Back To Work!

Now that I am the proud owner of a wonderful new soldering gun (a fun Father's Day gift) I am ready to get back to work. Oh look.......more lamp posts. That means more electronics.

 

 

I'll admit.....I'll be very happy when this part is finished. And when it is, aside for some decorating,  we are done with this attraction. .

 

Just a side note, we ran another test a few weeks ago with water and guest-filled logs and ran into all kinds of problems. Some guests were so tall they wouldn't fit under bridges. And we had a lot of trouble getting the logs to go up the ramps.

 

We are thinking these problems are better left to be solved during the final install as we believe the leveling of the model will solve most of these issues. 

More Construction

I don't normally get a chance to hide away in the studio on a Tuesday night, but the opportunity opened and I was happy to get back to work on our log ride. In these tiny pieces I added windows, which I had to create myself as I have somehow lost the really nice and easy window pieces that came with the model. Grrrr.

These pieces, put together, become a part of a ship's deck that will stand out in front of the attraction.

Here you can see the pieces put together. And yes...those red lines will run electricity up to what will soon be lamps.

 

 

And is that rigging I see? Nooooo! Looks like it's time to go back to the dreaded rigging. Let's see if I can do it without breaking the cleats this time around. I have changed my process for doing this so keep your fingers crossed.

 

More Buildings Constructed

 

 

Last night we were able to construct two more perimeter buildings for the log ride, complete with lights. To the left you see one of the buildings that we put a full-sized LED in. The one being constructed on the right has a tiny LED built into the wall which will light up on the other side.

 

The wires for the lights lead through the floor which we glued to the scaffolding of the building. It will be painted to look like piping as we did with the rest of the model. This model should have a good number of lights once we have it finished.

The Load \ Unload Station

 

 

This weekend we made a major "step" forward as we began to build the load / unload station. This turned out to be quite a major project to undertake. It started easily enough as I created these structures which needed some electrical wiring threaded through a hole which needed to be widened.

 

 

Then came the "step" part. What a wild ride this turned out to be! My first stairway I glued in all of the steps, one by one, on the left side and then tried to get the right side to fit in. I finally got it, but it turned out to be a bad idea. It's best to glue two steps at the top , two steps at the bottom, than add both sides together and slide in the rest of the steps. This takes lots of time and patience (not to mention searching for steps you'll keep dropping on the floor).

 

 

In the end, this stairwell turned out pretty nice. I will never look at stairs the same way again!

 

 

This stairway, which was the longest one in length, took just short of an hour to complete. After a step shot out of my tweezers and went flying across the room, never to be found again, I had to grab some scrap plastic to build my own. What fun! And where do all these stairs lead?

 

 

To our new loading / unloading station! I love the way this turned out. We even added a loading light inside.

 

 

Next up, we continue to build structures that appear along the attraction's perimeter. Here is one showing it's new wiring, waiting for it's roof.

 

 

 

Structure Building

Friday night I started working a little further away from the attraction itself. These poles, which are sitting in Sculpey, waiting to be painted, will be a part of a viewing platform that will sit in front of the attraction.

 

Here is the platform finished and in place. There are lights in both lamp posts. You can see the red wires behind them which will be painted the same color as the pole. Note the painters tape at the base of the poles which helps add support to the wires before the final gluing.

 

 

Another thing we did this night was to add a brown wash to all of our bamboo pieces. While it is a bit hard to tell in the picture, they came out looking great!

 

Electrical & More

It's A Big Day!!

 

Okay, let's take a look at the unaltered version of our Log Ride. Here is what it looks like, as released by Faller, at this point in construction:

 

 

It looks nice, but as you know, we have been on a "Construction Hiatus" while we did a little "plussing" of our own. We wanted to give our attraction a more realistic look. And so, after weeks of experimenting and soldering, here is what we have today:

 

 

While we are still working on the best voltage to use, we really like the way the lights bring the model to life. And now the other upramp you see in the background is also lit up and ready to go.

 

 

The lights make the climb to the top even more thrilling!

 

 

But the most exciting news is, we are finally back to construction! As you can see above, more decorations are being put together. These three poles will also gets lights inserted into them, though I have not figured out quite how I am going to do that because of the way they are constructed. Another fun challenge!

 



Electrical Work Continues

 

 

See that red line sneaking up and across the bamboo poles of our log ride? That's our positive and negative electrical lines. It is now in place and running down both of our upramps.

 

 

Look closely and you will see the copper wires, both on the left and right, jetting out of the top of the drop. These will be attached to the sides where they will come into contact with the lighting that will be on poles running up the ramps.

 

 

Now that these wires are in place, it is time for us to finish creating our lighting poles and getting them wired and into place.

 

This part of the model just proves that you really can do anything you want to do if you put your mind to it. I had no idea how to do any of this before starting this project. But thanks to mostly information on the internet, I am getting it done. You can do! 

 

 

Attractions Department: Logs

We wanted to know if our logs were going to be comfortable for our little guests, so we invited some of our "New Guests" to try them out. Well, actually, we glued them and......ummm....removed some of their legs. Hmmm...that just sounds terrible. But it turned out really nice and it was a small price to pay to get to ride the log ride over and over and over.

 

See how happy they all look? Actually, we had to "modify" a few folks to get them to sit on the seat. We moved these guests toward the front of the logs. As we get more people we will had them to the ride, though I kind of like that a few logs have only one person in them.

 

 

 

So now our guests are ready to ride the log ride. That means we better stop writing and get back to work. We have a lot of lighting to install before we can continue with the actual construction!

Mystic Mountain Update

We wanted to send out an update on the progress of Mystic Mountain construction.

We got delayed a bit as our poor Lego Millennium Falcon kept falling apart. I built it last year for fun and never displayed it, so it went from box to box, corner to corner, shedding pieces and parts as it went......which then became property.....and dinner....for Sprite, our eat-anything dog.

So, before he ended up with the entire craft in his stomach, I decided to take it apart, piece by piece, and start over again...this time with a bottle of glue! (For those of you who saw The Lego Movie, I know you are hating me right now).

It took a while, but I finally got the thing rebuilt and it is now together permanently and ready to be hung.

So that brings me back to Mystic Mountain, and yes, I worked on it some more last night. I am happy to report that The Flipper is now ready to be stored until installation day. The model is finished complete with lighting. Once installed, all it will need is a few touchups. I am also considering hot gluing the electrical wires underneath the base so as not to affect what they are attached to above which was happening anytime I had to move the model. But for now, it slides into storage.

Next, we go back to the lighting work on our log ride!

Mystic Mountain Update

 

Wanted to send in a quick update to let you know work continues nightly on the project. I say "the project" because we are jumping around from one aspect to another, with electrical being the number one focus.

 

As you can see from the picture, last night I started putting Flippers' light stanchions back into place, hopefully for the final time. As much as I would love to flip this attraction over and work from the bottom, I'm afraid it is too fragile to do so. Makes working on the electrical interesting.

 

I need to get two or three more color-changing LEDs into the center of the arm lift and electrical will be finished on the Flipper........unless I decide to add more  ;)

Lighting Department: Work Begins

 

This weekend's work was all about electrical and lighting. We have received all of the miniature and color-changing LEDs we ordered and so we set out to work, experimenting with how they could be added to our model. In the above picture you see we have broken out a piece of the Flipper's poles and added a color-changing LED behind it. In our testing these ended up working great. And we learned a huge lesson. It is better to work your lighting in BEFORE you put your model together...not after :)

 

 

 

Over on the Log Ride we have done just that. We waiting on these pirate signs and are really glad we did. Here you can see the back of the sign with a positive wire running up one side and a negative wire running up the other. Believe it or not, that tiny little speck of yellow with the two wires coming out of it sitting left of the sign is a mini LED.

 

 

Once installed and running it looks like this. Notice the yellow light lit on the right pole. These look really neat in low light.

 

So with the experimental part of this phase done we are now working away to add the rest of the lights to both models and to our game booths.

 

 

Attraction Department: More Construction

It's a little tough to see here, but we have our structures over a lift and a drop as well as our attraction sign installed. For those keen-eyed folks, you might notice that I put my little huts in a different place than the design calls for. Call it artistic license  ;)

 

Next up, it was time to build a cannon! This is going to require some pretty small cannon balls!

 

 

We were excited about this part. Our pirate has been installed! We love this part of the model.

 

 

Ah...there they are....and yes they are very small. Cannon balls! These ball piles had to be glued together as they started as three separate pieces. Crazy. So we will be installing these into the attraction tonight!



 

Flipper Stats

We promised you stats on our Flipper attraction and here they are:

Faller Flipper # 140439

Total Model Parts: 436

Total Hours Spent: 22

Total Days: 6

 

This attraction is now waiting for special lighting and final painting before being signed off as ready for installation. 

 

 

Attraction Department: More Log Work

Had about 90 minutes last night to do some work on the log ride which included working on two shelters and the attraction's sign.

Decorating the sign including cutting out these very small letters and pasting them down onto the sign.

So these three pieces are ready to be added to the attraction! More work coming soon.

Publicity Department: Hard at Work!

Looks like Mystic Mountain's little publicity department is already hard at work promoting our park.

Last night, Autumn came running into the studio saying "Dad, you gotta see this!" So she lead me to the living room where Nickelodeon's Sam & Cat were frozen on the TV screen. She excitedly hit play and there it was!

Sam and Cat were standing in their living room as Sam began to slowly take out something from her jacket pocket. The dialogue went something like this:

SAM: Hey....guess what I got?
CAT: I dunno....what have you got?
SAM: How about two free tickets to Mystic Mountain!

We all got a good laugh out of that. Looks like we better get our theme park up and running soon seeing as how Sam & Cat already have tickets  :)

Attraction Department: More Rigging & Beyond

 

Time to rig up the second mast. Now that I have the hang of it, it felt like I was doing someone's hair!

 

 

 

 

I must be getting better at it because this time I broke no cleats and only broke one threader! And.....it took only one hour to get this one done!

 

 

 

It was time to move on to other parts of construction. Safety is our number one goal here at Mystic Mountain (those HO scale people are really expensive!) and so we have sparred no expense in safety features. Here you see our emergency evacuation platforms on both of our lifts.

 

 

And here you see a walk-down ramp from the uplift. I had to take a little liberty with these as the ramp is a bit higher than it should be (had to do that to get it to operate properly). I decided to cut off the bottom boards so I could get the railings to align. When building a model like this I am finding that you have to think "out of the box".









Attraction Department: Redoing The Rig

Okay, no pirate I know ever used white rope. And that was driving me crazy. After three hours of madness, I was not happy with the way the mast looked. And I still had another one to make. Then I found this........

A piece of burlap. A trip to Michaels paid off when I spotted these hanging from a display. They were all ratty and the threads were hanging loose. But to me...this was perfect! I bought a roll and took it home and proceeded to take it apart.

This was much tougher to work with and I broke the cleats over and over again trying to thread this much thicker line through the holes. I broke many a sewing threader trying to get the job done too.

But I think the final result looks much better don't you? Now I can believe this is the work of a pirate! In all, it took over 5 hours to finally get this piece of the model correct.

Add in a few "ocean wave" trimmings and another step in the process is finished!