Thanks for the kind thoughts, Mark!
Well… whatdaya know? I actually worked on the building on Sunday too. It was another crappy weather day and my dear wife granted me another weekend work session. And a mighty productive one it was.
I got all the window trim installed. Remade and installed the lintels for those first floor windows. Glued the upper cornice together at the miter and then, when dry, mounted all the cornices. I trim painted the inside edges around where the store window was going, and finally, started working on the gables, with the fitting of the critical front gable.
I mounted all the eyebrows and sills on the upper right windows and then turned my attention to those 1st floor lintels. They were actually wrong. Here's a picture showing the correct lintel to the incorrect. The backing plate was the window width as was the lowest layer, then they expanded upwards and outwards, and there were only four tiers. It was a quick job and I painted it with Rattle Can Tamiya Matte White so I didn't have to clean the air brush.
I glued up the upper cornice again using the angle block and some quickie clamps. When they were dry I glued all the cornices to the the building. Before doing this, I brush painted the edging that surrounds the store front since this surface will be exposed unless I would cap it. I don't want to do that since the space is already narrower than I would like.
I couldn't help myself, but to take the building as it to the layout and try it on one of the possible spots. It fits, but it's facing the wrong way, meaning you won't be able to directly view the interior. My ideal spot would be where Saulena's is, which is the yellow building in the lower left of this image. Bronx is a bit wider so the Sinclair station would either need to be moved or slide to the left a tad. I would mean some minor adjustments to the macadam so it could nestle closer to the tracks and accommodate the crossing signal that also sharing that space. The building in the foreground right is destined to be the appliance store. I didn't build that one, but bought it when I bought that little crossing guard tower and the water tower.
Back to work...
I could have continued with installing the interior and then the store front, but decided that it was more prudent to work on the upper stories since I would be having to manhandle the building for a bit more. I found quickly that the square hole that I had laser cut in the attic floor had to be closed. I don't know why I drew it like that since the front gable needs to rest on that spot. So I cut a piece of Masonite to fit, glued it in and reinforced it with some backing plates. I sanded all of the exposed edges so it completely matched the existing floor.
The window pieces had a sloppy fit in the their respective openings. I still haven't got the hang of just how to draw the holes and window parts so they fit. As I've noted before, if you use the same drawing pieces for the windows and the their holes, the holes get bigger and the windows get smaller due to the width of the laser beam and how the material burns. But I don't think it is as big as I ended up with. The gap seemed to be somewhere around 0.020" to 0.030". I tried tow pieces of 0.015" stock, but it was too tight. I then tried a piece of 0.015" and another of 0.010" and while the window fit, there was some compression that was deforming one of the tiny mullions. So I went with two slices of 0.010" and it fit perfect. There was also a 0.040" gap from top to bottom. Instead of screwing around trying to fill the curved portion, I pushed the window up and made a nice 0.040" window sill.
I know had the formula for fitting the windows. I hadn't tried the fit in all the single gables spaces, but my guess is they are the same dimension.
I put all the upper pieces together with masking tape so I could make measurements. The gables are vertical and, of course, the Mansard roof recedes backwards as it rises to meet the roof. At first I attempted to measure the distance at the gable's top and cut some angular pieces to fill the space, and only after doing all the cutting and sanding did I realize that I made the opening in the roof facing so I could simply use rectangular pieces. The hole was the same as the width of the gable front so the rectangular pieces would just slide in. Easy peasy! Again, I used a combination of Aleen's PVA and then thin CA with accelerator to speed up the build. While the CA cures instantly, but is not too strong (brittle), the PVA will cure slowly and form a more permanent flexible bond.
So here's the gable slid into its space. The fit was perfect! I will painted the gables, assemble and install all the windows, and put the fish scale shingles on the Mansard front before I finally glue the gables in place. In looking at this image, I think I'm going to run the downspouts for the cornice waterways at the open ends thereby eliminating the need to have downspouts disturbing the facade.
So, all in all a very productive weekend. Tomorrow, I'll continue working on the upper stories by fitting the remaining four gables and building that nice ornate chimney. I'm sitting here thinking how I'm going to construct the curved roofs for the gables. I have some thin ply that could be laminated to a curved shape. I could also do the same with some thin styrene sheeting. I could trace the curves and make some molds to better form the shapes. I keep noodling it until the solution presents itself. Meanwhile, I'm watching my Eagles struggle with the Saints.
