P5se Camelback's 2010 Summer Structure Challenge GERN Plant

[P5se Camelback]

Alas, my twenty year absence from the hobby rears its ugly head to bite me! My anger was totally focused on my stupidity, forgetting that butt joints must be reinforced! You guessed it! The beautiful splice joint that I had made and spent so much time blending and scribing board lines though was all for naught – in handling that long loading dock to fit the rear platform to it, the unreinforced splice snapped!

In an effort to minimize this set-back, it was decided to repair the splice, add the rear platform and reinforce them both all at the same time. So, the next step is the same as earlier … first checking the fit of the newly fabricated platform with the loading dock and cleaning the broken spice with a couple swipes of the file and then “painting” on several coats of Plastruct “Plastic Weld®” (or lacquer thinner) to soften the mating surfaces and proceed to join them as before.



Reinforcing “plates” were cut and then solvent-welded into place. First on the original loading dock splice …



The next step is to measure for a couple of “double-duty” pieces. These will both stiffen a piece of flimsy 0.040” sheet styrene as well as support it at the same level as the loading dock. While we’re at it, we’ll cut a couple of supports for the building side of the loading dock. When in place, these supports will hide in front of the concrete “foundation” wall pilasters, hidden back in the shadows. The stiffener/supports under the platform will also hide in the shadows. Black paint will help these supports hide and some “concrete” paint will hide the ones under the loading dock in front of the pilasters.





And then a large splice plate for the butt-joined fabricated platform for the rear of the building …



Now we can flip it over and re-scribe the board lines through the repaired butt splice …





We are now ready to attach the loading dock ramp …



Next we’ll measure and cut the strip from which to cut the rear supports for the loading dock, which will appear as the concrete pilasters if they can be seen at all back in the shadows.



The NWSL Chopper helps cut all the needed pieces the same size ...



Now we’ll measure for the locations of the faux concrete pilasters and solvent weld them in place …



The number of sub-assemblies grows as we get closer to pulling together all the components that will become this building ...



A test fit of the rail-side loading dock before calling it a night (or an early morning)





That’s it … I’m going to catch a couple of hours of shut-eye. I’ll proof-read this and then post it tomorrow.