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| Water tower build, Scratchbuild (RMC Mar/07, HO Scale) |
| Follow the build - Scratch builds |
| Written by Ron Pare |
| Thursday, 17 April 2008 07:18 |
Wood water towerThis article is duplicated for continuity in the engine terminal build. Scratch building is an art form that requires a keen eye for lengths and measurements. However, when you do find a set of plans in your scale it makes the task much faster and a lot easier. Thats where Railroad Model Craftsman comes in handy. Every so often (was more common in the past) they provide their subscribers with plans for scratch builds. This is true of the March/07 issue where we find complete HO scale drawings of a water tank. Scratch building can be anything you want it to be, a direct prototype or just a close copy. I tend to sway towards K.I.S.S.. The first three letters stand for keep it simple. The last is for, well, I will keep to the first three. Obviously, if you are a rivet counter, buying the issue would be a great purchase so you can discover those various details that I will inevitably leave out.Using our calipers we copied the design roughly. We used wood glue for this and pre-stained our wood with ink-ahol. Using our weights, we made a 90 degree angle to get set to attach the standards together.
   Assembly of the base isn't something to rush through, as it is the variations in the standards that will make this all the more realistic. When the standards are assembled together, we want to sand the tops level to each other. The same with the bottom. We used some hefty sized square stock for the base. This worked out well. The difference in size made a huge improvement to the look of the piece.    We used a smaller size of square stock for the top. These were both sanded level and flat. Figuring out the top was solved during a break in building/planning, with a pop can. The wife put it on top and within 3 hours we had the task finished. Cut the top and bottom off the can and cut the middle piece half the height of the tank. Cut the planks to size and stain, let dry and repeat. We used a hot glue gun to apply the planks to the can. When we finished we used elastic bands to secure the planks till the wire bands were ready.    We had some telephone wire left over from the Wire Trees build, so we used that for the steel bands on the water tank. We wrapped the tank and wound the ends tightening the bands up.   
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