A Shell shaped Shell station - in scale

[eshaver]

Years ago, I was in the middle of helping to author the book Check the Oil by Scott Anderson . In the meantime Daniel Vyeria had authored a book called - Filler- Up an archecturial look on various service stations mostly from my then home of Houston Texas . In it was a picture of a forlorn old Service station in the shape of a shell. This building was in Winston Salem North Carolina . I was to move back to Richmond Virginia several years later . I stopped in Winston salem to gather  several shots of this piece of history for myself .

Not wanting to simply look at Black and white 3 X 3's , I decided the right thing to do was to do a 1-24th model of this station as it probably looked in 1930, the year it was built as Quality Oil #6 at the corner of Spring and Sprauge . Thankfully, this building wasn't forgotten . it was loveingly restored as it was bought from the owner who had turned it into a small engine repair shop years earlier . This was the last remaining of eight built .







Ed Shaver

[Ray Dunakin]

What a cool little building!

[marc_reusser]

Very cool structure and project Ed. How was it made, vacuum formed?

Marc

[eshaver]

Mark, I'll try to explain best I can . The building was constructed as a "Skeleton " made up of many oblong ovals made from Foam Core and suspended from four pieces of Florist wire . By that, I took the foam Core , stuck in the four pieces of wire at the corners and just started going up . from there , I draped several pieces of Fiberglass to make the "Basic " shape . Because Fiberglass is tempermental , sinks into creveces and sometimes bubbles as a result of adhesion , I had to use Automobile filler , Bondo to finiallize the finished shape . The "ribs " were made of 015 Evergreen Styereene sheet cut into strips and glued onto the Bondo . If that dosen't work, I can send some construction shots to you in a P-M ........Ed Shaver