Thanks, George and Greg. It was a fun project. I mucked it up in a few places design-wise, but generally it came out okay.
The drawbridge was tough, both in its hinging and getting the chain bit to work. The one I had as a kid, made by Marx, had a small winch on the inside top which could be used to wind the chain and raise the bridge. The problem was that the chain was fairly fine, almost jewelry quality, so it broke frequently when stressed. I recall going to The Old Man for repairs, and him using a needle and a pair of small pliers to put the links back together...onerous, to say the least. The Elastolin version just has a simple loop, i.e. the chain runs end-to-end through the gate-top. One simply pulled the chain back to raise the bridge. Not the best, but functional, and it puts a lot less stress on the chain. While it doesn't look great, that's the model I used on this thing.
The small hinge I used came from a doll-house supply shop that's just down the street from me. I'm not sure how the original was hinged. My mate Howard, who built a version of this before me, used four very small cotter pins interlocked in pairs and inserted into small holes drilled in the base and the bridge. That probably would have worked here as well, but I couldn't find any pins that small. I instead tried running pins out through the sides of the bridge into homemade escutcheons, but then the bridge didn't meet the base properly. Sarge had a number of good suggestions. and this hinge, together with his suggested mitered cuts on the bridge worked the best. Of course, even in its down position, an enemy would likely have to use scaling ladders to ascend, but one gets the idea.
Other than some glue and one small sheet of single-faced corrugated, the only other thing I bought was the hinge (a whopping $ 0.75 for a pair). Everything else was scraps laying around the house. The chain was a left-over from an old Christmas garden project. One thing I discovered is that the cardboard USPS uses for their Priority Shipping boxes is some brilliant stuff. Very thin corrugated, quite strong, good for model-making, and free (to me). Also, the use of single-faced corrugated for roofing was a bit of a revelation. Lots of good uses can be imagined for that stuff, and my local liquor store offers a bountiful supply in their discarded beer displays.
Part of me says I should weather this thing up a bit to get into a more haggard appearance, similar to the original, but I just don't trust myself to make a job of it. Weathering can be a bit of the land-of-no-return. Muck it up and it's tough to recover. For now I'll leave it alone.
Anyway, good stuff. The guy delivering the duke's Sentinel turned up early last evening, which was problematic:
Looking around for a new project. Rufus sent me a pic of his version of Jack Kett's clothing shop...turned out brilliant. Who knows, maybe I'll take a swag at Phil Uptyte's Metropolitan Hotel
