STEP BY STEP

1 A rough full-size paper mock-up of the frontage placed next to the already-built model of Bank Chambers. This drawing helps ensure appropriate overall building height and width, floor levels, aperture positions and detail (like the columns) locations.

2

Here are the carcass parts cut from mountboard as a kind of card kit. The sides have strips added in place to support and locate the floors. Mountboard is around 1.2mm to 1.5mm thick and allows edge-on butt corner joints to be formed by glueing with cyanoacrylate SA adhesive. 3 The assembled carcass is placed against the Bank Chambers model for comparison. The large lower depth is because the road level is higher than much of the surrounding area and allows the model to sit directly on the baseboard at the lower level.

4

The main front wall was made of card and is shown here in grey primer. I used old wooden paintbrush handles cut and filed at the rear to look like applied columns. They are probably a little too wide but after various attempts with different cylindrical materials to get something acceptable, I settled on the brush handles.

5

The top roof sections were built up with card, and here the front wall is just simply placed in position, without glueing, to allow further work on it, including painting and adding the windows. The various architectural features, such as cornices, are styrene strip, glued in place. 6 Basic colour and weathering from powders has been added, and a start made on fitting the windows. They’re from Scenesetters glazing grids, cut from a pre-printed sheet, the edge frames thickened with a white paint pen and glued in place from behind. The ground floor windows and doors are yet to be tackled.

7

The lead-covered curved cupola-like roof section was carved from a block of balsawood. Here the appropriate length was marked up and cut from a square section block using a razor saw.

8

The square section profile was a little oversize, so it was marked up to be carved to the correct size.

9

It was carved with a scalpel, sanded to shape and checked for fit and size in position. It was then sealed, painted and sanded with soft sanding sticks several times to get an acceptable smooth finish.

10

The raised vertical strakes were added from styrene strip and the entire subassembly given a final coat of paint and matt varnished. The higher level roof section was also treated similarly with the strips. The ground floor windows and entrance have also been made and fitted.