Onion Domed Church - Part 4 : Painted

So the model is painted and I am really pleased with the finished item.

I need to see whether the final presentation will be on a base with a churchyard. If so there is another couple of evening's work.

Kk

And on a hill in an Austria alpine valley...listening for the sound of music...

Onion Domed Church - Part 3: Final (Fiddly) Bits

The request was for this model was for a removable roof.

The construction of the basic roof structure was pretty straightforward. I cut the basic roof base from 3mm MDF and then glued on a couple of MDF locator plugs that, along with the tower, will lock the roof in position. 

The roof shape is a Pedimented Gable - a shallow or no pitch that then rises to a reasonably steep pitch - was cut and a heavy weight card used to create the skin of the roof.

Once the glue had dried I textured the exposed end of the roof, with a piece of plasticard across the bottom to help disguise the joint to the lower part of the structure, adding a circular window, or oculi, was  positioned to form an equilateral triangle with the pair on the lower structure. Any gaps were then filled and smoothed off.

For the tiles I took a different approach to my usual methods that are more suited to rustic structures than a more formal one like this. I want this roof to be made up of diamond shaped tiles. The thought of making and gluing as many as 4,000 3mm diamond shaped tiles and getting them in perfect alignment was too daunting so I sought other ways to achieve the effect.

My solution was a variation of a very old technique. The first step was to draw a pointed tile on the computer 3mm by 6mm, then duplicate it and butt the two side by side. I then repeat the process until I had a strip of 62 tiles, wide enough to extend across the longest part of the roof, plus a bit. Those strips were then duplicated and pasted to an A4 document. That step was repeated multiple times and several copies were printed.

The strips were glued to thin card that when the strips are laid on top of each other and then offset by half a tile the desired diamond effect is achieved.

Yes, there is still a lot of fiddly cutting, but it beats creating and gluing thousands of individual tiles in precise order. Individual strips needed to be cut from the main sheet.

Then every 'v' on the bottom of every tile had to be cut out.

I must admit that by the time I had cut the first ten strips of the 70 that I needed, I was beginning to think that I should have set the diamond size at 5mm instead of 3...but while my eyes may have crossed many times during the process I persisted and the strips were duly cut and glued to the roof structure. It took the better part of four evenings to complete and although alignment is not perfect - the printed paper has stretched or contracted with the glue - it will look effective when painted nonetheless. 

A good coat of PVA was applied to hold everything in place and add a bit of strength.

Finally the roof ridges were made fixed on.

Just when I thought I was done with roofing, I remembered that there was the roof over the porch and the smaller area on the side opposite the tower to be done...another 200 tiles!

The next significant fiddly item was the grilles and mullions of the windows. These were made using thin balsa strips. Surprisingly it took less time than I thought. Then I made all the door fittings.

Next step is to apply a little paint.

Onion Domed Church - Part 2: Building the Main Structure

Moving on from the construction of the tower, I have completed the work on the main body of the church.

The first step was to cut out the base of the model.

The main sides were then cut from 3mm MDF and some from 3mm card, and assembled along with the base of the tower, the main door and the side exit.

With the base assembly complete and the glue set hard the lower 20mm was given a stone finish. 

Then over the next couple of days I applied the main surface texture, which was a 1mm layer of epoxy putty across the whole surface and given a rough texture by gently pressing 80 grit sand paper into the surface. The windows hollows were cut from the putty using a template for consistency.

I am happy with the way the tower fits into the model.

Over the next few days I'll work on the fiddly bits - windows and door fittings before tackling the roof, which has a number or unique challenges.

 

Onion Domed Church - Part 1: Building the Tower

I have a commission for an onion domed church. The request is to base the model on Saint Martin's Church in Partenen, Austria, as below.

I had to make a few simplifications, the most notable of which was to the onion dome. I have made onion domes before, but a long time ago. They are tricky little beasts. The one in the photos above has around sixteen faces, but without a laser cutter I couldn't get the detail fine enough cutting by hand to replicate that, so the dome had to be made as an octagon. Since this is the most complicated part of the structure, I started this first.

The dome had to be 40mm in diameter at its widest point and a height from the base of the bulge of 35mm to the ball at the top of the dome. To start the process I took the second image above,  imported it into vector based drawing tool and then traced around it to create a vector silhouette of half the dome profile. Because the centre of the dome is going to be formed by a 5mm rod (more on this shortly) I removed 2.5mm from the flat edge of the silhouette. I then created a silhouette of a 30mm octagon, created multiples of these silhouettes and printed them out.

I cut out one of the dome pieces and glued it to a piece of 1.5mm rigid card, then cut the silhouette as a card template. 

Using the template,  I cut ten half-dome profiles from 0.5mm plasticard - I only needed eight, but made two more in the event of screw ups. Now, because they were cut out by hand there were discrepancies in the pieces so the ten pieces were then clipped together with a fold-back clip and the curves of the dome pieces were filed and sanded to get a uniform shape.

With the dome 'fins' made I started the assembly. The first step was to make the base by cutting a paper 30mm octagon silhouette and gluing it to a piece of 0.5mm plasticard - I would have preferred a 1mm thickness, but it was out of stock...if needed I figured I could glue another piece of 0.5mm to it later. I then ruled pencil lines point to point through centre of the octagon and glued a piece of 5mm plasticard tubing, 40mm in length, to the dead centre of the octagon using a set square to ensure it was perfectly upright.

To this spindle I then added the 'fins' of the dome with the base along the pencil line with the long straight edge against the spindle, again using a set square to ensure each 'fin'  was perfectly upright, to create the skeleton of the dome.

Ample plastic cement was then applied to all joints and left to set hard.

The next step was to put the skin on the skeleton. I would like to say that I used mathematics to create a template for the cladding, but far from it. I am no mathematician...I simply painted two of the fins edges black then pressed paper against them to create an outline that allowed me to make another template around which I could cut out the skins.

Here was where I made my first error. Thankfully it was not a serious one - I planned to make the skin from 0.25mm plasticard and bought some sheets to do this, but in error I bought clear rather than opaque. Not serious, just annoying because it made it more difficult to see what I was working on.

This part was quite fiddly because of the need to hold the prices firmly in place for several minutes each time while the glue set. When it was all done I gave it a quick coat of white paint so I could see the detail better. Any excess plasticard was then trimmed from the joints with a scalpel and gaps filled. The joints were filed to get smoothness and the lower section of the dome was completed using epoxy putty.

Then to finish the dome, I added the ball, using a glass bead from her indoors beading stock - with permission I might add. On top of this I added a cross constructed from various plasticard offcuts.

The next step was to make the octagonal part of the bell tower, on top of which the dome will sit. This was every bit as fiddly as the dome. The base structure was made from 2mm plasticard, but this left big gaps on the joints, so an outer skin of .25mm was glued over top. With a 30mm diameter and a height of 70 the octagonal barrel was then mounted on a 40mm square by 65mm tall box. To represent the round windows on the octagonal barrel I used 5mm steel washers.

The joint between the barrel and the box was then modelled as a roof and tiles were applied. The edges were filled and filed before the dome was fixed to the tower.

I then worked on the decoration of the octagonal barrel. This involved two ventilation panels (they aren't actually ventilation panels, but are the ventilated arches behind which the bells sit - I just don't know what they are called) that are positioned on the two faces that will have clock faces (that won't be fastened until after the model is painted).

I also created four sculpted panels; plasticard frames into which I glued various spare torsos and heads from my big box of plastic bits. In their final form these will be painted to look like marble. 

As a final touch I glued three spare flag finials from the Perry Allied Napoleonic cavalry set to the cross.

This finishes the work on the tower for now. When it is positioned on its base on the model proper the tower will stand 245mm (10 inches) tall.

Shiloh Church

Continuing my American Civil War buildings I have made a model of the Methodist church at Shiloh that is up on my Buildings for Sale page now.

Built in 1851 this simple log church was in the centre of  Sherman's camp when the Confederates launched their surprise attack on Sunday 6 April 1862. Some of the most vicious fighting at the Battle of Shiloh raged around the church (I'm guessing there was no service held that Sunday).

The rebuilt church on the modern day battlefield
(the original was partly damaged in the battle and then later by souvenir hunters).

It was a tough model to make (well, the actual construction was pretty easy really), but it is so simple that it quite a challenge to make it look interesting. 

In the end it is the different wood tones, along with the fence and the foliage that lifts this above bland.

Now, putting my model in the place of the current church (from the first image).