Catedral de Leon - 1/300

I'm starting another Merino Model - Leon's Cathedral, at 1/300.
As usual with Merino, the graphic quality is rather basic. However, I hope it will turn out as a pretty model because the subject is very nice and there is a lot of detail. Something close to 400 parts, many of them very small. Promising =)...

Thanks for your posts
I decided to start with the buildings that stand next to the cathedral.

Thanks, Iriera
Moving on with the cloister, I attach pictures of the many buttresses and small details that will be added latter. The second picture shows the completed inner and outer walls.

Matting the inner and outer parts of the cloister proved easier than I expected. Adding the buttresses and details was not a problem, either...

The cathedral has some adjacent buildings that are part of the kit. Not as many and as complicated as in Burgos but they end up taking a fair share of parts.

That's good Yu, as I also run out of :rotwerd: :rotwerd: :rotwerd:...
Assembling the roofs was fairly complicated. There is a big, white, part that serves as a basis for the roofs. To put that part in place, I had to use John's shelf method, notably in the cloister's inner walls.

The entrance is a tricky assembly, as you can see in the first picture. All the walls for the lower part of the cathedral are on the second picture.

Quote

Originally posted by Yu Gyokubun
I can't wait to start architecture building

Please do it :prost: The main drawback is that you need more space for every working hour than, say, with small trains
I choose a top-down method to build the main part of the cathedral. It is still too early to say whether it was a good choice or not. However, as the tabs are on the floors, rather than no the walls, I think it is easier like this...

Quote

Originally posted by John
I really like the lancet recesses between the three main west doors Ricardo. A nice touch.
John

Hi John I agree, of course. The colours are not the best point on this model but the detail to build is very interesting.

Tino - not really. I'd rather say that I play while working on them

The cathedral has 2 different towers. What I show today are pictures from the upper part of one of them. I used the same method as in Burgos for the tower top parts, as it went well there.

A couple of pens will do the trick as well, Yu At least, it works with me :rotwerd:
To build the top of the other tower, I tried the same approach cut the 8 parts of the kit and glue them over a scratch octagonal pyramid. It didnt work because of several reasons:
- The details are much smaller;
- The details are not outlined in black, as those of the other tower.
As a result, I probably didnt cut them properly and the middle ones were not aligned on adjacent slices. As it would be a nightmare to trim each of them on one side, after gluing, I choose to cut them off completely and use a different method to make them. Hopefully, the method is self-explanatory in the pictures.
The last picture shows the happiest ending I could get from what was, definitely, a terror script

Thanks a lot, Tino You know that I am following your thread with a lot more than a passing interest
I attach two pictures of the smaller buttresses of cathedral's rear section. They have two parts each, apart from a couple of card strips...

For the main buttresses, I followed the same method as in Burgos: fill them with card. It worked well, here, as the buttresses are rather slim - less than 2mm. The top-down assembly went reasonably smoothly, too. The big hole on the floor helped a lot...

What I have left to do on this model is to assemble a lot of buttresses and other details, already 'processed'...
In today's pictures are the tallest side buttresses. They go straight to the lower floor level.

The graphics are rather simple, Wiesel, but somehow they make up to a pretty model. That's usually the case with Merino

Well, moving on to the last construction pictures...

Nice to hear from you, John You are right. This is not an easy model to assemble. Of the 3 Merino cathedrals I've built so far, it is the hardest one but Burgos is not far away...
There is still plenty of room on the glass cabinet wall :P. Space shouldn't be a problem in the near future. Anyway, after a very short break with Schreiber's Stiftskirche Stuttgart, I intend to build a plane.
Well, you must have guessed it - Leon is complete :yahoo:

Some more details...

...and some bigger general pictures of the model. For anyone that likes Merino model, this is a 'must'!

Thanks for your comments

John - the 'trick' I use is to make a single (large) order a year at moduni. It is not too hard to get to the free shiping value :rotwerd: For you, outside Europe, the value is a lot higher but perhaps not too much...