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.
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