Building Woody Joe’s Horyu-ji Temple Five-Story Pagoda – Part 2

The first stage of construction is the stone base of the structure. Being a wooden kit, this is of course made from wood. The parts are perfectly milled, so there’s no cutting or sanding involved, just aligning and gluing.

I didn’t glue the Square insert into place yet, as it’s not added until Step 2, but I dropped it into place to help with the alignment. As it turns out, it’s not helpful, as it fits a bit loosely, and my cutting pad has a printed grid that allows me to check the corner angles.

By the way, I really like the ModelCraft cutting mats. The one I’m using here is an A4 size. That’s roughly 12″ x 8″, which I bought from the ModelCraft Tools USA, which is run by Ages of Sail. In fact you can just buy it from their website too. I really like these cutting mats. This one was only $13.99 plus tax and shipping.

There was not much to Step 1. In Step 2 I made the supports that will fit under the corners of this base. Again, these are pre-milled pieces with a step cut into the long side. Again, all that’s necessary is gluing them together.

The stairs are also assembled here. There is one set of stairs in the middle of each side of the base. The stair steps are pre-milled, as are the triangular pieces and line their sides. The part that takes the most work so far are some straight strips

With the triangular side pieces mounted, I trimmed one end of the strips that fit atop those and glued them into place. Kind of hard to tell what I’m talking about here unless you look really closely at the photos.

The top end of those strips have to be trimmed too, but I’m following the instructions and gluing the stairs into place first. I used all the base parts to make sure the stairs were lined up correctly. Note in the photo below how there is a piece under the stairs that push them up to the proper height. They are not glued in place yet, as they need to fit after the corner pieces are properly in place, which they are not, here.