One of the many design obstacles (which are great as they breed creativity) was creating some corrugated steel sheeting to line the trench walls.
There is plenty of corrugated Evergreen and Plastruct styrene out there that you can buy – and I was ready to, despite it being, as always, ridiculously expensive in most places. Upon further investigative research the embossing is very shallow and it looks… well… fake. So I made my own.
These relatively heavy-duty foil trays were bought from Sainsburys. The flat bottom is the important part here.
The flat base was removed with some scissors. This picture is the part you don’t need:
Plastruct rod (1.3mm) was then stuck on some cardboard with some strong double-sided tape. Make sure to leave some spacing in-between each one.
Take your time here. Get them as uniform as possible.
Lay the cut foil on top, using tape on the edge to keep it from curling…
Using a rounded edge tool, start drawing lines in the gaps. Embossing the foil. Press too softly and it won’t really work, press too hard and you’ll go straight through. Try it and you’ll get a feel soon enough. The rods will move when you are pressing into the foil, but that’s okay. It’ll take care of itself.
Once done, flip it over and emboss the now-inverted foil channels. This will harmonise it into a proper corrugated steel look.
Cut it out and job done. 28mm corrugated steel for the price of a coffee – rather than a Saturday night takeaway.
by on April 18, 2014
