Upper Railing
The railing around the roof of the wheelhouse is a simple bent brass wire with machined brass pins for posts. I’ll offer a few tips that might make life easier for someone building this model, with reference to the photo below.
I like the idea of continuous rails where practical as they will be stronger and generally look better. Add to that, the fact that the posts are all straight pass-through, so they can’t be used as true corner posts with rails entering at 90 deg to one another. So, I added the posts to the rails as I bent them up, and then mounted the almost complete railing toward the end of the process.
For any future builders, here’s how I went about it (sorry about the detail, most readers can skip the next few paragraphs)…with reference to the photo above, I started with the upper rail. I bent the 60 deg angle at the bottom right of the photo (leaving the leg a bit long for latter trimming), then threaded two brass posts onto the wire (they need to go on before the next bend is made as they will not pass around the bent wire). Then bend the first right angle toward the upper right, then thread on another post (for the mid back), then bend another right angle and thread the final two posts, and then the last 60 deg angle down to the roof and snip off a bit long. Don’t glue any posts yet.
The lower rail was started with a right-angle bend (for the lower rear corner). If the posts are moved away from that corner on the top rail, then you can thread the lower rail through the rear mid post and the ones on the lower side before making the final right angle bend and moving the posts again to allow the rail to be threaded the final two posts…this is why the posts can’t be glue in the first step.
However, using the continuous rail with smooth rear corners requires a small change to the published plan for mounting. As none of the posts are true corner posts, and the rear mid post must sit on the back rail (else we clash with the rear mast), I needed to add new post mounting pads in front of the rear rail…see the unpainted blocks in the photo.
Afterward, I went back and had a close look at the Billing photos and they didn’t do it this way, it looks like they have one corner post mounted at 45 deg with the rail bent through accordingly, and the rails of the other corner don’t match perfectly, so I’m guessing that they glued the second corner’s rails to the post. My version is not true to the plan, but I prefer the way it looks.
The final step for me was to drill the mounting holes and get everything set up square on the roof before soft soldering the lower rail to the down sloping angle of the upper rail. Once filed clean, the other posts had a touch of thin CA applied where the wires pass through, then it was lifted off for spray painting before being final glued in place.
That’s probably more detail than you needed, but for someone starting out it might be useful.
So, what happened with the curved roof issue from the previous post?
I didn’t want to undo/redo all the work with the nav lights and railings, so my solution is... I sanded the rear wall of the wheelhouse to make it flat, and I reduced the side-to-side camber of the front wall a little by sanding. This means that the roof now only has to curve a small amount at the front and should work well. That sounds simple, but it meant removing some of the wiring for the cabin lights to allow the sanding and then fixing things afterward.
