Whenever you stop typing and leave it for several hours, the thread times out and the pictures are lost. That's what happened last night and here are the three that disappeared. The upper middle decking is in place along with nail holes throughout. You can't really see the nail holes, but I know it's there.
Here was the barrel test with the older design on the bottom and the new in the middle. I made the barrel longer so it would stabilize on the rails easier. A real full bourbon barrel weighs over 500 pounds so gravity holds it in place.
But even reducing the girth by about 5%, it still won't fit the top row. Not sure why I designed it so narrow. Something's wrong. The rick height is 8 feet and I can see that the middle space is just too tall. It's way to late to fix this, but if I'm commissioned to build another, I will fix all the errors on this one. Even MTH doesn't get their loco designs right the first time out, I'm sure.
I will also produce an assembly jig that would space all the ricks in one go. It was suggested to me by my friend Marty Schwenbau at Scale Reproductions, Inc. (US's best hobby shop). It would be a laser-cut grid that had slots to accept the ricks to position them for gluing. Or something like that.
I got six of the remaining 24 ricks built yesterday. Work will continue today.
So now you're all up to date.
I just repaired the error. I found that the inner-spacing between barrel rails should be about 27 scale inches. I made the mods and here's what it looks like using a more properly proportioned barrel. I also modified the assembly jig to reflect this change. If or when I make another it will be correct.
