I'm having second thoughts about the MM stone sheets so I went to the LHS, bought more Evergreen and ordered some Plastruct embossed stone wall sheeting. They had several different patterns. The one I chose has fairly even courses so it will look good when cut to the 3 scale feet height. That and the rest of my errands today left me with just about an hour in the shop. It was a very encouraging hour.
For starters, I took the suggestion of one of my faithful readers (Ken NJ) to to make a curved window out of 1/8" acrylic. I had some remnants laying around from building the Missouri's showcase. I found one undamaged chunk that was just the right size. I measured the window space minus the thickness of the two window sills and scribed a line with the digital calipers. I then used an acrylic scriber to engrave a deep groove in the piece to enable breaking on the line. I clamped the straight edge to the work piece since you have to scribe it over and over and over to make it deep enough to break correctly. I thought it was deep enough and tried to snap it and got a half of the piece separated leaving a jagged chunk still attached. I went back and deepened the remaining groove and it broke clean leaving just a little bump that I took off with the belt sander and then cleaned up the edge with the NWSL True Sander.
The plan to bend the acrylic started with shaping the corner of a 2 X 4 to the required curve radius. I chopped off most of the stock with the chop saw and then sanded to the curve line with the belt sander. I clamped this fixture to the workbench and then clamped one half of the acrylic to this.
I used my Top Flite Monokoting heat gun to heat the bend zone and move the free end around the curve. After two tries I got it pretty good. There's a little spring back, but it's not excessive and it will glue in place well.
I tried it in the space before cutting it to the proper length. I used the ply window sill to mark the final length, marked it, squared off the line, cut it long in the scroll saw, sanded it closer with the belt sander and then final hand sanding with the True Sander. The fit is very good.
Here is the test fit before final length cutting.
Theres a little distortion at the bend, but I think it's acceptable. I'm sure bending thin styrene clear sheet around that bend would have its own problems to contend with.
The final thing I did today was run a test using the newly obtained copper foil and surface mount LEDs. These little packages put out a huge amount of light with a wide dispersion... perfect for interior lighting. I put the copper foil onto a piece of scrap acrylic. The contact points are on the bottom of the LED with a separation between anode and cathode of about 1mm. So I taped the two copper strips about that far apart. Tinned a tiny spot on each side, held the LED down with tweezers and then heated the foil next to the package and it settled down in moments and was done. I tested it with my 12VDC power source with a 470 ohm current limiter and boy! you can't believe the light output with no heat. I find LEDs still like magic...light with no heat almost seems against nature. And these things are cheap! ($0.29 each). They come in a little plastic sleeve all attached together with a piece of clear film across the top protecting and holding the LEDs in place.
This has got to be the coolest way to illuminate buildings or hangar decks of aircraft carriers without big clunky lights hanging down. The copper foil can be painted over so it could be almost invisible. I new about the copper foil since it's been used for doll house lighting for years, but it lacked the tiny LED light sources. I wish I did this when I lit the distilleries and all the other building on the layout. Learn something new every day. Today I learned two new things. Again, the value of taking the time an posting all these massive details comes back in learning and skill improvement... and I'm 72!
