I'm using bought metal books for those out on the table and strewn about the room, but all I need for the shelves are spines. Now there are essentially two different sizes of book shelf in the room, the mid-wall case and the corner case (which is slightly narrower) and after some quick playing with 3mm pvcfoam, I need 15 books to fill a shelf in mid-wall case and 12 books for a shelf in the corner case... and there are 5 shelves to a case... that should be around 1750 books. No way was I making those by hand.
I made some blocks of books out of foam pvc, 8 different 5 book blocks and 2 different 7 book blocks (henceforth refered to as bb)... that meant 140 x 5bb and 50 x 7bb to fill the walls... much more manageable, so out came the Siligum and the Alumilite Super Plastic:
I did a few molds to optimise the resin when mixed, but was bricking the actual resin bit. This is chemistry. This is chemistry with warning labels. Scary chemistry. Only it turns out it isn't... Some deliberation over the need for well ventilated and room temperature while being a very cold March, I ditched the garden, turned up the heating and opened all the windows... it's not exactly room temperatue, but warmer than the garden, this has had the downside of slowing down the curing time a smidge (3 minutes normally), but this means I have slightly longer to pour. I've had to limit my mixing to a quarter of a fluid ounce, as any more caused problems with the tin foil cake cups I planned on using for the mixing pot... large amounts caused the foil cups to buckle, making pouring a pig. I will get some plastic cups later, but it means for now I do half the molds at a time, one lot is curing while I mix the next lot which seems to be working so far. I've also got some spare for the Timelord wall sconce when needed.
Now, I have a new found respect for mold makers, it turns out the hardest part of the entire process is getting a decent mold in the first place... I must confess I've had to ditch a couple of my earlier molds, simply because of flaws, I'm getting better at it though, but it was an expensive (if fun) learning curve... what I have now still have some flaws, but all I need are good spines, the rest of the books will not be seen...
even managed to do my planned secret door...
which meant I had a lasercut door going spare, and seeing as I'd made too big a hole for the other door, I got creative and continued the general Gothic theme that seems to have happened by making the door a large double door instead...
(and now I look at it, I forgot to emphasise the join in the middle - so not quite done yet)
but I'm kind of ready to paint... not sure what colour to do the floor... or what (or who) to hang from the very necessary beam...
of course it looks nothing like that, but with the table and the 'hero' books scattered about you never know...
you get 5 orange (although a strange orange) Scientists, 5 red Drones, 1 white Supreme, 1 yellow Eternal and 5 blue Strategists (the Supreme and Eternal being unique amongst Daleks)... as you can see there are some gaps, so like before will need popping apart and realigning, but that shouldn't be a problem...
