Gecko's back door

House renovations are going on and on and on, but I've made a little progress on Gecko Records. Above is a picture of the loading door on the back wall. It needs a little weathering and some more detail. Basically, it's a laminate of styrene along with some ancient Letraset for signage and a staple for a door handle.

The corners are filled in with styrene tubes cut for a snug fit and painted flat aluminum.

I use a small tube cutter for scoring styrene tubes. Although this cutter is meant for metal tubes, it works well for styrene as long as you don't cut too deep and distort the plastic. Usually, a decent enough score can be made that allows the tube to be snapped without compressing the plastic. A little clean up with a sanding stick is usually needed after breaking the piece free.

The tiles are not precision dimensioned, so the structure is a little off-square and there are a number of gaps here and there between the pieces. I don't want light to leak out when the lobby is lit up, so I filled all the inside gaps with a non-solvent based wood-filler I bought at Home Hardware - I had some left over from house reno-ing and I didn't want to use expensive hobbyist filler for this job. I haven't seen any cracking or the plastic parts being attacked by it; so far, so good. The plan is to paint the interior black.

This is the insert for the entrance lobby. It still needs a lot of work. The ceiling will be some sort of light panel.