Mediterranean Church Part Two

Hello There! I have had some time to continue the various projects I have in progress and the latest is the Church from ,(formerly), Shellhole Scenics.

I had some resin walls, which I had kept, 'Just in case' and these were going to make a surrounding wall for the church. I had some 90 degree corners and plenty of straight sections. I have used just boiled water to bend resin items in the past and fortunately these items were made of a resin that allowed me to do that.

I needed a pan of just boiled water and a pan of cold water as I found that when I bent them to the shape I required they tried to return to their original shape. After a while I was able to obtain a manageable curve with an opening for a gate, which I will make from plasticard later.

The figure is for scale. I felt that the walls were a little small for 20mm figures which had been stuck to a one pence piece and had an added, thin piece of magnabase, for storage. I added a shim of 4mm thick plywood to raise the height. This will be hidden by scenic flock and plaster later. 

Moving onto the roof, this had two problems. The first was the release agent, used in any resin casting. It had left a residue of a fine, grit like finish on some of the surface. It appeared as a fine bead, like a shot blasting bead, adhering to the surface. This can be viewed on the left hand half of the roof here. It had to remover mechanically. While doing this you could see some air holes in the casting. These were filled with a suitable filler. In this case from Humbrol.

The other problem was the roof was a little lop sided. One long edge was 8mm thicker than the other. I rectified this by gluing a length of square plasticard to each end and cutting it into a wedge shape, in situ, to  level the roof up. 

The walls of the church also had this fine bead on the brickwork so this was also mechanically removed. This gave me the opportunity to spot any further air holes in the casting and fill them.

This was typically a case of you think you have found them all an then you spot some more.

The first part of this build is here. Next I will start with the first assembly, priming and first coats of paint.

Mediterranean Church Part One

Hello there! Along with the other scenic items I am working on, I have taken out of storage the Shellhole Scenics Mediterranean church that I bought during the 1990's!

As you can see it is massive. That is a 20mm figure on it.

It comes complete with a separate tower which I shall keep with the church.

There are some small damages which have accumulated over the years as it has endured a number of house moves, as have I.

The main building lifts off and has a subfloor in the base and a separate pulpit and second floor. I do not normally keep lift off roofs as they can easily get damaged and putting figures inside model building can 'give the game away' so I keep such figures off the table until revealed of spotted.

Also, unavoidable with such a large resin casting, the sides have bulged out a bit. I hope to take this into consideration while upgrading this building.

The separate tower is in three parts and again had a lift off roof. It also has interior detail.

I was planning to keep the tower in one piece and on the same base as the church.

Like the church it has to have the windows hollowed out.

As the top of the walls bowed out past the edges of the cast roof, I cut a sheet of platicard to the correct size and added a bead of quarter round around the edge to hold the roof in place when it is glued to the roof section.

Here is a better view of this work and the detail on the walls.

I had drawn an ellipse on a sheet of 4mm thick plywood and cut it out using a scroll saw. This would be the base for this large model.

I had some small walls which could be put around the base.

They were originally straight sections but I bent them to shape by holding them in just boiled water and bending to shape. When I had them how I wanted I dipped them in cold water to hold their shape.

This gave me a surrounding wall but it was a little short in height so I used each section of wall as a profile and cut out plywood sheet packing to cut out with the scroll saw again.

Well that is the end of this part. Next the surrounding wall has to be fixed in place and will look into the difficulties of fitting the roof squarely and adding some more detail.