A snapshot in time. A glimpse of the Plettenberger Kleinbahn in 1/22.5 scale.

[Ray Dunakin]

Holy cow, that looks amazing! The glasses and watches are incredible!

[Bernhard]

This looks so incredibly realistic. What a fantastic job. I think these miniature parts would drive even a watchmaker to despair.

Bernhard

[Hydrostat]

Thanks Narayan, Russ, Lawrence, Kim, Bill, Ray and Bernhard.

This looks so incredibly realistic. What a fantastic job. I think these miniature parts would drive even a watchmaker to despair.
Bernhard

About watchmaking: I tried different approaches at doing the wall clocks. It works quite well to print a scaled down frontal picture. At this special slotted design I used a scriber to carve the slots. The fringe is made from brass tube, chamfered at 45° and cut to a 0.5 mm slice (according to wall thickness). A drop of UV curing resin leads to the watch glass. 






This looks quite good at a front view, but it's quite difficult to paint the sides in an appropriate color and gloss level. So I tried something with pear, which comes very close to the prototype's color. Again the 0.1 mm slots are carved, following grain. A 0.1 mm saw blade would do better but I don't have one.




I used a caliper to adjust the fence for scribing.




All in all I like those watches more than the printed ones.



One can't get as close as that later on, not to mention for taking pictures. The area within the face is printed, too. I cut the printed pieces around the brass ring after the resin has set to receive a clean edge.




There was another design with plain surface and I didn't like the not too precise "shivering" the watch glasses into their position. This works in the background, but for the shop window I wanted a good one. I drilled the wooden core, placed the chamfered tube and then cut flush the excess tube material.






There are more designs made from brass and nickle silver etchings, superimposed round blanks and hands.




I've got quite an assortment of them.




I'm looking forward to see them installed in the shop in 2034 or so. 


Cheers
Volker

[Bill Gill]

Volker, That's an amazing assortment of clocks!

I'm looking forward to see them installed in the shop in 2034 or so. Volker
Your photos show that you certainly have "made the time" you need to do that. 

[Hydrostat]

Bill,

I followed the discussion about gold color at Lawrence' thread with big interest. The drybrushing method for sure would have proven an even better approach - I should have known before! I used an Edding 780 which provides quite small flakes.

Cheers,
Volker

[finescalerr]

The ability to create such 1:22.5 scale timepieces is beyond my comprehension! Good thing I went into publishing instead of model making. -- Russ

[1-32]

Hi Volker.
Great to see that they are all period correct.
cheers Kim

[Lawrence@NZFinescale]

Inspirational - as always

[Hydrostat]

Hi Volker.
Great to see that they are all period correct.
cheers Kim

This is most important to achieve a convincing scene. And research is a huge part of the fun involved here. Online auction houses often have suitable pictures and measurements available for modeling those items.

Already at the optician's workshop I was guided by some historic pictures of an optician from Siegen/Germany. They provide a lot of recommendations for the shop floor, too:




Both pictures with kind permission by Heinjochen Fuchs, Brillen-Fuchs Siegen


I really fell for the counter. I used several layers of veneer, glued to each other with a 90° offset following grain - a rather fine fibered material for the visible areas and the later on invisible ones from some coarse stuff.








The rear web bracing is cut and notched from 1 mm cardboard.






A first layer of color:






For the display cabinet I cut some wooden L- and T-sections.










I didn't want to have drawers working (except at the display cabinet) and so some wooden blocks glued to the web spacing were sufficient. The display cabinet's drawers are made from veneer, which then was stabilized with CA.




The handles are remnants from making the kitchen stove.




The surface was still to coarse. I used "Still water effects" by Vallejo to fix that.








Cheers
Volker

[finescalerr]

Most satisfactory. Need one say more? -- Russ

[Ray Dunakin]

Great work on that display cabinet! What did you use for the glass?

[Stuart]

Should be ready to open up shop soon.  Nice work Volker.

[nk]

Those clocks are terrific. I can almost hear the crackle of my Geiger-counter is it picks up the radium on the dials. Do you have room inside for some ads for the fine horologists of Glashutte?

[Hydrostat]

Great work on that display cabinet! What did you use for the glass?

Ray, I used 0.5 mm Vivak, a plastic that has a very glass-like surface.

Those clocks are terrific. I can almost hear the crackle of my Geiger-counter is it picks up the radium on the dials. Do you have room inside for some ads for the fine horologists of Glashutte?

Indeed there's an old Glashütte sign involved later on. If I got it right, Alpina was a cooperative that Glashütte became a part of.
 

The facade of Haus Lohmann was decorated with distinctive neon signs that changed over time. I chose this short-term situation with an old Zeiss and a then-modern Dugena advertisement, the Zeiss advertisement can be seen on the right in the picture at the back corner of the house:


Photo: Coll. Heimatkreis Plettenberg e.V. https://www.heimatkreis-plettenberg.de/


For the older Zeiss advertising, I used frames milled from nickel silver and etched brass cover plates. A core made of 6 mm thick Plexiglas fits in there. Panes made of 0.5 mm Vivak are used for lining to the target size and 0.25 mm polycarbonate panes form the actual glass fronts.

The frames and sheets were first sprayed in the desired tone.




After several attempts, the motif was simply printed out on Photoglossy paper and fixed with fixative.




To imitate a fluorescent tube, which has been on the market since 1938, I glued two cold white LEDs to a plexiglass rod, roughened it up and glued it into a plastic rod (the tube from a pennant with an Italian flag - that doesn't matter, but it is a fact).




The plexiglass core was given a cross hole to accommodate the "tube".




The connection cable of one LED runs through a groove cut all around to the exit point...




... in the rear cover plate, which has a cable entry.




Voila:






Cheers,
Volker

[finescalerr]

One could surmise that young Volker has attained the apex of modeling skills. -- Russ