The design changed a bit after that last sketch, and I decided on a broad wooden dock for most of the low ground (as shown in the plan view on that image). That seems a bit more natural, but also requires a whole lot of wooden bits cut and glued in place.
So, a trip to Riot happened, and I bought (and promptly hacked up) a packet of wooden craft sticks. Wider and thinner than icypole sticks; more like the kind of thing a doctor would use to help peer down your throat. They were easy enough to cut with a craft knife, scoring (both sides!) and snapping them across the grain – or just scoring them twice when cutting lengthwise.
I fell into a bit of a trance while my daughter was asleep during the afternoon, and eventually churned out a couple of hundred pieces of trimmed-down timber…
This shows the ends being cut off, and a few variant widths. Having a few narrower planks helps to break up the monotony, and produces handy offcuts that I’ll use in a minute.
I then started gluing them down to a supporting framework. Some planks have been cut more-or-less in half – that gives the total length I needed, and lets me alternate short-long, long-short across the structure.
After trimming the ragged edge (I did say my cutting was more-or-less accurate), I added more pieces to help stop the ends from warping. I’ve had to split some sticks in half for this, as I actually used up the entire packet in one go…
