Benchwork at Low's Bridge

This afternoon, I worked on building a small becnhwork section tahy wiil eventually contain the location of Low's Bridge. Low's Bridge contained a flag stop platform and covered bridge. The location was situated on the Bangor and Aroostook's Greenville branch, and the covered bridge carried a local road over the Piscataquis river.

I will be modeling this scene in a roughly one by two foot area. I had all the lumber lengths and foamboard I needed to build a basic frame and attach an initial layer of foam for this location on hand, so I decided to assemble the frame this afternoon.

The frame was constructed from previously used one by threes. The dark brown patch in the center of the one board is brown paint from my last layout. Each board was connected to  another board at the corner using two small wood screws.

The frame at the the end of assembly, and ready to have foam attached. I did not bother to adf any interior bracing as the frame is so small.

Cutting foamboard. I used a yardstick to measure out the neccesary soze for the foam, and then cut very carefully, making four or five light passes with a knife to make sure that the knife didn't slip. However, the knife slipped anyway, but luckily not into the piece that I was planning to use.

Instead of cutting the foam all the way through, I cut the foam untill it was almost apart, ans then snapped it, making a relatively clean edge.

I attached the cut piece of foam to the frame using wood glue. I find that wood glue works well as an adhesive for foam as it is foam safe, bonds the foam well, and is not as expensive as some of the foam specific caulks available. I piled spare wood on the foam to weigh it down and left the glue to dry.

After I came back in about an hour, the glue was dry and I removed the weights.  One corner of the foam was not sticking well to the frame, so I screwed in a small wood screw to help hold it in place.

More  benchwork should be constructed shortly, hopefully over the weekend.