Joining the baseboards

Once I’d built the 4 simple sections (all 80mm deep), I was ready to test my connections idea.

I wanted to make the sections relatively easy to pull apart and join back together so I went with alignment dowels and offset latches.

Both of these aren’t simple Bunnings or Mitre10 buys (B&Q or Home Dept) so I needed to turn elsewhere.

Brass dowels as used by British modelers and screwed in are not cheap and postage makes it worse. In the end I went with eBay push-in aluminium dowels secures with liquid nails. Maybe not as robust as the brass option but seems to work OK.

The offset latches were also a challenge, especially with the internal corner joins. These require special latches that I sourced from Melbourne. Shipping was pretty high so I dropped by their store when I was in the city on business.