A finished diaorama

The lamp post has been installed, and by that the diorama is finished! Here are some pictures. Night pictures at the very end (as dark as it gets here in Sweden this time of the year).

Making a lamp post, part 5

The lamp post is finished. Primed...

...and the painted a blue-grey color. As I remember, the posts had about this color. Maybe a little more towards green, but since I really do not know this will make do.

Making a lamp post, part 4

Today I assembled the lamp post. First is a picture where the reflector part is to be soldered to the horizontal part of the post. I had to fit the LED in the reflector and thread the wires before soldering the different tubes together. This since the 90 degree turns would not let me thread the wires afterwards.

And here is the final assembly.

Next is some touching up and then painting. And then, finally, the post can be installed on the diorama, and the diorama will be practically done!

Making a lamp post, part 3

My 3D printed lamp reflectors arrived today. They seem to have printed as they should.

The first thing to do was to check that they would fit with the rest of the assembly as intended. To the right in the picture below is a reflector as delivered. To the left is a reflector where I have drilled a hole through it for the electrical wires, attached a 1 millimeter brass tube to the hole and threaded two magnet (enamel) wires through the whole thing.

So far everything looks good.

In front of the left reflector in the picture above is the 2323 (23x23 mm) SMD LED that I will use to light the lamp post. It is the same type of LED as I used to light the telephone booth.

Making a lamp post, part 2

The reflector of the lamp post model I am trying to replicate had quite a peculiar shape, as seen in the previous post. Like this (since I guess you do not remember or have not seen that post):

I could not figure out how to convincingly, and manually, create that form from plastic, metal or any other material. From brass using a lathe perhaps, but I do not have a lathe and would not know how to properly handle one, so I decided to once more pursue the path of 3D printing. After some struggling with the Web based 3D modelling tool I am using (Tinkercad) I managed to create a model that looks like this when uploaded to the 3D printing service (Shapeways):

I am eager to get the result delivered and see what it looks like in reality. My intention is to place a SMD LED inside it, and make the post actually work.

Making a lamp post, part 1

The last item on the diorama is a lamp post. And as all other things on the diorama, this one shall be as I remember it from my childhood in a Stockholm suburb. I scouted that neighbourhood for posts remaining from that period, but they have all been replaced. I did however manage to find some photos on the web, like this one.

Note the distinct shape of the lower part of the post. It is that part I was most eager to get right. But with only pictures like this it was hard to get the dimensions correct. But then one day I happened to, by pure chance, stumble upon two lamp posts closer to the city centre, where only the upper parts had been replaced, and the lower parts remained in their original form. Like this.

Not in a very good shape, and not in the color I remember, but now I could get decent measures.

I have so far modelled the lower part of the post, using brass tubes of different dimensions, and styrene strips wrapped around the tubes.

So far so good. I'm now waiting for smaller dimension tubes for the upper parts.

Making a tree, part 3

Before adding the leaves the tree needed some finer branches. So I sprinkled on some static grass fibres. First 6 mm fibres and then 3 mm fibres. I used ordinary hairspray to make the fibres stick. The picture below shows the tree after this step. The stem is covered with a piece of paper to avoid any hairspray or fibres to end up on it.

The next and last step was to add the leaves. I used Noch Leaves, Light Green (#07142). Once again, hairspray was used to "glue" the leaves to the tree. Here is the final result.