Getunderit

No, I don't see him as Alec Guiness. Come to think of it, it may be the museum currator. Funny how our subconscious plays a part in what we do in life.

'One Fifty' is helping me align these piers. My hand drilled holes are not really at ideal angles, but the diameter is correct. To align the piers, I have to trim parts of the dowel, that goes into the base, so it will align correctly. Also, I had to cut the piers a little bit shorter, hence the jar of stumps. The small jars contain shavings and stubs. These will be used in the diorama. The stubs will become seats and blocks to bust up for firewood. The shavings will be darkened and used for debarking waste Thanks, Pete @Pete in Lincs for offering to sweep up the sawdust, but I truly prefer for you to feel free to share your thoughts and wisdom. One step back too far. Because the wooden block template was too thick for tighter areas, I made another template out of card. On the card is a plan showing which set of piers have horizontal braces. So far. Well, the weekend is over for me. Time to clear the bench to work on the Wardell Bridge project.

Interesting. There seems to be several expanations for entasis. But none of them has mentioned two other possible reasons for the columns design. These reasons bear out when viewing the column on its own as a vertical structure without additional horizontals like a ceiling. 1. Forced perspective to make the column look longer than it is, espcially viewed from close proximity of its base. 2. To counteract the appearance of the column falling, or leaning, due to the curvature of the earth. On earth, all 90 deg verticals radiate from the centre of the earth. I used to do architectural (perspective) renderings from plans. To make the illustration look more real, the perspective vanishing points needed to be many feet away. Even so, mulitistorey buildings, when drawn on a flat surface (2D), would often appear to either fall forward, or backwards. To counteract this, as the illustrated building looked farther away, the perspective vanishing points needed to be lowered, or raised. In effect, the horizontal sides of the building were simulating the curvature of the earth. Much like onion layers are horizontal but circular.

Three seconds!? I spent several minutes filing the three slots to leave 2.5 mm of wood _ hence the calipers. Well, Gorby, you certainly the better man when it comes to filing skewers 😄.

For starters, but not all braces will be recessed. Changed the plans to suit same elevation for top brace, but the brace is now thicker. Just to let you know, there is a lot more work, but I am sure it will be worth it. I do have a dremel, but the shaft is bent. Anyway, I prefer using needle files.

Used a square for fitting in the centre piers at both ends. It was a bit iffy due to the taper. Then the out piers had to lean inwards as well as maintaining correct height. Solved the problem with a square block of dressed wood. Used it as a template for aligning the piers when gluing. Photo was taken at a higher level which, visually, almost eliminated actual degree of lean-in.

Thanks Brian. (and @Gorby). I will see what I can do. Will one of you now please come over to my place and redraw my plans to include half-saddle joints. . . Just joking.

True. But I am not going to do any half lapping with this small scale model. It's difficult enough for me to figure out whole measurements, let alone starting halving cross-sections. Many beams will be 2.2-2.5 mm bamboo skewers. Halving these (2.5 mm / 2 =1.25 mm) makes for thine and fragile cutting and/or filing. So, I am giving it a miss. As I said earlier . . . Nice bridge by the way. 😉

Okay, I am back. Spending the weekend on this project. Here is an insight of what this scratch builder does for kicks. So far . . . Been trying to get a grasp of how the builders slapped together this movie bridge. Since it was a temporary build, the builders were not overly concerned if things did not fit together. Here I am drawing some of the observed cantilever joints, and trying to find an ideal. It turns out too complex for a small scale model. So I worked out a simpler solution for my own construction. Below, my goal was to find out, with the available materials, how to include the main girder (spanning the whole bridge) without closing the gap between it and the top of the bridge towers. All the kit versions suffered from this problem. I do not wish to follow their example if I can help it. Before installing the piers, I needed to know exactly how high the main girder is above the waterline (or base plate). Once known, both end piers can be constructed to the correct height. Then a metal beam can lay across these two ends as a guide for all the other piers to meet the exact height and lean-in angle. Note, where the piers go into the base board, at an angle. The pier ends need to be trimmed and shaped to fit in the holes correctly.

Spent last two days trying to design the electronics for the boat and mechanics for the pulley system. There is surprisingly a lot to consider. 1. No loose moving wire harness to be used. Fatigue causes to many breakdowns. 2. Boat electronics, while traversing, needs to depend on own power source. 3. Need to design 9V battery charger. Battery to be mounted on boat vane. 4. Mechanisms to enable/disable circuits while boat traverses to, and at, docking points. 5. Boat nav lights to transpose location, on boat, to signify up and/or down stream travel. 6. Nav lights to be enabled only while bridge span is 'unlocked'. 7. 9V battery gets recharged every time it docks in the upstream location (far end). 8. Pulley system needs to incorporate safety shutdown before motor gets overloaded due to any mechanical malfunction. 9. Diesel motor sound, and possibly a foghorn, to be heard whenever the boat motor is on. Ah, the weekend is here. I think I'll take a break and leave this for two days; and do something different - like the Bridge on the River Kwai diorama.

Thank you so much James for your moral support and kind words. If you don't mind, I wish to screen print your response, and send it to the museum. I think it will give a good nod for their own volunteer work, and workers.

Thank you so much for link. The rails are cheap. Went to see what it would cost me for 4 lengths of 18", sent on cheapest postage, and converted currency, costs $21. Mmm. Will still try the bamboo version first. Thanks again for your help.

Thanks fellow moldelers for your support. Have finished here for a while. Need to return to the other bridge, Wardell Bridge diorama. Hope to see you there. Will return here whenever I can. Hopefully soon.

Creating a bevel frame for the 3 mm Perspex sheets that will encase the diorama. Used scrap 3mm Perspex, plus 1 mm card, for a gap spacer during construction. Not having a jig for cutting angles, I made a few initial errors (top right). Glued and nailed the frame to the base. One Fifty is asking why I added an extra row of piers. The last position where a pier would be is where the bridge deck joins the land. The pier is not needed. So now I have six spare piers, which will become handy. Last night I was thinking of making a few more piers just for showing POWs debarking tree trunks for piers. Now I have six for this mini diorama. As soon as I started applying wood putty, the spalulate broke. It was a reasonably new. Lucky I still had my old spatulet of over twenty years.

Yes I did. A powerful movie, especially since it is a true storey with forgeness and reconcilliation at the end. If they showed everything that went on the Thai-Burma Railway, and in the camps, it would be too horrible to grasp. I have trouble with it after reasearching for a few weeks. I have to find some humour before going to bed so I don't get restless. I've been reminded by a friend about Vicarious PTSD. That is why One Fity got introduced for self-preservation. It will more important for me to debrief when I start creating POWs in various enslaved activities. . . Yes, I am a bit sensitive, and I am grateful that I am.

Yes I am sure. Good idea. I will see where I could just buy the rails. If too expensive, plus postage, for my empty pocket, I'll stick with the bamboo.

Making a Display Case base. One Fifty has poor work safety sense. Here he is giving me a hand _ almost literally.

Perhaps. For most of us, we are lucky up to this day. Who knows what tomorrow will unfold. The more aware, we become, the loader our "NO" will be against human exploitation _ even on a subtle level.

Yes, it is sad, @Gorby. A truth we all hope won't be revisited. That is why I have included One Fifty in my updates. He helps to create some sort of balance; a sort of art therapy for me.

Thanks everyone for your 'likes' and comment. _________________________________________________ I wanted to start adding the piers but the base plywood has a bow in it. I first need to flatten that out. My plan is to add another, larger, sheet of plywood as the base, and the previous base will become a platform. The new base is from the same plywood with a bow. I will glue and screw opposing bows together. That ought to cancel the bow out for certain. The new base will also accommodate the framework to hold a Perspex casing for the model. Here is a rough illustration of the display case. On the left shows an end view. This will be part of Hellfire Pass. (Extract from the following link: 'Hellfire Pass is so called because the sight of emaciated prisoners labouring at night by torchlight was said to resemble a scene from Hell'.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hellfire_Pass The movie, Bridge on the River Kwai hinted (symbolized) Hellfire Pass in this scene . . . . . . and also suggested that the Pass was not far from the bridge. In reality it was very far away. I wish to include a portion of Hellfire Pass within the left side of the diorama. It is a significant part of the Thai-Burma Railway, if not more so than the actual bridge. Many POWs died cutting that pass. It can easily be seen, from the rock surface, the different shades of dark red to orange. Lit at night reflects the name Hellfire. A survivor's rendering of what it was like. ANZAC Day memorial photograph. This will be both a significant and challenging portion of the diorama.

Finally sanded all the piers to a taper. 'One Fifty' got in the way and was burried in wood dust. This dust will come in handy for woodust and shavings in the prep areas of the diorama. To give an idea of how the piers may look when installed.

Hi bar side. I thought about N gauge tracks, but discovered that they are quite expensive, let alone adding a steam train and carriages. What saved me was the idea of only showing partial construction. I will be adding tracks to and from the bridge. The Thai-Burma Railway used 3' 3" track (at 1:150 scale = 6.5 mm) i.e., Z guage. However, I experimented with sanding bamboo skewers and discovered that I can make my own tracks. Using matchsticks for sleepers. The other problem, I noticed with other models of this bridge, is that the model railway tracks on the deck become too high (thick). The tracks of the movie bridge are built into the deck. Have already worked out how to build it as depicted below:

@john-w, @Major_Error, @Gorby, @Vince1159, @Ozzy, @thorfinn, @malpaso, @stevehnz, @bzn20, @DAG058, and @Badder for your reactions and comments. I am overwhelmed by this response. The Bridge on the River Kwai is certainly iconic. Hope to make the build worthwhile for you all to follow. Though I have to warn you, I still have to finish the Wardell Bridge Diorama. I will try and spend a few hours a week on this project, In doing so, an update will drop in now and again. Please forgive me if I drop in an update without mentioning you all. I do acknowledge who has liked the builds, and I am very grateful for that. It encourages me to keep going.

I cut the base plate from 12 mm plywood scrap. Bought 4 and 6 mm dowel for the main bridge piers. Meet my supervisor, One Fifty. He is telling me where to place the dowels. Here are some more one-fifties (12 mm) figurines. The Japanese soldiers will look normal.The POWS look anorexic (starved and exhausted to death). So I had to whitle them down. It's a terrible exercise because it really touches your heart to spend time thinning them down. I will be spending some time on these. Whitle one or two at night, a few tmes per week. I will need lots of them. Then later I will chop them up to make various postures for the diorama. Drilled holes for the main piers. Then cut the pier lengths, and started to sand them down to a taper, like a tree trunk. Overall there are 50 piers.

Obi-Wan Kenobi will have to go back to the Star Wars movie set. Looks like you won the dare, Badder 😀 Yes, let's see if I can improve on that water look. There won't be much water anyway.