Well, I could not for the life of me make decent handrails from PE parts or wire. Too difficult to give it a smooth curvature with no kinks and too delicate for the inevitable knock that would occur during along build (clumsy me). So I tried to figure out a way to do them out of stretched sprue.
I thought I should share the build sequence for anyone who wishes use it, suggest improvements or alternatives. Over scale issues notwithstanding, sprue took a smooth curvature easily and could handle rough treatment throughout the build.
- The picture shows the sequence for a 1/350 Tamiya Fletcher funnel.
Step 2: Cut lengths of plastic rod or streched sprue and stick them in the holes. Fit does not need to be tight, or you will bend the fragile rod pushing it through. I used rod of rectangular cross-section.
Step 3: Apply glue to the base of the rods from the inside. Capillary action will do its best to ensure that no glue runs on the outside surface of the funnel. The glue also tends to fill the gaps.
Step 4: Once dry, cut the lengths of the rods on the outside to a uniform height. I actually used a small piece of plastic of the required thickness, drilled a hole through it, and applied over each rod, so that the rod went through the hole, and then I cut any excess.
Step 5: Start glueing a piece of stretched sprue around the funnel. I glued the rail on the first two rods and, once settled, I took it around all the way to the other end and glued the rest of them.
Step 6: I used rods of rectangular rather than circular cross section, placing the long dimension in a vertcal orientation. In this pic you can see some of them misaligned. I corrected that by filing parallel to the handrail.
Pics 7,8: Views from various angles.
Pic 9: The painted funnel.
Kind of cumbersome, but once I got the hang of it, I dressed the rest of the ship with handrails. Much easier to do on flat bulkheads.
- This picture shows the technique applied to the bulkhead of the aft superstructure. Further down the learning curve, I managed to work with a thinner handrail than the one in the funnels
