The "Wharf"
John Allen's little "wharf" (really, it's nothing more than a fishing dock) on Taylor Lake has the distinction of being the last structure for me to build—well, sort of; it shares that honor concurrently with the wooden trestle, which was begun before the wharf, but will be finished after; it worked out perfectly to build the wharf whilst I awaited the lasered trestle parts.
It seemed like a natural thing to simply order a Micro-Trains Narrow Pier Kit (799 90 935). It wasn't possible to judge its size from the product photo; as it happens, it's huge in relation to what was needed, but it wasn't unusable. After I chopped off two thirds of the deck, it became about the right length. However, it looked absurd with only six pilings, so I drilled holes for four more, and it finally started looking right.
The extra pilings precluded using the kit's cross-bracing, so I made my own from stripwood scraps. By this time it had become one of those why-bother-with-a-kit kinds of projects, but there was no knowing this before cracking it open, and ultimately there was a modest time-saving advantage to using the kit.
I placed the assembled wharf on the lake bed and marked out the piling locations. Then I drilled holes in the scenery with a small power drill. After test-fitting the wharf in the holes and making some minor adjustments, I sprayed the wharf with light grey primer, then applied an India ink wash to achieve a nice weatherbeaten wood effect.
Since the lake will be poured, I had to make sure that the final installation was "watertight," so I re-filled all of the holes with Loctite PowerGrab adhesive, which I worked into the holes with my finger. Foreseeing a challenge in trying to color and texture the area under the installed wharf, I made use of the adhesive that was smeared all over and sprinkled on some texture material, vacuuming away the excess just before pressing the wharf into position in the glue-filled holes.
All that remains to finish off the scene (aside from pouring the lake, which will be the very last thing done on the layout) is to build up the terrain around the land end of the wharf. A small batch of Sculptamold will do the trick, and that will allow me to wrap up the scenery work around the front half of the lake.