Stephansdom Wien - L'Instant Durable

I hesitate to show my efforts amongst so many expert builders, but here goes...

From the model book:

Model: Stephansdom, Wien
Publisher: L'Instant Durable
Number: 42
Published: 2005
Designer: Thierry Hatot
Sheets: 28 off 305x220mm, 1 off 440x305mm
Scale: 1:250
Size: 440x290x550mm
Parts: 300 (*)

(*) The parts are numbered from 1 to 300, but in many cases there are two or more parts with the same number. The most extreme is part 298, the main roof dormer windows, of which there are 36! The total number of separate parts is in fact 480.

The model is beautifully printed, with crisp, detailed graphics. It promises to be a fascinating build, which will keep me going for many weeks.

Alan

First the base is laminated to thick card, and several holes cut out for later access to the inside of the building. Then the major chancel and nave walls, also liberally strengthened with cardboard. The top edge of the nave walls is extremely delicate and will be vulnerable to clumsy hands, so I have left a strip of card attached to the tips of the pinnacles and crosses to protect them for now.

Construction proceeds very much in numerical order, but I decided to skip ahead to make the core of the north tower (part 76) now, because it needs to go between the ends of the chancel and nave walls, and I did not want to risk its not fitting.

Thank you all for your good wishes. I think I may need them before I am finished.

@Josef: thank you for your offer. Any details of the original are of interest, but I think I shall be hard pressed to make a satisfactory job of the model as supplied, without worrying about extra detail!

René: those stories make the building come alive. Sadly I cannot find any evidence of the "O5" or the standard measures on the model, though I may well not be looking in the right place. Do you mean the doorway in the West end of the nave, or the gates at the foot of one of the two large towers?

Best wishes to all,
Alan

The main roofs are now fitted. Again there is much cardboard stiffening the large flat surfaces, and also a piece spanning the bottom of each unit, to make each one a rigid box.

Now the major structure is built we can get on to the more interesting bits.

Alan

René

Yes, I have found it, but it is to the right-hand side of the doorway, not the left! Still no sign of the bread gauge though.

Alan

I forgot how busy I was going to be this week! There is not much more to show yet. Just one picture of the dormers to go behind the tracery of the nave walls, not yet glued in place.

More soon, I hope.

Alan

Thank you John. A small knife blade and BIG magnification for my aging eyes!

I have now managed to fix the dormers in place, with only minor colouring of the black part of the main roof to avoid white lines showing. Most of the crosses and pinnacles are now protected by being glued to the front gables, but the outer ones are still vulnerable and we have extra crosses at the tops of the gables. I just know I am not going to avoid catching them with fingers or clothing as I proceed - I shall have to hope that any damage I do is not too severe.

Alan

The gables on the south side of the nave are now done.

It is interesting (to me, at least) to see how an apparently symmetric building in fact differs from side to side. The gables on the north side are decorated with projecting blocks up the sloping sides, but those on the south are plain. Presumably they were built by different masons, possibly many years apart.

Attention moves to the west end. This incorporates the oldest extant part of the cathedral, built in Romanesque style in the 13th century, which sits between two Gothic chapels added when the nave was rebuilt much wider than before.

First come the two towers. The model design is a bit inconsistent in its handling of parts where both sides are visible. Parapet walls generally have a turn-over section or a separate rear side, but the backs of pinnacles are left unprinted, even where easily visible. Since I scanned the sheets before starting, I have printed extra copies of those parts for backing. The first photograph shows the more northerly west tower with some of the backing pieces in place. Each spire has a platform surrounding it part-way up, and these have doubled parapets, but unbacked pinnacles. The next two photographs show the platform as supplied, and finished with extra backing pieces and temporarily assembled with the spire.

Finally the two towers are in place; I shall not fix the platforms until everything else is complete. Note again the asymmetry: the right-hand tower is some 1.5m taller than the left, but the left spire is much steeper above the platform, so that the tips of the spires are level with each other.

Alan

Just one more photo - there is too much else to do at this time of year!

The roofs over the western chapels are snug against the towers.

Merry Christmas
Fröhliche Weinachten
Joyeux Noël

Alan

I have now got back to work, and the west end is complete apart from the buttresses on the side chapels, which come much later.

Now to the Gothic north tower. This was started in 1450, 90 years after the south tower was started, and 20 after it was finished. Sixty years later it was still only half built, but construction stopped for nearly 70 years, when a rather incongruous pavilion with a domed roof was stuck on top. This is what we see today.

Alan

On the nave and chevet roofs there are rows of tiny dormer windows, for which parts appear on the very last sheet (part numbers 298 and 299 out of 300). The assembly instructions indicate that these are optional, since the windows are already printed on the roofs. [In fact they say there are "two choices on the corresponding sheets", and only in the French version make it clear that the choices are to use the parts or not to do so!]

As I started the north tower it became clear that it would become more and more difficult to put the dormers in place as more details were added, so I decided to start putting them on now. With 44 to add, it also seemed sensible to do them a few at a time so as not to get too bored. I started with the eight on the chevet roof, and made seven up before I realised that they are incorrectly drawn. The sloping rear edge of the dormer roof is drawn at a shallower angle than that of the vertical side, whereas it should be steeper so that when folded back the rear end fits against the planar roof. On the scan from the part sheet the nave dormers (above) are correct, the chevet ones (below) are wrong. Fortunately I could trim them adequately with small scissors, so didn't have to make up another set.

Alan

Thank you gentlemen. I hope that I am conveying a little of my pleasure in building a superb model.

René - I like the idea of listening to the Bummerin tonight, though even 2300 GMT might be a bit late for me! In which tower is she hung?

For tonight I have returned to putting the pointy bits on the north tower. There are a lot of fiddly little pieces, but they combine with the nice printing to produce a rather convincing effect.

A happy and prosperous New Year to you all.

Alan

Greetings to all

Another round of pointy pieces sees the north tower finished. It really looks very Gothic, but distinctly odd because of its very severe truncation and incongruous top.

The roof of the pavilion gave a little trouble because the "petals" end in an unprinted triangle which together form an octagonal pyramid which is too large for the conical peak to hide. I coloured in the white gap by hand, and the result is just about acceptable - in fact it is a lot less noticeable in reality than in the photographs.

There will eventually be a gold ball and figure on the very top, but I shall keep that until the very end of the build.

Alan

Like many large beautiful buildings Stephansdom has acquired an encrustation of small ugly ones around its base. We move west of the tower to add the first of these. Along with this come the first few buttresses. These on the nave are triple-stepped with a tall pinnacle on each step.

The last buttress, which is partly embedded in the corner of the north-west chapel, presents a minor problem. As can be seen in the third photo, its square base (labelled 147) is overlapped by the end of the gable, but part 147 has no cutout to accommodate this. It wasn't too difficult to make a suitable cut, though - photos 4 and 5.

Alan

I have now finished the buttresses on the west chapels, and we return to the east end, where there are more little lean-to buildings. There is also a large sculpture attached to one of the buttresses. Part of the rear of this will be quite noticeable from certain angles, so I made a mirrored copy for the back to give the right colour and texture. The red and white flag is rather conspicuous though, so I drew a rough rear view of that on the reverse side. I don't know what the rest of the flag looks like, so I kept it simple.

Alan

The first photo shows the next two small buildings, and some buttresses. At the extreme right you can just see the reverse side of the sculpture with the flag - it certainly looks better than plain white paper.

There was a small problem with the grey-roofed building: the front wall is substantially too long to fit under the width of the roof once the two double-thickness wings are added to its ends. Once again my having a complete scan of the model paid dividends, as it was easy to scale the centre section of that part by about 3.5% and join the wings back on to it.

The last of the buildings clustered around the chevet fits against a complex-shaped chapel which in turn butts against the south tower and one of its buttresses. In the numerical building sequence this chapel will not be constructed until all the other three parts are in place, making it nigh on impossible to fit it in. I stepped ahead to make the chapel, buttress and tower core and test fit them all together. Then I fixed the building and chapel, ready to start on THE TOWER.

Alan