Stump Tower Kitbash: Part 4
With the main portion of the facade build, I moved to the smaller side of the structure. The process is very similar, so the build moved fairly quickly. The main difference is the center potion of the smaller facade, with several windows in place of the single large window and center “molding”.
For the center of this side of the structure, I again started with the top, .031″ tall section, made to fit the width between the kit’s pilasters. This is just .250″ and .060″ strips glued together.
I created a second .031″ strip following the same method. This second one is added to form the wall area above the first floor, which is obscured by the awning in these photos.
Because I created the two “wing” sections in the previous Stump Tower article, attached these two .031″ strips between them to form the overall side.
I then added .125″ strip on both sides of the doorway and both sides of the top window area.
Next, I used a .250″ spacer, like I did on the main facade to space out the window opening and add the vertical wall sections between the windows, using more .125″ strip.
Finally, to complete the windows openings, I cut three pieces of .250″ strip to a height of .031″ and attached them to the center of the openings. Here, you may be able to tell that they’re a little uneven, but that will be corrected with some filing and clean-up.
As a final step, at this point, I added a “sill” detail under the second story windows. I put sill in quotes because this is actually more of a raised architectural detail than a true sill. This is just strips of .040″. I believe it’s .040″ x .020″.
Building an Awning
On the prototype, the short side of the structure features a fairly ornate awning. I felt it would have been difficult to try to be faithful to the original design, but I wanted something that still felt ornate and not something you’d typically see in N scale.
After doing some research, I decided to build this from strip styrene and Grandt Line HO detail parts. I really like using these HO details in N because they can be re-purposed in entirely new ways. I use Grandt Line exclusively, only because it’s the brand of details my local hobby store carries. In this case, I used Grandt Line HO Window Walk Railing #5246.
To used a lot of scrap sizes of styrene for this and just went with what felt right, so I don’t have exact measurements on these. First, I combined several strips to make a flat surface. Honestly, I wasn’t too particular with this — once it was all glued together, I sanded it quite a bit to level everything and remove all the seams.
To one side of the piece above, I added three strips of styrene around the edges. These will be on the underside of the awning and makes it so the bottom of the awning is recessed a bit. I wouldn’t be prototypical for the awning to just be flush on the underside. Also, this will allow me to later add a small SMD LED light and not have it hang down below the bottom of the awning.
With the three strips in place, I added a front to the awning. This is a simple piece of styrene added so that it’s flush with the bottom of the strips I just added. Then, onto the face of the awning, I added the Grandt Line detail, trimmed and cut down in size.
To the top of the awning’s face, I added a thin strip, just to give this a little more detail and look less like a few strips thrown together.
I trimmed off the long strips from the underside and sanded everything town and even. I added a strip to the top of the left and right sides to make the front wall wrap around to the sides. I finished the sides by adding more of the Grandt Line detail.
I glued this to the short side of the structure. I proceeded to add several additional strips to the top of the awning to create the appearance of a support structure.
