I haven't posted anything for a few weeks because I've been concentrating on building my second French chateau, the Baroque one. I've still got some unphotographed models to do blog posts on, but I thought I'd post some pictures of where I'm up to with this quite elaborate model. There's no intention of showing a particular stage or anything, it's just the point I happen to have reached.
When I can post images of the completed model, I will give my customary ramblings about the Baroque look and the typical styles of French chateaus. For now I'll just say a little about how this is being made. The basis of the brick- and tile-work is the good old Wills sheets. There are a lot of cast bits where I modelled a master and made silicone moulds, and a (hell of a) lot of parts cut and shaped from styrene sheet and strip. The fourth significant material is wooden mouldings that are sold for dolls house work. The walls, windows and doors of the model are complete and I have started on the roof now. You can see the cast parts for dormer windows and chimneys, to be incorporated in the three-part roof, one bit of which is started. There are over 600 styrene parts making up just the quoins (corner stones), and I reckon there must easily be over a thousand parts in the whole structure.
Hopefully construction on this will be finished in about a week's time, then it will take a couple of weeks more to paint. With a bit of luck it should repay the work that's gone into this model.
Stunning work there John. I've tried this in smaller scales before and the quoins always did my head in, especially filling in the gaps between those and the bricks they over lapped!
ReplyDeleteThanks, Steve. I tried the Wills quoin pack long ago, but I find they are hopeless and the best method is to cut your own from strips of 0.5mm sheet, working on your quoins equating to so many courses of brickwork- two courses here. This way, you shouldn't have any overlaps other than on the end that's furthest from the building corner. The courses on the Wills sheets are actually fractionally irregular, but I measured 20 courses as 27mm, so 2.7mm is the average for two courses of brick/ one quoin. I tried to cut the quoins 2.5mm deep so they cover two courses of brickwork with the gaps/ cracks at top and bottom of each corresponding with those of the brickwork, and just a tiny amount of allowance for irregularity.
ReplyDeleteEven only partially completed, this looks like a fantastic model, John...looking forward to seeing it in all its finished glory!
ReplyDeleteThat looks superb so far--looking forward to seeing the finished article!
ReplyDeleteThanks rross and Kym, as ever. The building stage of this chateau is nearly done now, but it's going to take at least a couple of weeks to paint then!
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