Hampton Court Palace

[papermodelfan]

A raft of smaller structures gather to form the rest of the "Henry VII" suite of rooms - I guess they were the kitchen and some of the other supporting facilities for his palace. Here I run into trouble. Lining them all up on the ground plan, they take up too much room, and the last one in the line sticks out over the line by about 3 mm/one 8th of an inch. This will mess up all the subsequent buildings that are added on from there. No one building is way too big - it seems to be an error that multiplies through a row of structures, each one contributing a little. This fit problem is in the original too - the 45 year old part we built 45 years ago has it too, (See, for instance, photo A3, January 10, above). I am copying onto 65 weight paper, pretty close to the original cardstock thickness, so I don't think it is the result of my using thicker cardstock - maybe Heighway just did not include the card thickness in his design (and didn't test build it). I foresee other problems.

One option is to rotate the final building in the series 90 degrees, so that it is shorter in the critical dimension. This would violate the intent of the models, I guess - so the other is to shorten it - so I saw the end off, trim and reattach the gable end. The result (Pic 16) is that the building is not symmetrical around the chimney, and that the window to the left of the chimney is now a corner window. I can live with that. Now it fits.

Pic 12: Raft of smaller structures around Great Hall
Pic 13: Lining them up, they take up too much room on the ground plan
Pic 14: Overlap with the ground plan space for 15C better seen here
Pic 15: Rotating last little building 90 degrees
Pic 16: Shortening the building surgically - better solution.

[papermodelfan]

Here is a card with some of the chimney pots. The procedure seems to be wrapping a tall cylinder around a whittled wooden match core (a brush bristle would be easier), and then wrapping that with a little strip around the top to make it thicker. There are tons of them on this model.

Mass production sounds like a great idea. The paper is thin, and the parts tiny,and the thumbs are fat. I'm thinking of wrapping a number of them in series around a long bristle,and then wrapping the little cap bits around the shafts before cutting the the bristle and turning them loose. That way I can have a handle on them. Ship modelers faced with zillions of tiny gun barrels must have solved this problem.Suggestions welcome.

[Mike Stamper]

Rob,

I used a piece of stiff wire. I used different thicknesses to gently reduce the size. The glue is less likely to stick to wire. It can also be cut to a length that suits your hands.

It may be worth testing different thicknesses of paper, the "original" card is difficult to work with. Perhaps print off a few onto normal paper and see how it goes. Keep the chimney on the wire until you've added the small piece round the top.

The way forward is to put on your favourite music and put your brain in neutral and just work through it. If your favourite music is "popular" try something else. My favourite "slowing down" music is Mozart or Russian Orthodox. The latter is not as extreme as you may think.

Cheers
Mike

[Don Boose]

This is a wonderful story, Rob. I've finally had the chance to read through it carefully and look at the photos. It is a real treat to hear the history of this model, its beginning as a father-son project, and the ways you have coped with the challenges.

Since work has absorbed all my time, the only model building I can do is of the vicarious sort through the builds in the Forum.

Lil and I visited Hampton Court Palace in the late 1970s and, if I am not mistaken, the "little houses" (Post #12) are grace and favor residences.

Don

[papermodelfan]

Here is a small structure (#10D) that shows how Heighway the designer worked. This one is more complex than a simple box, and has a little crenellated cornice piece that runs around the top. .
It is still unclear to me exactly which building is which. The ground plan of the model just uses numbers, and although I have trolled the web, I have not found anything more than a simple plan at the HCP website indicating various touristic trails through the Place. This one is on "the Henry VIII story" trail.

Pic 17 shows it in situ on the card
Pic 18 cut out
Pic 19 building glued up
Pic 20 - the problem: Again the space indicated on the ground plan doesn't match up. this time it is because the old model parts from packet A extend out into the space for this building. Odd too, because when we started on Packet 1, we started with this actual wall, so this is a primary error we built in back then, not one that multiplied through several adjacent boxes.
Pic 21 - the solution? Gads, more paper surgery - this time nobbling a couple of mms off the west end of the building and replacing the end wall.
This is a bit of a crude fix, and I have now had to do this with multiple buildings. But if I dont, the error will, as they say, propagate.

[Mike Stamper]

Rob,

Can you post a picture of the building - showing where it is - I may be able to help

Cheers
Mike

[papermodelfan]

Pic 22 - The building comes through surgery fine.
Pic 23 - and placing it for a dry fit, now there is lots of room for the State Apartments of Packet C to fit where they belong.
That still leaves the problem of the visible part of the footprint on the ground plan in the wrong place. I have accumulated a lot of these, and need to come up with a general solution - maybe slipping a second layer of the "gravel effect", printed on thin paper on top?
Pic 25 - More evidence Heighway didn't proof carefully - on this card you can see the white cornice piece he forgot to color in, and the instructions for the little towers say to put them on building 10E - when they actually go onto 10G. I know - picky picky - and god knows how many parts there are in this entire model, but I did have to look all over for the missing towers when I was building 10G.
Pic 26 - Here is building 10G, with its towers (and the tell all camera reveals many imperfections I blush to see.)

[papermodelfan]

Another fit problem. In the northeast corner is another courtyard, fronted by a building with an indented entry way. It backs up to another building that should be precisely the same length. It isn't,and the first building is actually again some 2 mm too long. Yet the two together must span the same gap. More nip and tuck.

Pic 27 - After all the effort getting the preceding buildings right (around Pics 13-16), this building messes it up. I have set it on the plan a little to the north (towards the nearest edge) to show the mismatch better. You can see the vertical line on the left which ought to line up with the adjacent building, does not,and sticks out too far - there is already the 2 mm error there.
Pic 28 - from another angle, showing the other building it backs up too - should provide a smooth end surface together, does not.
Pic 29 - Now post op with the end building in place - we reach the East End of the model - and seem to have conquered the various excesses, at least in these dimensions
Pic 30 - Another tiny building
Pic 31 - More tiny buildings
That is the sum of all the buildings in Packet B Now to fix the many little goofs revealed by the camera, add the little paper ridge lines, and water color the blank edges, either yellow or raw sienna, I think.

[papermodelfan]

Here goes. At this point I have added all the little roof ridge pieces, and water colored the white edges, backs of cornices and other stray white spots, and am ready to glue the individual buildings down. By the way, the background grid on my cutting board is 1/2 inch squares. Mike Stamper, thanks for the offer of help - I seems to be running into many issues fitting my model to the plan - usually that a building is simply too big for the space allotted. Did you run into these fit problems in your build?

I ma actually a little behind now in posting, and am actually building Packet C, and running into more of this. I will hold off on more definitive actions until this building report catches up. I would like to get some advice on an issue or two before making the final cuts.

So the glue down starts -
Pic 33 - the Great Hall
Pic 34 - the kitchens
Pic 35 - more outbuildings - I am following the outer edge of the footprints but loosing precise fit along the inner edge.
Pic 36 more of the footprint problems here - note the little courtyard on the far side of the footprint for 12F.
Pic 37 - with 12F in place

[papermodelfan]

And yet more - Two buildings 10E+10, and 10B+10G should line up as something of one single structure, forming the wall of the clock courtyard. They don't seem to quite match - at least their ridgelines are in slightly different places.

Pic 38 - Those two buildings seen here. The walls match up well, but the roofline not quite. Maybe they are not supposed to?

Pic 39 - more footprint issues
Pic 40 - shows our old friend 10D, the one that required some surgery, now fitting well from this side.
Pic 41 - same building from the South side - another footprint issue here
Pic 42 - The indented building in the Northeast corner that also needed a nip and tuck to fit - it now fits the plan, so building 15 can go snug up against it and its mate