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!