of course if you are single and retired you might have time to spare!

Donw