Work continues on the outside stair. After I had cut and glued the diagonal braces and trying it on the building I quickly found out that I was putting the right most brace right through a window so I had to reshape it to be a small bracket like the center one.
I went ahead with the wood-block-screwed-mounting. I measured and cut a piece of thick ply (scrap laying around) and CA'd it between the top and bottom. I needed a bit of shim stock to get the fit perfect. I placed the stair up to the building in its finished position and marked the inside of the building where the screws should go paying attention to the ledge that will support the second floor. I then drilled the exterior of the building with a clearance hole for the self drilling screws that I was using. I didn't depend on their "self-drilling" attributes.
When I started driving the screws I was putting too much torque on the whole assembly and didn't like it. So I drove the screws into the block with the stair off the model to pre-cut the threads into the tap-drill-sized hole that I drilled in the wood block. This enabled me to re-drive the screws home without breaking anything. I then took it all apart to prepare for painting and windows installation.
I wanted to dress up the brackets and and add some gussets since the joints weren't very strong. I have a decent selection of NBWs from Tichy.
In this image you can see the large clearance holes for the mounting screws. The bracket pads will be painted the trim brown that I'm using on the rest of the model.
Lastly, I painted all the windows and doors, primed the outside stair and started masking it for airbrushing the brown trim and starting to get the tin roof painted.
While I was laying out all the windows, I found out that I had not re-drawn the turret window panels since I decided to go from a laser-cut structure to a hand-built one. I will draw them up tonight after I finish posting. There are a lot of windows in this little building.
