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.