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1:300 St-Bavo Church, Haarlem, The Netherlands
A short introduction
One of the great architectural achievements in The Netherlands is certainly the St-Bavo Church (also referred to as the Great Church) in Haarlem, the capital of the province of North-Holland. The church was built between 1370 and 1520. It is obvious that, unlike in my profession, schedule driven projects didn’t seem to exist in those days. Considering the time span of 150 years, they certainly took their time to complete the structure! This majestic cathedral towered 73 meters over the low-rise building of the time and could be seen for miles away in the flat and empty surrounding landscape. A true Arc of Noah rising up to the skies. Even in this age of high rise buildings the church still forms a landmark that cannot easily be missed. Haarlem is the town of 17th century painter Frans Hals (buried in the St-Bavo), the place that gave its name to New York’s Harlem and the residency of a young Dutch aviation pioneer named Anthony Fokker. In 1911 Fokker made a daring flight in his “Spin” (spider) by taking off from a meadow just outside Haarlem and circling around the St-Bavo spire. What a magnificent event this must have been and it set off a long history in Dutch aviation. The church is located on the “Grote Markt” (freely translated as Market Square), which is very busy on Saturdays when the square is packed with all kinds of market stalls. It’s a very lively scenery and a great tourist destination. I composed a few pictures from Google Earth to give you a general impression of the church and its surroundings. Note that the church is situated on an exact east-west orientation, with the main entrance facing west. Certainly no coincidence. In the nineties Dutch publisher Leon Schuijt published several great quality architectural models, amongst others Dutch churches and wind mills (surprise!). Although the designs date from before the computer age, the fit in general is good and the print quality very attractive. The models are not extremely difficult to build and the logical numbering of the parts, together with clear building instructions, provide easy reference to the builder. This combination is the perfect mix for hopefully a relaxing build, much needed at the moment. The attractive model consists of almost 500 parts and is printed on 9, semi-glossy A3 size sheets. The scale is 1:300. Interesting aspect of the model is the number of smaller buildings clustered around the church that over time have become part of the entire complex. This makes the finished model an interesting object to look at, with lots of things to discover and a small village on its own. A bit like Mont-St-Michel in France. Anyway, time for the build to start. Erik |
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#2
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Looks like a lot of stuff to put together.
Very nice looking building and model.
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~Doug~ AC010505 EAMUS CATULI! Audere est Facere THFC 19**-20** R.I.P. it up, Tear it up, Have a Ball |
#3
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Interesting model.
Post lots of pics as you go Erik!
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The SD40 is 55 now! |
#4
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I'd be interested to see how it develops, too.
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Give me a pigfoot and a bottle of beer. On Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/153077...57692694097642 |
#5
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Hello Erik ,
I am especially happy about this construction report, because this church is also on my to do list. Then I'm curious when the report starts. With best regards from Styria Kurt |
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#6
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Main walls
Thanks guys for checking in and your interest is much appreciated!
The build starts with the ground plate, clearly showing the actual church layout and where the smaller buildings have to be added. The main ship and side aisles have the form of a cross, although not exactly a crucifix, which was as far as I know customary for a church or cathedral built in those days. I glued the ground plate on the cardboard supplied with the model and to avoid twisting of the plate later on it I intend to put weights on each corner during the entire build when gluing the various parts on to it. Then the main walls of the church are erected, each to be completed with stained glass windows and/or doors. Cutting out the window openings, to fold the tabs backwards and gluing them to the inside of each wall, followed by gluing the window itself yields in a nice result but is a time consuming process, especially the cutting of the many, many windows. The door parts of the west side entrance need to be corrected somewhat for a proper fit. After gluing the walls, I reinforced them on the inside as much as possible with cereal box quality cardboard, approximately 0.5mm thick. This will provide better grip when gluing other parts against the walls later on and is better for overall stability of the model. Years ago I built St-Basil’s cathedral in Moscow by the same publisher and reinforcing/laminating of the inside parts proved to be very valuable. Hence my advice is to not cut back on applying such simple albeit eventually invisible enhancement. Cheers, Erik |
#7
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Good start Erik.
I also see you know your "oats"! That reinforcing in a great idea - I make a lot of architectural models and I can see just how well it will work. Thank you!
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The SD40 is 55 now! |
#8
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Hi Erik ,
you make a fine job , good start !! Kind regards kurt |
#9
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Outer walls
Thank you Kevin and Kurt!
The work continues with placing the outer walls. I started with the eastern section. A lot of window tabs to be cut out and folded away. There is a certain misalignment between the white areas on the ground plate and those on the walls, where the external columns have to be glued. To avoid problems later on I used black and brown felt markers to correct. Also at one location I cut the wall in two parts as the fit on the ground plate appeared too tight. This leaves a narrow gap as you can see in one of the pictures but it luckily didn’t result in further fitting issues when I glued the column in place. Having said that, cutting, folding, fitting and installing the external columns on the walls was not an exciting job. Too much repetitive work. In the process of placing the columns I installed the side buildings on the north-east "quadrant". A relative easy job but ensure to use reinforcement with thin cardboard to aid in proper alignment of the buildings to the main walls. When installing the columns and buildings I concluded that the height of the outer church walls is in fact a bit too short in relation to the length of the columns. This can be corrected by adding a strip of cardboard of 0.5mm thick to close the gap but I still have to correct for that. Stay tuned. Cheers, Erik |
#10
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Looking very nice - slow but steady progress.
It always takes me forever to build this type of model........
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The SD40 is 55 now! |
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Tags |
bavo, church, schuijt |
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