With the construction of the base of the temple completed, I proceeded to paint the completed assembly using smokey beige satin-finish Rust-Oleum Ultra Cover spray paint. I also decided to go forward with construction of the mounting base. This was actually from Step 27 in the instructions, but I had the parts out and didn’t see any reason not to go ahead with this assembly.
The base of the pagoda painted a stoney gray color. If I wanted to get more authentic, I would have painted it earlier in construction and masked off areas to create different shading for the different stone blocks.
This Woody Joe kit came with a set of very nice wooden pieces to construct a frame for the mounting base. The wood provided was a medium brown color, which I think is cherry wood. I treated the wood with Watco natural finish Danish wood oil. Construction was exactly like that of the stone base of the temple that I wrote about in my last post.
The base frame shown here treated only with natural finish Danish wood oil.
Next, I began the construction of the lower walls of the pagoda, Step 3 of the kit. Since I was painting the model and made the stone base a stoney color, I decided to color the rest of the model a bit more like the actual temple instead of making it raw wood, thought that is also a nice choice of finish.
I used Transtint wood dye, which has become my method of choice for coloring wood. I thinned using denatured alcohol and this keeps the grain from rising when I apply it to wood. Thinned with alcohol, it also dries very quickly, and died parts can still be glued together.
I assembled the 4 lower walls, adding the window covers and the door. By then, I’d decided on the paint I was going to use, so I masked off the areas and painted using Liquitex soft white acrylic paint, applied with a brush.
After painting, the four walls were glued together and trim was added.
Pre-milled pieces are provided for the trim under the windows, but these required some cutting and trimming to get them to fit correctly, as the notches were not wide enough or, in some cases, not quite deep enough. Also, the ends need to be trimmed slightly.
The milled pieces before being dyed and trimmed to fit.
Pre-milled notch in the center is just a tad too narrow, but easily fixed.
The trim properly cleaned up and glued into place.
With the walls complete, there was a seat that fit under the wall, and the whole thing was then glued to the stone base and that onto the display base.
Next will be to add the roof pieces onto this and then begin construction of the upper levels.
Ship Modeler 