Bank Wall Details

It's been a long time since my last update and with not much progress made on my part in that time. The holiday season has been busy with work and other obligations. I have made some progress though. I am also finding that I am learning a lot and expect the future areas to progress much faster. The learning curve is steep, but I have to keep telling myself that there is no rush. I have as much time as I need to do it the way I want and if something doesn't come out the way I wished, then I can always revisit that part at a later date.

In any case, here is where I stand now. I spent some time creating some of the interior bins and lid portions. I then hit as many pieces as I could with flat black and flat grey spray can primer.

In the above shots, you can see I taped the outside of the walls off and primed any piece that would be inside with black to block light from escaping once lit. The bottom pic shows all the pieces for the card holder and dice bin. I attempted to glue some fabric to the inside parts of the card holder and you can see the CAA bled through a bit. In person it doesn't look as bad as it does in the pics, and in any case, no one will ever actually see it.

I decided to use some half rounds for interior wall bracing. I hope that it will give me a good base for interior detail as I hope to use this when covered as columns inside the building. In the bottom pic you can also see on the left side the angle bracing I am using to create the card holder. The fabric covered pieces will go inside that area. Also on the right side, you can see where I messed up. The chewed up area is where I added another angle piece before realizing that it was on the wrong side and had to cut it back off, therefore damaging the wall a bit. No big deal though as this will eventually be covered anyway.

I apologize for the quality of the pics. They are terrible, but eventually I shall get some better ones when it counts.

The next step was to start with the exterior details, so I began creating the columns. 1/2" Half rounds for the front portion and middle of each side and 1/2" x 1/4" square for the side corners. I then used .125" x .040" strip and liberal amounts of glue to do the foundation details. Some were easy to do by just gluing it to one side and slowly bending it around while gluing. Others I attempted to use a heat gun but the heat was too much and warped the strip to quickly. I suppose in hindsight that a hairdryer would have worked better. The square parts were easily cut and glued.

Next I attached the columns to the walls, figuring that I could add the step detail to the columns just above the foundation parts once they were attached as the strip for that portion was very thin. In pic further along this detail is there but with the quality of the images, you probably can not see it. in any case this was done by gluing a .015" x .060 strip just above the foundation pieces. I then laid a .015" x .030" strip over that to create a step detail at the bottom of each column. After the fact I decided that doing this part while the columns were still unattached to the walls would have been easier.

On a whim, while buying windows and stuff online, I purchased some of this "cement". I wasn't sure I would use it at first, but eventually I realized that I would have to do something on the exterior walls to trim up the window holes. Otherwise I was going to have large gaps between the window frames and the wall. I now realize why people do this in layers. Unfortunately, I had already added the columns, so adding this on the outside was going to be more cutting and fitting around those than if I had added it prior. No biggie. I figure the columns would now have more of a "built-in" look this way. The "cement" sheet is rubbery and cuts very nicely and easily and is probably in the .010" to .020" range in thickness. I didn't want this to cover the entire wall as the columns would then look funny being smooth, so I opted to use it just along the bottom section to cover only the bottom windows. I would then add a trim piece above that and finish the top larger windows with .010" styrene. It is very hard to see in the above pic, but it is there and the styrene to cover the top windows is not added in this pic.

The final thing I want to talk about is the lid section. This will be the top most lid and is created with 3 sheets of styrene stacked on each other. The smallest (top section in the pic) will be the bottom and is cut from .040" styrene. The next two sections (under that) are .020" styrene cut about 1 mm bigger than the previous piece to give the roof a bit of molding detail. The hinge is made from double sided carpet tape attached to fabric on each side. This provides a super strong hinge that I won't have to worry about ripping or breaking. The fabric section is sandwiched between the top and bottom layer, while the middle layer had the middle cut out to accommodate the fabric. The piece hanging out the back will be attached to the inside of the back wall behind the card holder section.

So that is where I am. It doesn't look like I made a ton of progress, but it took me a while. A more experienced person probably could have done this all in a very short amount of time. Such is the learning process.

My next step should be to finish covering the front wall middle section where the entrance way portico should be, prime the outside and start getting the interior walls created and shaped. After that I can start squaring this up into something that looks like an actual building. I wont be able to continue the cutting and shaping process of the top sections of the building until I have it squared up and erected as the ceiling piece I need to build off of needs to be cut to the size around the dice bin and I wont be able to get those measurements until I have it built up.

See ya next time!