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Making Miniature Fake Chains and Springs

Making a fake spring
Finding this technique did involve a bit a lateral thinking. It stemmed from a question from Holdfast, asking if I knew of a way to make a working spring for a 1/48 scale aircraft aerial. Well, I failed on that one but, in the course of experimenting one Sunday morning, found this neat trick to create tiny dummy springs.

I started by with the obvious route of wrapping wire or stretched sprue around a drill bit; the results were OK, but still much bigger than I wanted... how to make something even smaller?

Here's what I came up with:

1. Take some fine fuse-wire (5 amp) and clamp it either end (I used a "Helping Hand").

2. Wrap a second piece around it as tightly as possible.

3. Slip the first piece of wire out, and cut the resulting "spring" to length.

Using this technique, the size of the "spring" is only limited by the guage of the wire you use.
  • spring1
  • spring2
  • spring3

About the Author

About Rowan Baylis (Merlin)
FROM: NO REGIONAL SELECTED, UNITED KINGDOM

I've been modelling for about 40 years, on and off. While I'm happy to build anything, my interests lie primarily in 1/48 scale aircraft. I mostly concentrate on WW2 subjects, although I'm also interested in WW1, Golden Age aviation and the early Jet Age - and have even been known to build the occas...