Part 5 Constructing Fixtures

Constructing fixtures and attaching them to the system.

I began with the ‘fire’ in the pot belly stove:

Above is a photo of the pot-belly stove partially assembled. This is a Chrysnbon kit made of plastic and has wonderful detail. With LEDs there is no need to worry that the heat of a bulb will warp the stove.

The Base and ash collector body have holes in the bottom through which the wires are run. They exit the structure beneath and then will run out behind and through the hole in the floor in order to connect the black wires to one side of the switch and the red wires to the red wire which exits the power jack.

These are fuzzy photos, but show how the body of the stove fits over the fire lights, which will flicker.

I will be using museum wax rather than glue [recently discovered Aleene's Tack-it Over & Over] to attach the body of the stove to the base & ash collector body, so I can take these apart to replace LEDs or fix wires later, should the need arise. And no matter how long LEDs last, if you have constructed a scene or mini building that you want to keep for many years, think about that future 10 years down the road. How will you replace these lights?

All my connections will not be glued but stuck down with temporary sticky-whatever.

   

The stove pipe will be 'glued' (with sticky-stuff of one form or another) in place when I am ready to set the stove in its final position.

Since I put the pot-belly stove together before discovering that I could install a system without those pesky resistors, I was concerned about whether the 3-light fire set would still work with the new 3v adapter.

The answer was a very lovely yes “the fire will work just fine with 3 volts; no need for a separate supply” so I finished the assembly and placed the stove to see how it all looked.

This photo shows the stove in place against the rough wall of the interior of the shop.

I actually placed this little stove at first on the most visible wall of the shop. The flickering fire would have shown nicely there. However, I came across an external stove pipe and really wanted it on my building. That external pipe had to be on the wall that did not have porch roof as it was too short to go above the porch roof, so I had to place the stove facing sideways where the flame won’t be as visible. Still the flame can be seen.