Again, this week I didn’t get as much done as hoped.  I had to stop work half way through the week because of multiple factors, primarily an old toy truck.  I will go into more detail in a few days. 

Construction

This past week I began on the last and most difficult leg on the facade of the Hudson Life Building.

Building Arches

Before I could move further up on the building, I had to the .060″ thick arch layer first.  These are the arches that link the pilasters together and then forms an arcade.  I was going to use the digital craft cutter again but the thickest stock I could run through was .010″ sheet styrene.  So what I decided to do was to do two .010″ arches and then add  a .040″ spacer between then to get the .060″ thickness I needed.  I still had to add some thing to close in the underside of the arch, but I will go into that later.

I added the first of the cut arches, they are butted up to the capitals and centered on the previously cut arches.  Then between each arch I added a .060x.080″ strip to keep the aches square as I built them up.  I then added the .040″ strip to add to the thickness of the arch.  After which I added the last arch cut out.

To finish off this portion of the arches I needed to add more tiles to the underside.  These were cut from .015x.060″ strip styrene into little 3/32″ pieces and glued into position.

More Framework

The tenth floor windows and remaining upper portions need to be brought out to the same level as the pilasters.  So I needed to build a frame work for the windows to rest in.  First I had to laminate some .010″ strip to the existing framework because I add this same thickness of tiles under the pilasters.  Now I start to add the .060″ strip styrene to the strips I just added.  The windows on this floor are different then the rest of the windows on the building.  They are a pair of smaller windows where all of the others are a single larger one.  Together they are slightly wider than the larger windows, so once I had the opening built, all I needed to do was add a mullion, thus separating the two.  

Brick

As of yet, this was the most challenging part of this building.  I had to cut a sheet of brick that would wrap around three sides, have thirteen window openings cut and thirteen arch openings cut.  Any one of these steps would mess it up and I would need to begin again, it took me five hours to cut just this one.  Fortunately I got it mostly right on the first time, I had one accident but I bet nobody will ever find it.  

I glued the sheet into position and that is as far as I got this week.

Conclusion

The toy truck project is ahead of schedule and I could have it done very soon.  I hope to have some quality time this week with the Hudson Life Building, because it looks sad sitting untouched on my work bench.