Sunday, February 16, 2020

The tower stands!

I put the pedal-to-the-metal and got the sides panelled with horizontal and vertical elements using the same techniques used on the facade. Once done, I was quite anxious to get the 3 walls glued up and see this thing standing.

Gluing the walls together was a bit tricky. For the next highrises I'm going to need to build a jig to hold the walls in place as they're glued. This one was a bit of a juggling act, but things worked out ok.

The sides were glued to the facade - which is an acrylic to acrylic joint - with a thick superglue. Some kicker was carefully sprayed on the glue seam to speed bonding.

I decided to add interior floors to give extra strength to the structure, and to allow for some interior detail and lighting.


The floors are rectangles of black, 3/16" foam board, glued in place with Roket Card Glue by Deluxe Materials

The back wall is going to be able to slide out to allow for interior detailing, and for taking pictures of layout scenes. That wall will simply be a piece of foam board with some plastic brick sheets glued on. 

The real thing was finished construction in 1972, and when this little version stood up, and I had a good look, it was definitely reminding me of highrises from that era. So far, so good.

2 comments:

  1. Looks great! Look forward to seeing it furnished. There is something about high rises of that era, a very pleasing regularity to them. I struggle a wee bit with modern high-rises that look like they've melted!

    Related, but on a much grander scale: https://youtu.be/fvwwYeDVAqk

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    1. Thanks for the kind words. I'm hoping this will be the first of a few highrises that I'll build this year. I'm learning a lot of new things as well as what not to do on future models. I'll take a look at the link.

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