Diorama Update / 1:64 Scale VW Beetle Roof Rack

Since I had fairly good success making the swamp cooler for the Beetle diorama, I wanted to continue to add by making a roof rack for the Beetle. I kicked around ideas for materials and finally decided to use small paper clips for the frame. I didn’t want it to look new, so removing the kinks from the paper clip gave it just enough wear. I used needle nose pliers to bend and shape the frame, trying my best to keep in to scale. I also tried different methods to hold the frame together. JB Weld didn’t work very well and it was very clumpy. Epoxy didn’t well either and like the JB Weld, it was clumpy. I had a little success with super glue gel, but in the end, it just didn’t work out. I ended up soldering the parts together. It’s still a little clumpy, not too bad. For the wooden slats, I was going to use a popsicle stick, but the scale wasn’t so great. What I ended up doing was folding a piece of paper 4 ways and gluing it together. This gave me a good thickness that was close to scale. After the glue was dry, I cut it into strips, dunked them into stain and let them dry. I did use the super glue to secure the slats to the frame. All in all, I’m pleased. It’s not perfect, but building one from scratch at this scale is very difficult.

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