Facade for the CP building

Over the last few days I've been working on the facade for the centre building in what is going to be a three building complex. 

Like always, I spent a long time pondering how I'd go about building up this piece. I try to figure out enough to get construction started and not get stuck in a paralysis-by-analysis state. 

Once the dimensions had been determined a blank was cut from 1/8" clear acrylic sheet. Those legs on the bottom corners are pieces of 0.080" styrene bonded on with liquid glue. 

I figured out the dimensions for Thomson building, the Canadian Press complex, and the yet to be started Newhart Tower in February and cut all the blanks at that time. I did that for two reasons: I figured it was more efficient to cut them all at once when I had the workshop set up for that task, and I wanted to get the relative heights of all the key highrises clearly established so I had a sense of how the layout's vertical dimension would play out.

The next task was to draw all the major elements onto the blank with a fine black permanent Sharpie pen. Lots of arithmetic and head scratching went on until I had a good, consistent set of dimensions.

All of the coloured panels are cut from off-white and black construction paper. They are attached to the blank with 3M transfer tape. 

On the prototype the light coloured panels are closer to cream than off-white, but my choice was based on what I had on hand, and thought it was good to make them a little lighter so the contrast with the buildings on either end of the complex is stronger. Once they're weathered, they'll seem a little closer to the prototype.

The vertical and horizontal 'metal' pieces are made from 1 mm square styrene strips. 

Before installation they were painted with a Tamiya flat aluminum paint. Next time I'm going to try colouring these sorts of pieces with a silver Sharpie pen. I didn't have one around the house to give it a try.

The styrene strips were attached to the blank with Weld Bond glue. I cobbled together a little 'workstand' to keep glue application clean. A strip was placed on the masking tape loops and glue was applied with an old, fine brush.

After attaching the strip to the blank, a small wooden ruler was used as a guide to make sure the strip was straight and aligned to the guidelines. A sharpened toothpick was run along the edges of each glued down styrene strip to scrape off any glue that got squeezed out during attachment.

Lest you think all went smoothly, there was a minor disaster about halfway through the gluing process. Not shown in the photos is a small container of water I used periodically to clean glue from the brush. In a moment of thoughtlessness I knocked over the container and water splashed all over :-( Much cursing ensued. After cleaning up and taking a break I put a masking tape ring about the water container to help make it a little more resistant to tipping. No more spills on this project, but it emphasized to me the importance of making sure the work area is clean, and only the necessary tools and materials are present when working on some particular task.

The horizontal panels are all individually cut and installed. This is different than the technique I previously used. Up until this project I'd apply the horizontal panels in one continuous strip and then cut out pieces for installation of the verticals. On this project, since the vertical slots would only be 1 mm wide, I didn't think I could cut them accurately using the previous method, and since there is only one surface to cover I didn't think attaching individual pieces would be too tedious. It wasn't. I paced myself and listened to Radio Deluxe - it turned out to be a fairly pleasant task.

And once all the horizontal panels were attached, the horizontal 'metal' bars were added. Like the verticals, these too are 1 mm square styrene strips, and were glued on using the same method as the verticals.

And that's that. 

For the rightmost building in the complex I've ordered a City Classics kit that when modified will act as a reasonable stand-in for the prototype that's in that location. But, until it's delivered I think I'll move onto getting these facades attached to buildings.