199 : Building the Church Model

I glued together the exterior and interior wall pieces of my Essling Church model. I used my glue of choice: a ‘tacky’ white wood glue. When the glue was fully dry, the model was ready for a bit of a plastering with modelling paste.

I used some Pébéo non-textured acrylic modelling paste. I found that just a little paste simply applied with a cocktail stick could create enough texture to break up any flat areas and give some impression of stonework. I used the side of the stick to create horizontal and vertical lines. I didn’t apply much paste as I thought adding more would mean going to the extreme of having to model every brick and stone – especially troublesome at the corners.

After the texturing was completed, I tiled the roofs with strips of cut card tiles. I used paper strips as leading to cover the joins along the ridges of the roofs.

I reckoned that the bell tower with its eight windows couldn’t do without a bell model of some sort rather than a clear view through the tower. I tracked down the smallest miniature bell I could find. I clipped away the oversized flat metal clapper and the fitting and hung the bell by gluing it to the ‘rafters’ of the tower with a dollop of contact adhesive, adding some padding to bring it down to the level I preferred. I painted the bell a dark bronze colour. And remembered to paint the interior walls before gluing on the roof.