Building a Tank House (Part 3)

In this installment I will document the finishing touches of the Tank House, which proved also to be the most delicate and trickiest part of the whole building process.

On many tank houses, the stairs leading to the second floor, were inside the building. Here it's on the outside. As there are no ready-made stairs available which I could use for my tank house, I had to build them from scratch.

To do so, I first built a jig to hold and space the stair stringers correctly.

 

The stringers are from Campbell, cut to fit. The treads are 1x8 Evergreen strip styrene.

I only added a small drop of glue to the stringer, where the treads would go, with a needle, to avoid glueing the stringers to the jig. After the glue on the treads had dried I added more glue to fix them more securely.

Then I build a small platform and attached the stairsway to it. I drilled two holes into the platform side and inserted two bits of .019" brass wire. I also drilled two holes into the siding where the platform will be located. These pins allow for minor adjustments when building the rest of the staircase. Also I need to paint the structure and then the stairs will be in the way.

A first test fit of the stairway attached to the platform. As I mentioned before, this will be a very delicate assembly.

On this picture you may already guess the final look.

To attach the supporting posts, I fixed the assembly into the magnetic jig to hold it square and flat.

Then I turned to the windmill and added 2x4 steps. The original was wood and the model I use has a metal construction, but by adding the steps it almost looks right.
I used a 2' wide scrap piece of styrene to space the steps. Then I applied a tiny drop of cement to attach the steps.

That's it for now. Hopefully more to come during the week-end if the announced nice weather doesn't keep me out of the basement.