How to make an Iron Door

Welcome back to Shonuff’s Scenery Corner. This time I was in need of a nifty door or access hatch for a piece of scenery for this contest we’re running on the forums. I looked through my bits and none of the door gave me the ‘feel’ i was going for on the scenery piece.
I was looking for a door that reminded me of a ship’s iron riveted door. The thick, heavy iron door style with bands of strengthening iron, which are riveted to the bulk of the door. I didn’t see any and knew I had nothing like that… So I made one.

It’s so Easy, i thought i’d share how to do it.

Step one. grab yer materials.
Simple carboard, some plastic rivets or gel superglue, a ruler and a sharp blade. The cardboard is the same thickness as what is on the backs of small notepads. it is about the same thickness as the cardboard backing of a spiral bound notebook, maybe thicker. You can work with various thicknesses to find your perfect style.

Step two. Cut yourself a piece of the cardboard. I actually used the width of the ruler and the height of 3 inches.

Step three: Using the same height, I cut myself thin thin strips. maybe 3/16th of an inch or 2 mm. I cut myself 5 strips per door, per side.

Step four: Begin to superglue the strips on the edges of the door. The height is the same, so no altering there, but you’ll need three for the middle, horizontally.

Step Five: Trim all three to fit inside the two bordering strips, and you have yourself a segmented ‘door’

Step Six: I bought this baby online by simply googling for a “1/16th inch” (1mm) craft hole punch. Came out to roughly $9.00 USD + Shipping. If you can’t afford one of these, a nice thick ‘gel’ superglue will work the same way.

Oh yes…I said 1/16th an inch (1mm)

Step Seven: About 3 minutes of fevered punching..

And the rivets come out like magic!

Step Eight: Drop some glue in the corners, and then in equal spaced locations on the strips:

FINAL: You have yourself a door!

You can cut various bits and make a nice twist handle for the door, cut out circles and make a port hole, or any other plethora of things. These three doors went onto my Scenery piece and made normal boring walls….pop!

Have fun and good luck.

Sho: out.

Posted by Shonuff on May 14 2010. Filed under Modeling & Scenery. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry