Today… nothing actually went terribly wrong and all progress was forward. First up was installing all the glazing for the store windows. Scribing their outlines on the Silhouette vinyl cutter was a splendid idea that saved lots of time and prevented lots of mistakes. There were instances where I had to take very fine slices off to get the glazing to fit without pinching—which created bowing, which I didn’t want—and I held all the windows in with Bondic. The nice thing about Bondic is it doesn’t cure until you shine the UV light on it, so you have infinite working time. And if you get some on the glazing (before curing) it comes off with Isopropyl Alcohol and polished with a micro-fiber cloth. Once cured, that’s a whole different story. I found that putting the Bondic under the glazing and then shining the light through worked… sort of. It cured and held, but Bondic doesn’t really adhere well to sytrene and they were breaking loose during the work session. To correct, I applied an amount the covered over the styrene and locked it to the substrate mechaniccally, not adhesively.
While outside looks pretty clean, the inside is not. But the inside will not be viewable for the most part since there are no rear windows on the first floor and the only view would be through the one side window. Those window frames upstairs were unnecessary and some were interfering with the installation of the partitions. I’m generally not too excited about how I engineered the window installation. I overcompllicated the partitiions in many ways also, including the lugs and slots I built into the front and rear walls. Instead of faciliating assembly, they’ve created more problems.
It was time to fit the frist floor plate. I travced the interior of the building after taping the walls together. The floor is also a trifle more complicated than it appears because the front sills hang over the floor’s edge and the other parts extend out of the doorways serving as the entry step up from the pavement. After hooking the front over the edge, traced all the configuratons and then cut them out with the scroll saw.
Here’s looking straight down. The floor doesn’t fit tight, but I don’t mind. I can shim it if needed. I may not glue the building to floor to give access to the interiors.
I placed the partitions on into the taped-together building and traced their locations in preparation to cut and apply the finished flooring. I painted concrete colors to those parts of the floor needing that surface. I originally sprayed Rust-oleum sand paint to simulate the concrete, but didn’t like the results and painted it over with my concrete blend.
Since the other floors duplicate the floor plan, I just traced them to cut out the floor material.
I took a closer look at the site on the railroad where this is going. The surface is MDF and I’m gong to have to use the Dremel with a router to remove parts I don’t need OR just splice in a piece to fill the space left by Saulenas and save a lot of dirty work that would get sawdust over the layout.
The end it nigh on this project. Tomorrow I’m going to glue down the flooring using transfer tape and then get into painting the interior pieces. I also have to devise how and where the lighting circuits are going to go. CL2N3 LED drivers can produce heat. Each store needs two CL2s with one chip driving 3 LEDs with my 12VDC supply voltage. I may install them in the building behind the rear storage rooms instead of burying them underneath. Can’t glue anything together yet, but soon.