Photos by the author
Part 2 ended with a comment that the final part would cover the connecting two walls, the courtyard and the final touches. I have revised this view because I greatly underestimated the amount of work that was still to do. Therefore there will be a further section at a later date, next month I hope, unless I hit problems.
So, here we go. This section will cover just the first of the connecting walls.
The outer wall is made up of three sections of wall, each with it's own set of windows, towers and drain pipes. These are the parts for the first section.
This is the parts "bin" for the second and third walls. The smaller wall is shorter than the main wall and one of the pieces makes up a ledge. The picture shows the walls before any of the white pieces have been cut out for the windows.
You may have noticed in the previous picture that two of the windows are round. This picture shows a close up of the way these are made up. It may be possible to see that I have made an extra cut in all the tabs. I did this because it was obvious that the tabs were too wide to make a decent circle once the tabs were bent back. The tabs on the left side of the strip are bent back and those on the right are bent forward. The strip is glued to its self to create a circle and the round window is then glued to the inward facing tabs.
Just a few of the windows to be glued behind the second and third sections of the wall. The tabs have the number of the part they are to be attached too and helpfully have the numbers the right way up for the window.
The back view of the two walls. I've included this one to prove that I don't rely on my memory to get the pieces in the right place! Each time I cut out the window blank I scribble the number that is shown on the blank near the appropriate hole in the wall. Once completed I set the wall aside until the inner wall had been made. I assumed that it would be easier to glue the inner wall to the base before the outer wall was glued in position.
This leads me neatly on to the parts for the inner wall. I have removed all the window blanks and covered the back with all the numbers for the parts. There are three basic sets of parts. The first tray is full of the ubiquitous windows, frames and shutters. The second tray has the parts for the stairway and the last tray holds the balcony.
The windows in the staircase are set at an angle, which makes for some interesting scoring. Here you can see the three stages of window making. First, valley folds are made by scoring on the reverse around the window frame. Then hill folds are made by scoring on the outer edge of the wall. The small arrows indicate the position of the hill folds but the only indication of the valley folds is the dotted line on the small tabs. The dotted lines continue on the window frames but small black dots on dark brown doesn't make for obvious identification. Past experience is the only real guide and there is plenty of that if you have got this far with Rozmberk! One final comment on these windows - as you can see they are low down on the inside of a courtyard. When the opposite wall is in place they will not be seen. This just shows the attention to detail in this kit. There are many other such examples and I will refer to a few more as they occur.
I mentioned at the start that this part of the model took longer than I expected, and this picture shows why. I decided that the railings on the balcony should be railings and not have the light blue printed background. The piece that makes up the railing is folded in half and glued together so that there are coloured pieces on both sides. On side is slightly longer so that it can be glued to the floor of the balcony. Remember, this piece is less than one inch tall and is double thickness. The other part that took a lot of time was the angled door on the staircase. Having made the main part, I found that it did not marry up exactly with the floor, so I had to cut the door frame and pull the parts into alignment. This was critical if the floor of the courtyard was to meet the walls. It also had to be exactly square so that the right hand side lined up with the wall of the building that was already in place. The problem is similar to the tunnel mentioned in the first review. It is almost impossible to make the staircase completely symmetrical. The top of the wall bends forward and acts as the tab for the roof. It may have been easier to glue the roof to the sidewall then glue the stair wall to the building to the right then glue the roof to the stair wall.
Both walls are now in place. The kit also provides pieces that are folded into boxes to make spacers to glue between the walls. I added a tall piece of card the same width as the gap between the walls to make sure that they were perpendicular to the base. You may be able to see two small light grey strips on the base. These are pieces of card I glued to the base exactly on the wall line. I used these because I thought it would make the placement of the wall easier. As it turned out, this was time well spent. The strips will be covered in "grass" in the next part of the review.
Dormer windows and chimneys are the next course in this marathon. The eight dormers consist of the roof and the window/wall piece. These parts are very small and the tabs would leave an unacceptable line between the parts and the main roof. I therefore cut off all the tabs. The only tab I kept was the tab that joined the tile section to the underside of the roof. Number 124 conveniently indicates the tab in question. I have found that the white wood glue that I use is stronger than the paper and a butt joint on this size of part is acceptable. It is a sharp join and as strong as if there was a tab. The other exotic pieces make the three chimneys. More about them later.
Seven pieces make up the roof. On areas like these I always cut off the tabs and glue another tab underneath. This makes it easier to get an accurate fit and also there are no "steps" between the sections of roof.
This picture is a little blurred but it shows the roof, complete with all the dormers and the three chimneys in place. I have not attached the chimneys because there is still a lot to do in the courtyard so I will leave them off until the end of the build. This picture represents about 3 � hours work. I used my usual technique of removing the tabs at the end of the roof and gluing strips of thick card to the walls of the two buildings. These pieces are then painted the same colour as the roof. This makes location of the roof much easier and also helps if the fit between the roof and walls is not quite exact.
Here ends another milestone in the build of Rozmberk. (Milestone not millstone!) At the risk of repeating myself, this is a complicated model, especially as I have to make up my own procedure for the gluing order of the parts. You will note that I use 'complicated' not difficult. Things become difficult when you are not sure how pieces fit together or the parts do not fit. The numbering system on the parts solves the first problem and so far all the pieces have fitted together very well. I was afraid that having glued both end buildings in place there would be problems when it came to connecting the sidewalls. I shouldn't have worried, the fit was excellent. Although I did cut small holes in the base to get a stick inside the main buildings. I could then push the walls against the tabs on the sidewalls to make gluing easier. I later replaced the card in the holes!
See you next time!
