FOS - Frank Lava Gunsmith

[ReadingBob]

Great work on the gunsmith shop, Bob!

It looks fantastic.  Great tutorial as well.

Cheers, Mark.

Thank you, Mark! Glad to have you follow along and comment.   

[ReadingBob]

Bob, on that last photo looking through the bottom, you have brass straps running along the walls, and then the light strips running perpendicular to the walls (and parallel to the ground.)  So I think what you did was (1) install a piece with 2 brass strips along the walls, (2) then attach and solder the light strips to these wall-mounted strips.  Is that correct?

And how would you do it if you wanted to put a 2nd story floor?  I'm presuming you'd do this in order of (1) bus strips running from base to 2nd story ceiling.  (2) install 2nd story light strips.  (3) install the 2nd story floor (with any furniture, etc, attached to it).  (4). then install the 1st story light strips. 

dave

Close Dave. I used photo mounting board for this. I cut three pieces that were, if I remember correctly, 1/2 in width.  The length was as needed. Two were for the circuits with the LED's and Current Limiters. One was used to support the two circuits and provide power. That's not brass straps. It's an adhesive copper tape. I ran two strips of the copper tape the length of the support piece and attached wires to them. One was for the positive side of things and the other for the negative side of things. They don't meet on this piece. The circuit boards were then connected to this support piece by first soldering the copper tape (wrapped around the end of the circuit board) to the copper tape on the support piece. That held them in place, but I opted to glue a scrap piece of the photo mounting board to the side just for the addition support. The whole thing was inserted into the structure and attached to the back wall using double sided foam tape.

How you describe it if I wanted to do a second story floor is pretty much the way I'd do it. One thing I might opt to do differently would be to put the copper tape on the underside of the floor (the ceiling basically) and use surface mount LED's as opposed to drilling holes, bending the wires and soldering them to the top of the card. Surface mount LED's have gone up in price, so I generally avoid them. I could bend the wires on the LED's and solder them directly to the tape in this configuration. Same with the Current Limiter since there are no surface mount Current Limiters. 

If I ran that copper tape up the wall and didn't want it visible, I'd cover it with some wallpaper. I have, for rooms that I want people to peek into, printed out scaled down wallpaper patterns and covered the walls with it. The copper tape is so thin it would be easily hidden.

Thanks for following along!

[ReadingBob]

Great work Bob, look forward to seeing all the details up close.....

Hopefully soon, Greg! It's been a while since I've been able to make it down to Tom's. I need to remedy that. 

[ReadingBob]

Outstanding!
Thanks for all the  pictures and all the SBS's.

Thanks, Rick! Glad to have you follow along. I have another one on the workbench that I'll start a thread on soon. Hopefully I'll get that one done a little faster. 

[ReadingBob]

Another great build, Bob.  I can see where the pistol and sign would not have a lot of surface contact.  Smart to leave it until the end. 

Jeff

Thanks, Jeff! Yeah, that was tricky to add and it's a prime candidate for getting knocked off. 

Really appreciate having you follow along! This was another gem, from Doug. It'd look great one the Empire. 

[ReadingBob]

Bob,

Fantastic job on the build and the SBS process. This is another masterpiece.

Thanks for sharing the build.

Tom

Thanks, Tom! I'll bring it down, one of these days, so you can get a close up look as well as a feel for how much real estate it really takes up.

See you soon. 

[deemery]

Bob, thanks for the detailed description.  I always learn from your builds!

dave