Sunday, March 1, 2015

INSPIRATION: Adam Savage's O Scale build of the Hedge Maze from "The Shining"

This is quite a work of art! He used flocked particleboard, and every piece is screwed down to the base. There are, as always, a lot of good tips sprinkled through this rather long video. I'm feeling slightly shamed, as I abandoned a 1979 papercraft model of the Timberline Lodge in mid-build. The parts didn't fit properly. This was a particularly frustrating build, as I made a multi-level foamcore base, which fit the model really well, and color copied all the pieces so I could keep the original printed model intact. After two days work, I found that whoever designed the model obviously didn't do a test build, as the roofs didn't fit at all and many of the dormers were misaligned. (I'd forgotten this sort of thing was frequently a problem with ambitious 1970s card models.) To top it all off, I was building it to exhibit at the PDX Mini MakerFair, and when I realized it couldn't be finished without major redesign work, I had to kick myself for all the time I'd wasted on it. I thought briefly about buying some Xmas spray foam snow to cover the roofs' flaws, but even that wouldn't have worked with all the gaps. Days of work, into the dumpster!
Anyway, when I started, somebody joked I should build a hedge maze next to it. Sadly, I couldn't even finish the damn hotel.