Anyone build a metal bin-type retaining wall (see photo)? They are very common in the Waterbury CT area. Any thoughts on how to go about modeling one?
The horizontal ribs are about 20 inches apart and about 6 or 7 inches wide, recess is about 8-10 inches.
Thanks
Scaled down photos on cardstock? That is if don’t mind not having the texture. Maybe O scale plastruct siding.
Doc.
That should be rather easy in styrene shapes and sheets. Archer rivet decals could simulate the bolts.
Pete
I think that your guesstimates on the dimensions are a little off, and may be confusing when trying to determine how to model it. Whatever the width of the horizontal ribs, the spaces between them don’t appear to be much greater. I’d guess 10" -12" for the ribs and 12" -14" for the spaces between them.
That type of retaining wall is common around here, too (a couple of them, on the side of the Niagara Escarpment and holding things in place above access roads in nearby Hamilton, collapsed recently).
As Pete mentions, styrene strips for the ribs (.100"x.125" or square stock of either size) and sheet styrene for the rear face. Round-off the front edges of the strips, using a couple of passes with sandpaper, before cementing them to the sheet material. I’d use .060" thick for the latter, and solvent-type cement for the assembly, and then add the Archer rivets if that sort of detail will be visible once the wall is installed.
Wayne
Doc in CT:
Looking at your photograph suggests to me that the front of the ribs are the same height as the back of the recesses but, like most corrugated steel, the bends are not at 90 degrees to the front or rear face. They are on a slight angle. Those in your picture appear to be closer to 75 - 80 degrees so the space between the front faces is slightly larger than the height of the face. If you look at a typical piece of corrugated steel from the end the width of the flat peaks will be the same as the width of the flat valleys and the vertical pieces will be on an angle. Does that explanation make sense?
I would follow doctorwayne’s suggestions about using square styrene stock glued to a background sheet . If you really want to be precise you could file the square stock to duplicate the angles but that could get tiresome quickly, and getting all the pieces to be the same could be difficult. I would simply space the square stock a bit further apart than their widths ( i.e. .125 stock at .150 spacing). If you add details like the vertical strips that are riveted on to the fronts of the horizontal ribs (.005 styrene would work), and use rivet decals as suggested you should be able to make it look pretty convincing. One other detail that would be good to add in is the apparent distress on the angled flat panels that form the slopes. They appear to have some slight ripples in them. That could be done with simple weathering techniques.
Show us what you come up with!
Dave
Thanks Wayne, Dave. It would be nice to get the bevel but…
(BTW, dimensions are taken off of the manufacturer’s product literature - translated from the Candian)
Ah, there’s the problem. [(-D] I think that we shoulda stuck with inches and feet: I’m still not comfortable with those puny measurements. [swg]
The drawings don’t show the vertical dimension at either the face or the back of the recess, and the fact that the drawings aren’t to scale doesn’t help a great deal either. The depth of the recess is about 8" and the height of the open area on the front face is less than 16" - I’m not sure why they even show the 16" dimension, as it doesn’t appear to line-up with the edge of anything or the bolt-hole centre lines, either. The over-all height of each piece is 20".
EDIT: I just called the company and hope to speak to someone tomorrow about the actual “what we see” dimensions. I’ll report back then.
Wayne
Maybe the easy route would be to find a late model auto hauler body and cut it up if you had a extra lying around. Also you might look at a conex box that just needs a shot of silver.