Chalk's Church

The Church as shown in Wargames Illustrated

The title of this post is of course a reference to the excellent Caribbean style Spanish Church (shown right) made by Gary Chalk. The build was featured in Wargames Illustrated magazine back in 2000, made from a combination of materials but mainly foamboard. 
This week I had intended to dig out my collection of pirates to dust off and post about but alas I have been struck down by a lurgy which has left me coughing, producing phlegm from two orifices and generally being unable to do anything remotely physical. So being chair-bound, so to speak and surrounded by tissue I instead found the three magazine articles related to Gary's piratical builds ( a harbour, a town and the Church).

Gratuitous picture to fill this post

 
The church, as previously mentioned, was mainly made from 5mm foamboard, something I have in abundance and is on first sight a fairly easy build, being two 'boxes' (the main building and tower) and had no interior.
The roof. whilst looking fit for purpose was made from corduroy clot painted red - something I didn't like then and still don't now.
I could easily have made up my own version of this model, but I have no doubts that I would have ended up with something four times the size of this model. I resolved to more or less stick to the dimensions as given.

The four main walls

Surrounding my invalid station with the necessary, I cut out the four walls of the church to the plans obtained from the magazine - not normally a great chore, but taking much, much longer longer it should have.
The long walls have rectangular windows in the original version, I've rounded mine out at the apex of each, which in my opinion give a more 'church-like' appearance and individuality.
You can also notice the circle scribed into one of the end-walls for a circular window, rather than the arched ones in the original.

The facades.

 I wanted my version of this church to look a little more grand and worked out a simple facade that would make t a little more 'grand'.
 The faced  for the doorway is taken directly from the plans in the magazine.
Also shown is a piece of what I call plastic canvas (others also refer to it as granny plastic), which I'm sure everyone is familiar with. I've cut it down by three 'rings' for  a better looking fit.

Corrugated cardboard (Obligatory boring picutre)

For the roof I've reverted to the old standard of corrugated card for which. I've had a very large roll of for many years. This has been cut into 1cm strips (more than I needed and longer than needed) along with 2cm  strips of very thin card which the strip are affixed to.
The corrugated card and card strips are alliteratively glued atop one another; the card forming the base for the corrugations.

The building pieces for the roof.

  I always make some mistakes with this but they're easily corrected and after the initial cutting out of all the bits goes together very quickly indeed and I do draw a central line on the card but it isn't essential.
The steps are:
1. Take a 2cm card
2. Glue a corrugated card strip onto it.
3. Glue another card piece onto the still exposed half of the previous card piece.
4. Glue another corrugated strip onto the new card strip, butting it onto the previous corrugated card.
5. Repeat as necessary from step 3.

Add caption

If you manage to glue all the bits in sequence, you'll end  up with a very solid, stepped roof structure looking something like the two shown in the photograph. Whilst it's not a perfect way of doing tiled roofs, I think it's a pretty fair representation of them and it's cheap and quick to do too.
The final exposed piece of card you see is where the join will be made between the two roof halves, a pre-folded card piece will be added then two more corrugated strips of 'tiles' will come together at the apex of the roof.

Reverse of the roof, showing the stepped appearance.

If I hadn't been so ill this last week I reckon all f this would have taken me less than half the time I spent cutting and gluing, but I'm pretty happy with what I did achieve given my circumstances.
I also managed to finish off  'Pyles' Book of Pirates - a far easier read than Defoe's and featuring pirates from both the the 'buccaneer age' and the post golden age, neither of which Defoe covers.

Still do do on this build -  cut out and build the tower; decide whether I want internal access to the main building (and all the inherent work that that  will entail); determine the base size and form for the church; painting and detailing too - of course.

But that's it for this week, not much but at least I managed something!
I hope you've found something of interest here and haven't caught anything from me whilst reading through.