Photos by the author
I've been fascinated by architecture for as long as I can remember, particularly the more utilitarian forms such as lighthouses, castles, bunkers, oil rigs etc. Oddly enough, I've only ever built one lighthouse paper kit, a German one in a small scale. I wasn't very satisfied with it - there was nothing wrong with the kit but I do think one of the great advantages of paper modelling is the ease of making use of the medium to produce large and lightweight models. Also it didn't satisfy my hankering for a good, big model of a 'classic' conical tower type, ideally with stripes. (You have to have daymark stripes on a 'proper' lighthouse!) What to do? Searching the various publisher's catalogues and free download sites on the net didn't produce anything very satisfactory.*
Eventually my enfeebled grey matter came up with the rather obvious idea of designing my own model. I'd never tried it before but a new learning experience is always a good idea (as long as you planned on having one!) I'm not finished yet, but hopefully my experiences so far may be of interest to anyone contemplating 'having a go'themselves.
Fortunately for me, the town of Geraldton (about 420 kms north of Perth where I live) is graced by a magnificent red-and-white stripey lighthouse of classic design. It is at Point Moore, within walking distance of the town centre, and was built in 1877 from prefabricated sections of iron shipped out from England. (Yes! This will be a lighthouse-kit of a kit-lighthouse!!) It's now electrified and automated but is still in service - one of the oldest active lighthouses in Western Australia. On a business trip to Geraldton in 1999, I took a number of reference photos of the lighthouse in anticipation of eventually knuckling down to a serious modelling effort.
Some of the pictures: 
This is the lighthouse from a quarter-mile or so. A picture like this is nearly as good as an elevation drawing, but the better the resolution the better off you are. It's unfortunate I didn't have a digital camera with zoom at the time!
Stripey!
Closer pictures are good for relating the details to the whole. Any items that are perpendicular to the line of sight can be used for relative scaling, also.
There's nothing that beats good close pics for detail. This was as close as I could get unfortunately, due to the barbed-wire fence that now keeps vandals out - a sign of the times even in rural parts of Australia. On the other hand, the lighthouse had just been painted and looks great! The model will be quite an accurate impression of the current state of the building, as it is very clean and shiny for now.
On my return I had a very rough go at designing the tower section, but was hampered by a lack of technology - namely, a lack of compasses remotely big enough! I tried to plot the curves instead but I seriously don't recommend this - the result was horrible.
I gave up for a while. Later on I became proficient at using vector illustration programs for technical drawings, and this proved a much more workable solution. If you haven't tried using a vector drawing program (eg Adobe Illustrator or Corel Draw), you are in for a treat! The learning curve is steep as it's nothing like traditional drawing, and could best be described by the judicious use of any string of invectives of your choosing. (You could perhaps say that a vector progam is to a drafting table as a word processor is to a typewriter. Instead of indelible marks, lines and curves and entire subsections of a drawing become "objects", which you can copy, paste, move, resize and manipulate at will.) However, once you have the basics down, you'll find the power and sheer labour-saving convenience of one of these programs to be literally indispensable. Using my computer I found that the mathematics of the drawing became infinitely easier also, and I managed to draw my way to a printable test-version stage with a week or so of casual evening work.
I began by setting up a new drawing on the computer, at A3 page size, and importing all of my reference photos and any others I could scavenge from the Net. (Having these scattered across your drawing is equivalent to having reference photos blu-tacked to your drafting table and is really useful.) 
I then drew a front and side "elevation view" of the lighthouse, using the known scale of the overall building and the reference photos to ensure reasonable accuracy. (If you don't have architectural drawings, having some good photos taken at the maximum possible distance - to reduce parallax - is a must!)
These drawings were used to work out the dimensions of the cone and all the other parts, which were then laid out as if they were paper kit parts - so anything with two visible surfaces was "twinned", with allowance included for fold lines and paper thickness and so on. The most time consuming operation was ensuring accuracy of all the radiating and concentric lines of the iron panels on the main cone. This required several nights simply to set out radials and circles, and then several more to cut them into sections and "double" them to represent the seam strips. The opportunity was taken to avoid a big, ugly seam down the side of the tower - by having the paper part follow the 'zig-zagging' natural join lines of the original, the model can have a flush and nearly invisible join. A base was also drafted which matches the octagonal concrete 'apron' of the original. I can't stand models that simply sit on a flat piece of coloured paper - it looks so incomplete! - so I took the opportunity to make the base more of a "box" by extending the concrete apron "below" ground-level. This allowed me to place a name-plate on the side, a nice spot for it.
Initially I was working to 1/72 scale. The tower is approx. 35 metres high, hence this scale was quite impressive and would have produced a model over 18" tall. This was nice but did require separating the 'cone' into two sections as a single one would not print on a single A3 sheet of paper, which I thought was a little undesirable on my first model. I resized the model to 1/100 scale and printed a monochrome test version on 2 sheets of approx 80gsm A3 "toilet paper" (well, not quite, but it is nasty, soft, absorbent stuff. I had it lying around and wanted to use it up!) This model built up quite well over two evenings and lessons learned were incorporated back into the next version. For example, insufficient allowance had been made for paper thickness in several parts, and others were resized due to scaling errors which had crept in. (See section on"Version Control", below.) I have since settled on 1/87 or "HO" scale, this will make the 'fiddly' parts easier to handle and makes the best use of the A3 sheets - it will end up around 40cm or 16" tall. I also redesigned the method of attaching the 'box' base to the tower and reinforced this area a bit.
Some pics of the current monochrome beta version:
Um...the model...
Yes, um, the model again...it's the upper bit this time...you knew that!
The middle bit. The pre-fab design of this lighthouse fortuitously lends itself to a fairly seamless main section. If you cut carefully, the panels interlock very nicely! 
I'm not sure but it could be...the base of the model...!
One issue this process has brought home to me is the importance of adequate 'version control'. Save frequently and back up your work, but as you go through "stages" of the evolution of a drawing (you will know when) it's wise to save the model under a new name. IT industry practice is a good model to emulate: call your work "Model Name V0.1", "Model Name V0.2" etc for pre-release versions and "Model Name V1.0" for released versions. DON'T ever delete a "previous stage" drawing! You may well find you need to go back to it if an error or accidental deletion creeps in at some point. Trust me, I learned the hard way!! 
Sheet 1 at present. A bit of a squeeze fitting everything in!
Sheet 2 at present. I'll devise a parts numbering system and instruction sheet for the download, but like most lighthouse kits (that I've seen) this is a fairly simple model.
For the next issue, I will hopefully have been able to put together a successful colour test model on glossy stock. Wish me luck! If it works adequately I will put the model on the Net for download. Stay tuned...
*Footnote: I hasten to add, in the field of large lighthouse models. Digression - I *did* turn up Mr Currell's *amazing* 1/144 model of the Soviet N1 lunar rocket, one of my very favourite things in the world! This seems highly detailed and accurate and as a FREE download just about beats even the (expensive) resin kit on fun value vs cost - I hope to review it in a future article. (Freudians may feel free to poke fun at my interest in conical pointy things!)
