very carefully

piano wire for the pivot.... basswood for the shutters.... balsa wood should be banned from arch models......

1/4" scale or 1:4 ?

Thanks Binary, yeah, piano wire would be awesome but you mean thread it down the middle? piercing a perfect hole down the middle of the shutter would be difficult as I will have to make MANY of these shutters....or do you mean just glue it on the back? They need to rotate and I want to show the random rhythm it can create...this will be a 1/4" scale of my units therefore, a partial model to get the sense of the enclosure system and materiality....

I'm using the shutter system from the council building of Melbourne.....


sorry haven't posted an image of this yet so I don't know how to post the image :( if you can be so kind to google this building in image.google? or you can tell me how to post?

Thanks again everyone

Sorry, there's no easy way to do that.

There's a perfectly good reason as to why more people don't use slatted wood.

It's incredibly cheap. It's easy to work with in some aspects. But it's TIRESOME.

Thanks Unicorn Ghost but I'm not really clear on what your suggestion is? There's no easy way to do what? To build shutters in 1/4" scale? Slatted wood in the model or in real life?

I'm assuming that's what you want to do?

I'd just cut strips of wood out, clamp or rope a stack of them together and use a drill press/drill with very steady hands and make two or three holes through the stack.

f&*#k you are right tiresome and so time consuming.....but will be beautiful I was also thinking of laser cutting out some of the vertical pieces but leave a frame so it will mimic a shutter and put an acrylic rod in the center, sandwiched between the 2 laser cut outs of the "shutter".........what do you think as this will be my first time making such a model. thanks again everyone and to you for your sketch unicorn ghost :)

if you basswood is over an 1/8", you can use a push pin to make a small hole about 1/8" deep on the top and bottom then insert the piano wire in and glue....use a wood glue to hold it in place....

thanks binary but in real scale, the shutter in height will be too high, it will be 5' in 1/4" scale so 1/8" hole on top and bottom will def. not be enough :(

wah!

ahh, so you are at 1:4 then... i was thinking 1/4"

ok am i getting a brain freeze? quarter scale is 1/4"=1'-0"??? so then we are saying the same thing....

so you mean 5" and not 5' then.....

isn't 1/4"=1'-0" quarter scale?

yeah... so how big is your shutter in your model and in real life... i'm lost

personally, I wouldnt make the shutters so they rotate at 1/4" scale. In order to get them to work, your elements will be out of scale. Make a variety of shutters at different pitches at 1/4" and then make a larger scale mock-up of the shuter system that functions.

mdler's point is a good one. each of these shutters is 2'x4', i.e. 1/2" x 1" at 1/4" = 1'-0". that's tiny. are you using 1/32" wood to make the slats? make life easier on yourself and mock-up the shutter at a larger scale with the actual detail; use the 1/4" model to express the concept.

at 1/8" you could use packaging tape (the one with the fiberstrands), maybe make, as mdler and williams have pointed out, a none-moving version showing larger area

use a larger scale for detailed.

I've done something similar at 1/4" scale - having a dremel drill press or similar modeling drill works well (dremel also carries a set of tiny drill bits that are great). The high speed of the drill eliminates splitting - you'll need a to tape (masking or drafting) the slats together and use piano wire that matches the hole size or is slightly larger (to prevent too loose of a fit). I'd just cut a thin long piece of bass, tape and sand to make sure the lengths match - tad old-school but I hate the burn edge on the laser cutter (also seems a waste of the laser cutter to cut rectangles). oh and getting model clamps are key to keep everything square.

you could also use a heavy cardstock or paper to simulate the shutters at a smaller scale. If they are going to be metal in real life, paint them (Krylon Dull Aluminium is a great color to use). Painted paper and baswood look great together in models

^if they are wood in real life, use paper that looks close to wood