Custom Decorations - Underwater Gas Well

[Alshain]

I work for a company named Ferguson Beauregard. We make natural gas production equipment. Now, I have an All Glass Mini Bow 5 at work and I want to build an underwater well site. I need help suggesting materials for constructing these. Safe craft items, types of plastics, etc.

There are several components, right now I'm thinking of the well head (christmas tree), the meter run, seperators, and tanks. I have some pictures below of everything but the christmas tree which you can kinda see here. Sorry bout the black and white, I didn't realize my camera was in that mode.

I want to make the pipeline blue. We paint some of our products blue. I will also need some kind of plastic plate to bury below the substrate that I will glue the pieces to. I suppose the first material to find will be to make the pipeline. It needs to be small and rod shaped, I can glue it with silicone.

Tanks - this is a dual liquid tank, but in my tank I want to have two of these (water and oil). They look about the same though.

These are 3 types of meter runs, they usually have a pipeline with a flow computer on top. One has a compressor too but I'm not interested in making this.

And finally these are seperators.

 

[MACATUA]

Cool idea, can't wait to see!

 

[Sicklid]

I would google "scratch building" for models and toy train setups... you can use virtually anything... I would personally go for pvc or polystyrene and use pvc glue. let algae grow all over it and it would look cool!

 

[MACATUA]

Try a HobbyTown USA, my father-in-law sets up lots of cityscapes and they always have the oddest plastic pieces for it, that would be a good place to start.

 

[Alshain]

PVC would work if I could find a small enough diameter. I could then paint it with a latex paint and that would be easy. The only problem is, this is a 5 gallon tank, I would need a diameter no bigger than 1/4", smaller if possible. I'm not sure if it comes that small.

I just found out that I live a block away from a HobbyTown, never seen it there but, their website says it is. I will check it out.

 

[Sicklid]

I was not talking about pipe! I was talking about PVC sheets... You can get it at sign company and plastic suppliers, or drop by a sign shop and ask them for table saw drops. I used to throw so much of that stuff out.

 

[Alshain]

I was not talking about pipe! I was talking about PVC sheets... You can get it at sign company and plastic suppliers, or drop by a sign shop and ask them for table saw drops. I used to throw so much of that stuff out.

Didn't know they made it in sheets, but while searching for it I found they also make PVC rods which would work for the much of the project, the tubing, the seperators, even the tanks. Then I can use the sheets to cut the stairs and the odds and ends.

The first part I need to make is the Christmas tree, If I had various sizes of the rods I could cut them into small cylindrical blocks and glue them stacked, then use a small rod for the lubricator. Then I would have to find a way to make the valve wheels.

I still haven't shown you guys exactly what I am trying to make, I want to closely mimic the demo setup we have in our training center. Tomorrow is a work day so I will get some pics and post them. Most of the pics you see here don't actually have our products on them.

 

[Alshain]

This is a gas well christmas tree, actually there is more here than is typically on a real one. This is a mach setup in our training facility. I don't expect to go into this detail, the grey cable conduit can be omitted, the bottom tubing has a pipe going through the wall that comes from a compressor to simulate activity and of course this doesn't need to be there. Also I will probably modify the stuff on the right, but you get the idea.

 

[majolo]

I just had a funny thought -- it would be neat if you could incorporate the regular tank equipment in the decorations. Like have the heater as part of one decoration, and have the filter intake as part of another...

 

[Alshain]

Thats a little harder to do, the tank has a whisper in-tank filter, one of the medium sized ones. Although the tank hood does support the possibility of replacing it with an HOB, I'm considering it since it takes up so much space. At any rate I still think thats a bit more of a challenge than I was planning on.

 

[majolo]

Nah, it was just a thought.

 

[BillyZ]

Find a hobby store. There you will find a wide selection of raw building materials in wood, metal and plastic. Obviously i would go with plastic

For your "christmas tree" it actually seems pretty easy. work with several different diameter rods and piece them all together to for that structure. For detailing I've seen people use pin-heads glue to the surface to simulate bolts/rivets. But I wouldn't focus too much on fine detail, as you will eventually get algae growth on all the joints and cracks so fine detail might be obscured.

As somone else suggested the plastic/pvc sheets will give you a good base to build on, and for your various tanks just look around the house. I'll bet you can find any number of plastic bottles, pill bottles, etc that would work well. You can even look at the grocery store and find something cheap that has the right shape, even little candy containers sometimes have the right shape you're looking for, and you get some candy!

hth, please take lots of pics! This will be great to see being built.

[edit]doh, I missed the part where you already thought of building the tree with several diff diameter rods :? . But you should be able to shop around the hobby store and find all sorts of odds and ends to can use, or even take apart and use just parts for details. Find a cheap model train tanker, and pop the valve wheels off of those and glue them onto your tree. basicaly, give yourself lots of time at the hobby store and i'm sure you'll come away with a few ideas[/edit]

 

[Sicklid]

Yep, PVC comes in different thicknesses, what I would do is get yourself a sheet of quarter inch in black (it comes 4' x 8' like plywood... for what a sheet costs, you are going to have WAY more than you need). I would punch out disks of it in various diameters with a hammer and various sized pipes as your die and glue layers of them together to make your christmas tree. You can also use a hole saw if the size allows. You can carve the details with an exacto knife, the stuff is like dense styrofoam and cuts so easily. As I said, it can be glued with clear PVC cement which is inert once it all dries...

 

[leoslizards]

I just had a funny thought -- it would be neat if you could incorporate the regular tank equipment in the decorations. Like have the heater as part of one decoration, and have the filter intake as part of another...

That's an interesting idea.

 

[QTOFFER]

I wonder if you could make a oil well like this connected to an air pump that would make it move? That would be neat!

 

[BillyZ]

hmmm, that would look pretty neat. And i think with some creative engineering it could certainly be done. The first challenge would be to find a plastic model of one of those pumps the right scale. Then run some airline into the frame to fill either the head of the pump or the rotating bits in the back... or both alternately, to get the motion you want.