Work has again thrown me a few time consuming projects, that meant I had less time than I wanted for this build, but I managed to get a couple of minutes here and there.
Since the last post I've continued preparing the wall sections, painted all the window frames, and painted the corner posts then cut to the right lengths .
The easy way to paint them was to hold them with a few cloths pegs. (see pictures)
As I reported earlier, I had some challenges with warping as I used a water based artist acrylic paint for the walls. This took some time to rectify, but I managed to straighten them all out by also 'wetting' the other side, and then put them to dry with weights on top of them.
The corner posts and windows where therefore spray painted with a solvent based paint, which resulted in no warping. My next wood structure will certainly not be subject to water based products anymore.
I also found that gluing a wood structure is not as straight forward as a plastic/styrene structure. I've done plastic structures in the past and one of the best things to use for that is a solvent called Methyl Ethyl Katone. It actually dissolves the plastic and it evaporates very quickly, so you can build very quick and clean too as it is very thin.
For wood, and especially the bond between plastic window frames and wood, I needed something else. I found a gel type CA based glue that has about the consistency of butter, and dries pretty quick, so assembly with this was fairly painless. I do wonder what others use for this. The brand I found was Pattex 100% repair gel. I'm not sure under what name this is available in the UK, but this is a common product in the Netherlands, Germany , Belgium and France.
Below are images of these two construction stages:
Graham progress by
K2K Koos, on Flickr
Corner posts glued to the walls:
Graham progress by
K2K Koos, on Flickr
After this the next construction stage called for adding the glass to the windows etc. So I went looking for it, only to find that this kit did not include it…
As it was evening, I had no chance even purchasing it, and I could not find anything that I could cut it from (packaging of some description for example). So that stopped me from progressing any further this evening. I did not want to continue assembling the structure right now, as I am afraid that adding windows would become too difficult then.
To be continued….