Luke's Garage & Gas Station

[Barney]

Excellent Workmanship and different   - This large scale certainly has appeal
Barney   

[Stuart]

Aside from my lubester, my main focus has been the completion of my two Tokheim clock face gas pumps.  All that remains is to finish the clock faces with their accompanying pointers, glass faces, bezels and the hoses and nozzles.  The glass globes at the top of each pump light up and there is a small light in the cowling above each clock face.  In a future post I will show the lighted version.



Actually the clock face decals I show here will be removed as I have hit upon a better idea for creating the finished face.  Originally I was simply going to stack the components on the face of the model, i.e. clock face decal, clock hands and then add the bezel and glass face.  The glass face was to be a thin clear plastic disk cut to fit and glued just inside the bezel.  But as I tried to glue the plastic disk in place I was unable to create a clean glue line that stayed anywhere close to being in scale.  So, taking a clue from Volker's excellent rendition of a clock and watch shop where he used UV cured resin to make his watch and clock faces, I am trying a new approach.





Using my original bezels I have soldered a .005" piece of brass sheet to the backside of each ring thus creating a very shallow dish.  Inside each "dish" I will place the clock face decal and the hands (or pointers) in their appropriate locations and then pour a very thin layer of clear epoxy resin over everything.  To ensure a bubble free result I'll place the pieces in a pressure chamber while the resin cures.



Primed and ready for the next step.

[Lawrence@NZFinescale]

To ensure a bubble free result I'll place the pieces in a pressure chamber while the resin cures.

Lovely.

It's pretty common to remove resin bubbles by passing a gas flame (or heat gun) over the part (not really enough to actually heat anything much).  Fast and very effective.