Great Lakes Lighthouse Build

Started by carl b, January 01, 2020, 11:43:41 AM

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rslaserkits

What a great looking light House will be following for sure
rich

carl b

Thank you Janbouli and Rich for the welcome.
I really appreciate your interest in following along.
Carl

Pennman

Carl,

Looks like the Master of Diorama's has another fine project under construction !  I will be following along with your progress as well.

  Rich

carl b

Thanks for following Rich. Appreciate the compliment.
Carl

carl b

The US Lighthouse Society website (https://uslhs.org/) does have a few measurements of the tower itself, which will be my first task. It's 61' high to the evaporator ball and 13.5' square at the base. The light has a 27 mile range.



I've never built a square light tower before. To mimic the stone used, I chose a RailScale Model product N scale dressed stone block sheet, but the rows were still too tall. At my request, the owner Stephen Miley, kindly obliged to re-cut the block rows for me down to 1.75 mm heights. which is smaller than the stock sheet. I also had him change the material, and burned it onto 1/16" basswood , rather than cardstock or RC board.



First, I made a crude scale drawing of my known elevations of the tower.



Even though I'm using the RSM block sheets here, I first made the carcass of four sides with .050" chipboard. I didn't want to rely solely on the finished block sheets for strength. I also need to miter all edges, and insert a tube to carry the power wires to the light.  So they'll be laminated to these pieces.



Rough mock-up...



Additional strength with 1/8" square corners...



Building out the base thickness to match the prototype....



Dressed the top with 2 levels of borders....and prepped the window cut outs...nothing glued...rubber bands only.



Till next time.....more tower work....
Carl

Opa George

Carl, very interesting project and a really nice start. The walls look good in chipboard--can't wait to see them in the textured block.
--Opa George

Jerry

Nice start Carl.


Great tutorial also.


Jerry
"And in the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years." A. Lincoln

PRR Modeler

Curt Webb
The Late Great Pennsylvania Railroad
Freelanced PRR Bellevue Subdivision

Jim Donovan

Looks great. Look forward to seeing it grow. Thanks for sharing.

Jim D
Holland & Odessa Railroad

Mark Dalrymple

Coming on nicely, Carl.

Cheers, Mark.

carl b

George, Jerry, Curt, Jim and Mark, appreciate your posts &
thank you for your kind comments.
Carl

Oldguy

This is going to be good.  BTW - interesting glue holder.  Makes sense.
Bob Dye
Livin large on a pond

carl b

Thanks for following along Bob.

Glad you like the Aleenes holder- it's just 3 pieces of wood. Always ready-no waiting.

Carl

carl b

The very small windows for the tower are N scale version Tichy, with the original muntins cut away, and a single vertical bar I inserted in the middle.



I made 4 square bracing blanks from chipboard for the interior. They also hold a styrene tube in the center to carry the lantern light wires. I won't glue the four sides together till later.



The top of the tube was run long for measurement purposes, previously painted because it's a cut off from another project. Will now begin the lantern assembly....



The lantern "clockworks room", housing the mechanism to rotate the light, is a slice of 3/4" pvc pipe. In HO scale, it's 6 ft high and 7.5 ft. in diameter.



The outside diameter (actually a bit over 1") wasn't quite big enough, so I added some blocking so I can "skin over" it with some thin sheet styrene.



Now with primer gray.



A trip to the craft store for these wood balls (labeled "dowel caps"), which I will have to cut in half to become the top of the dome.....They were out of stock on the "half split balls". GRRR.  No, I couldn't buy just one.



And this cheapo necklace, which has a string of plastic 5mm balls, for the evaporator ball....



Putting it together, a styrene tube (which will be cut super short), a jewelry ring, a 5mm necklace ball, and a needle. Bathed in CA glue. It needs a paint job...



Till next time... a 10 sided object....
Carl

postalkarl

Hey Car:

Looks real nice so far. I really like light houses.

Karl

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