Still on the theme of wagon loads, while at a recent show (O gauge North West at Manchester I think) I noticed a demo of a Gent making a timber load from strips of Microstrip which looked quite interesting. It gave me an idea for a use for a box of coffee stirrers that I bought from eBay a few years ago.
Before seeing the demo to make such a stack of timber I would have cut some coffee stirrers to length and then glued them all together into a stack. What this gent did was make a hollow stack with short pieces in place at the ends. In terms of what I planned it would not only use less coffee stirrers but also allow me to make use of the cut rounded ends which would otherwise be surplus.
I started by using a 7mm scale rule and a square to cut 14 stirrers to a scale 16’ long (they were a scale 20’ overall allowing for 2’ to be cut from each end. These were then stuck together 2 high by 7 wide to make a base. To glue them together I used Crafters Pick PVA superglue. This is much thicker than normal PVA and gives a good grab for all sorts of things.
Next using the cut rounded ends and some lengths of some sticks that were not straight/flat I built up the ends and some inner supports
Finally finishing with a lid the same as the base.
The stirrers that I used for this trial scale out at 11” wide boards and I plan to make some more with smaller scale boards using the same techniques but scoring the top boards and the ends to represent narrower finished boards.
