Topic: Clonehead's dioramas

[Tamer]

Looks good to me Clint. You filled in those gaps nicely. How long does it normally take the superglue to not look wet?

Off to the front pages.

[Clonehead]

That’s just the accelerator, Shawn. It’s a spray on application that makes superglue instantly bond for people like me with no patience. It evaporates fairly quickly.

[Tamer]

Oh thats right. I remember you telling me about that. I bought some a few years back. Bet I need a new bottle. I don't have to patience for superglue sometimes either.

[hemble]

Absolutely loving this Clint, awesome work mate.

Ron

[Starchaser]

I'm just amazed at this project. It is really inspiring to watch your work on this.

[Clonehead]

Thank you much fellows, it is becoming more my pride and joy as I continue to work on it.
   Two of my grandsons came over this weekend and you should have seen their eyes light up when I suggested we went downstairs to play with it.  Nobody forgets about the racetrack.

I’m still getting used to driving the smoother shoulder areas I had givin attention to. A vast improvement over handling during a drift/slide in those areas. I can drift my favorite vette smoothly through about the whole course now if I choose.

[Clonehead]

Replacing infield lights that had gone dim. These must have a shorter life or something. The best way I’ve found for feeding these tiny little wires through the styrofoam and wood of the tables thickness is to drill a small diameter hole through the table, and then feed your wires through a tube that can then be fed through the hole from the top, delivering your wire ends to the bottom side. Pull out the tube through the bottom around the wires and, presto, your wires are ran.
Replaced one here, and another here. That middle one is a bit dim but I am fixing to re do the pit area so, I’ll let it wait.

[Tamer]

That looks great too. Off to share the update.

[Clonehead]

Thanks Tamer! Sharing is caring, yuk

I had started the pit row fence line rebuild yesterday. I started by hot gluing each section to the track, and to each other at the wall section tops. I still need to clean up my glue mess. Then, I troubleshot all of the section lamps, replaced a couple, and began the long task of powering the twelve lamps in a configuration that they seemed to like so all lamps would illuminate.Funny little buggers, I still replaced one or two more and ended up with parallel banks of 5 and 6 together with no resistor and one by itself with a resistor, powered by an extra trainset transformer I had laying around.

Finally, I have them lit, I need to solder the connections and protect before stuffing away and covering up.
     Now is the time to get the neon window signs up and running.
I’m filling every other fence section hole, two different Bud designs, as a track sponsor on each end and vintage fuel companies in between.

[Clonehead]

So I skipped a step and didn’t turn the power off to the lights prior to soldering or protecting and lost over half of em to a short. Kicking myself, I scrounged all of the similar lights I had mounted on the high bank curve and used them to replace the ones I had blown, and blew those up also. I know what I did wrong but have to import more before I can get it lit up again. 5 out of 12 are still alive on the pit row fence. Breaks my heart.
    I did begrudgingly mount and wire up the rest of the window signs on the fence. I have 6 of those hanging on the fence. That last bud sign didn’t even work so I replaced it with a 7up sign that I had.

Going to have to shift focus now as I can’t finish the front or back of the pit row fence area until I get those lights replaced

[Darth More]

Man, you tell me I'm a madman? Well, I am, but what are you, then? You make every square Inch look incredibly realistic! Love it!

[Tamer]

Sorry about the lights blowing up. Sounds like you have figured out the problem. Looks great to me. Back on the front page.

[Clonehead]

This madman is still reeling over those lost lights. Coming from China of all places. The Corona virus will probably slow down their shipment and possibly kill me when it arrives.

Onto another area
You guys may remember this last static grassed groundwork insert that I had made for the track some time ago. I have changed configurations since Then and this piece will no longer fit.  With some careful measuring and cutting with an exacto, I was able to split our piece in half and saved nearly all of its length to fit into the narrowest channel between the tracks heading dwarf the hairpin infield area.
    The pieces were a bit curvy so I wet Them down to flatten them down and fastened them to the table with deck screws. That’s more than 4 foot worth down in an easy procedure.
   I’ll paint over the screws, sow more static grass if I like, weeds, flowers, fenceposts, groundlights are all owed to this area.

[Clonehead]

Guess I had better make some posts first

[Clonehead]

I did save a scrap of grass material to stuff into this one spot next To these barriers. I like the shoulder and tire stack configuration on this end of the backside of the pit. I’ll have to mimic that on the far end also.
At the far end, the static grass piece was already cut for barrels so I put a set down there where The piece ended. We will pick up on that end to continue our groundwork at a later time