Catedral de Palencia - 1/250

Merino's Palencia cathedral is not as complicated as Burgos. Nevertheless, it has 330 parts, many on them rather small.
I start with pictures of the kit's covers and the main construction diagram.

@ Yu the novice you are referring to is yourself 8o? If so, it was a good joke
To answer more seriously apart from the models fit quality, I think the difficulty (in any kind of paper model) is related to the size of the parts, the joints between curved surfaces and the gluing steps that have to be made in sequence when something depends on a previous gluing and that one on the preceding and so on. Planes and boats often score high on all 3 criteria and you are a master on both :). As so, if you want a model with few parts, not necessarily easy, Id suggest Schreibers Maria Laach (easy) or I. Durables Sainte Chapelle (more complicated but very pretty). Schreibers newest small church in Stuttgart is surely also a good choice. Erkotyps kits are among my favourites but any small model often has a fair share of parts. I bought the Homoli church last Christmas and it is also a very nice kit.

The roofs have the standard Merino printed pattern over a very solid colour. The small details are also for the roofs and, interestingly, they have a triangular base.

You are welcome, Yu. We all have noticed that you are definitely not a novice paper modeller
Well, moving on with Palencia...

The cathedral has a single tower, with an octagonal base. Each of the 8 buttresses glues onto two faces, making the task a bit more complicated. Instead of the usual card strip at the buttress back, I used some transverse card bits to fix the shape and make gluing easier.

Hopefully so, Glue me!, but the colours are rather dull
I enclose two more pictures - the upper bells and the complete tower.

The cathedral has a fair share of flying buttresses. To build them, I'm using the same method as in Burgos, because it comes out very well.
The only problem is that it involves cutting a lot of card...

The buttresses are broader at the base. That means another part and two card bits for each one.

Concluding the buttresses saga, with the small pinnacles. 3 of the buttresses are slightly shorter than the other 9.

The rear part of the cathedral has over 40 vertical fold lines! For anyone with ordinary sized hands with less than 20 fingers each (that's my case...) the reasonable approach is to make a big card template.

Thanks, Yu but, with a suitable card template, it is not so difficult.
Adjusting the hole on the terrace to fit the tower was rather tricky. I wonder why Merino choose to make the towers rear buttresses right down to the base level, instead of terrace level. It would allow a much simpler terrace/tower interface. Perhaps they like to make our life harder :(...
I enclose two pictures of the lower/rear buttresses.

Good joke, Yu but if they make it too hard Ill follow a different path for assembly. It already happened with the buttresses and it will surely happen again
Today's pictures show the lateral entrances and their big buttresses. On the smaller side, is the well and a tower with a tiny bell.

The buttresses of the forward part of the cathedral have 4 parts each and, in my view, they should have 5. The problem is in the pinnacles, to the upper left of the first picture. They are drawn in a single part, with a complicated fold method. I tried it just once. For the others, I choose to split each part into four (main, pinnacle sides and rear) and add a card bit. The end result is the same but the assembly process is much easier.

Tino, how could you? It was a secret :rotwerd:
John, you go straight to the heart of it. We both like to get as close to possible to what the designer had in mind as the end result, but not necessarily following the same path
I enclose the last construction pictures. Hopefully, there is something interesting there.
On the first one, apart from the usual card template, note that I often dont cut the tabs on the proposed alignments. If the tabs dont overlap, I prefer to have them broad at the ends because it makes folding easier. With a very sharp-ended tab, it is much harder to get a neat fold. Sometimes, when there is a need for a sharp-ended tab, I cut a broad one, make the fold and cut the excess. The result is better.
On the last picture, there is a complicated alternative to Johns shelf method. I used it because the roof part has big indentations (for the buttresses) at both extremities. The card strip helps to avoid deforming the part while gluing. The four L-shaped paper parts allow me to put some pressure both at roof top and at the base. As so, they work as a double shelf both vertically and the horizontally

@ Yu you know, keeping an open mind is the best way to let the cards come and go, as needed. Sometimes, Im lucky enough to put my hands on a good one. I bet you have a fair share of good cards, too
@ John before you call me a terrorist, Id better point out that the paper looses strength in the fold/unfold process. To get rid of excess paper in order to make a pointed tab, I often use scissors or a very sharp knife with a lot of care. It is so easy to tear the paper apart, along the fold line, when applying tangential stress with a knife! A possible solution is to cut in two or three gentle passes instead of a single, strong one. With scissors, there should be no problem because the stress is applied perpendicularly to the paper plane. The same effect is obtained by pressing (vertically) the knife to cut the paper. You only cut a few millimetres at a time but, well, the tabs are usually slim

John, you know that, not surprisingly, I find it easier to express myself in Portuguese than in English and, this time, there might be a 'tear' too much. Let me see if can put it in other words
When folding a sharp-ended tab, the paper may find it more convenient to fold at an angle near the tip, because it leads faster to the paper extremity than the intended fold line. In the process, as you say, the outer tip can delaminate, most probably close to the half cut level that has been made. In this process, the delaminated tip will tend to go upwards. Folding the tab before making it sharp, as I suggested, is a good way to overcome the problem. The point that I mentioned in the second post regards the care that has to be taken when removing the unwanted part of the tab, to make it sharp-ended. As the paper gets weaker with the previous fold/unfold process, the whole tab can easily separate from the part, along the half-cut/fold line when applying force to cut the unwanted tab section.
Regarding your other point, I regularly use my middle finger's nail, pressing with the thumb, to pass over cut and fold lines. The nail gets somewhat polished in the process :rotwerd:
It is very useful to soften the edges and, as you say, reduce some delamination that may occur very close to the fold line when folding. The problem is very much related to paper quality and to the half-cut you make to mark the fold line. If the half-cut is shallow, the remaining part of the paper may try to fold with a far-from-zero radius. In the process, the pre-cut paper surface may want to separate and go up, probably at both sides of the fold line.
Pressing the cut and fold lines (with the nail or a spoon) is also useful when using pens to paint them - they will take less ink and do so in a more uniform way. The trick is: press first - paint latter

Thanks again, John, and let's go on to Palencia's final pictures
Some details...

...aircraft views...

...lateral and top views. Overall, I found the kit very interesting. Very good fit but some awkward assemblies. The colours are not very pretty but I guess the real building is well represented.
My next model will, for a change, be a submarine - GPM's Seehund. The next Merino? I don't know, yet. Most probably, Leon or Palma de Maiorca cathedrals...

Thanks to you all Going under, now...