The Lumber Yard

Every expanding town needs a Lumber Yard and Beaverlick Falls is no exception.

I made the Lumber Yard Office as a single building, so all that was required for this build was a simple fence and yard arrangement.  Using the fences I'd built earlier I added them to the 2mm thick mdf base that had been shaped and sanded.  My preference is to have the bases taper down to nothing so that they blend in with the tabletop and are less obvious than square edges.

I decide to add a gate to the back of the yard to give an additional entry point (or escape route, depending on the situation.  The gate is a trimmed bit of fence with some battens added and it's hinged in the same way as the office door, with small strips of materal.

I chose a 'corner' entrance, cutting the base at 45 degrees, for no particular reason, other than I thought it would make the piece more visually appealing.

The height of the sign was going to make storage a problem, so I've made it removable.

I drilled a 2mm hole into the bottom of the posts to 25mm depth and then cut off c.8mm from the bottom of the post, making sure I marked the posts and front face.  This will make sure the pins and posts line up perfectly without needing to drill separate parts with complicated measurements

I inserted a 2mm brass rod into the hole and dapped the bottom of the rod with black paint. While the paint was wet I lined up the post with the fence so that the wet paint marked the baseboard with where I needed to drill the hole for the brass rod.

the 8mm blocks cut from the bottom of the posts were slid over their respective brass rod pins and glued in place - this strengthens the joins significantly. It's important to get the correct block and pin paired up otherwise the posts won't fit on the pins neatly and the join will be obvious.  Using this method means it doesn't matter if the hole isn't perfectly central to the post.

Some more photos of the finished Lumber Yard.  The lumber stacks are loose so that the configuration can be changed if required.  It also means that the yard can be used for another purpose with just a simple change of signage.