{"id":12837,"date":"2018-05-19T20:52:37","date_gmt":"2018-05-20T03:52:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.emilymorganti.com\/blog\/?p=12837"},"modified":"2018-05-20T08:08:55","modified_gmt":"2018-05-20T15:08:55","slug":"victorianna-right-tower-finished","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.emilymorganti.com\/blog\/?p=12837","title":{"rendered":"Victorianna right tower finished"},"content":{"rendered":"

The last time I worked on the Victorianna’s right tower, I had assembled the cupola (a bashed 1:48 gazebo) to look like this.<\/p>\n

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To finish it, I needed to fill those gaps between the wall pieces, and also clean up the platform that goes around the cupola. I cut dowel pieces to fill up the gaps. For the platform, I used thin strip wood to cover up the many different pieces that have been sandwiched together to form this surface.<\/p>\n

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I painted the pieces before gluing them in. I knew they’d need more paint once they were in, since there would be gaps to fill, but doing one coat first made the job a little easier. Of course, the paint caused the thin strip wood to curl, so it had to be taped down overnight while the glue dried.<\/p>\n

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Next I filled in the gaps with wood filler, being super careful not to get filler on the windows.<\/p>\n

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And here it is painted.<\/p>\n

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The cupola is enclosed, so it doesn’t technically need a railing, but the platform around it looks unfinished, especially compared to the beefier tower roof on the left.<\/p>\n

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My original plan was to put roof trim around the edge, but I couldn’t cut the pieces in a way that made the repeating pattern look nice.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

So I decided to do a railing similar to the porch railing<\/a>, but using the shorter spindles I’d used inside the cupola<\/a>. I started by cutting out the handrail pieces using the 37.5-degree angle on the miter box.<\/p>\n

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Thinking the angles would be difficult to glue standing up, I attempted to glue them all together so the railing would be one piece, but the assembly was too flimsy. So I ended up with a few segments of partially glued pieces.<\/p>\n

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The groove in the handrail was slightly larger than the railing piece, so I used a piece of strip wood to make up the difference.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

My idea was that the strip wood pieces would meet up at the corners, so you wouldn’t be able to see that the gaps between the railing pieces. I thought I could do something similar to hide the gaps at the bottom.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

This was a valiant effort, but it just didn’t work. I wanted the bottoms of the railings to be evenly spaced from the front of the platform pieces, but then the railing corners didn’t meet up, and I just couldn’t come up with a good way to hide the gaps at the bottom. Back to the drawing board.<\/p>\n

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My next idea was to use the Houseworks railing set<\/a>, which has a top and a bottom piece, but with shorter than normal spindles so the railing wouldn’t block the windows. These are 1 1\/2″ spreaders<\/a> cut in half.<\/p>\n

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They fit well in the grooves in the railing pieces, but the bottom piece looks much too big. It would be sturdy, but it’s not elegant.<\/p>\n

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Next I tried these Tiny Turnings<\/a> segments. They’re a bit shorter than the cut-in-half spreaders and the flat bottoms mean the bottom railing piece isn’t needed, so the railing comes in just below the window.<\/p>\n

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I painted the Tiny Turnings while they were still on their sticks.<\/p>\n

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Then I cut them apart, leaving the peg on one end to fit into the railing groove.<\/p>\n

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I like it! <\/p>\n

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I used five turnings per railing piece. On each railing piece I put a spindle close to the corner on one side but not the other side, so there wouldn’t be two spindles right next to each other at the corner.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Rather than try to measure out where the spindles should go, I started by putting a spindle close to one edge and about 1\/4″ in from the other edge. Then I inserted a spindle between the first two.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Then I added the last two. I was able to space them fairly evenly this way.<\/p>\n

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After gluing the pieces in, I put wood filler in the seams where the railing pieces meet and then repainted. About an hour after gluing, the spindles are still a little wobbly, but the railings glued together nicely and are forcing the spindles to stay put. (I hope!)<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Here’s the finished cupola. It’s come long way from the 1:48 gazebo I started with<\/a>.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

And with this, the tower exteriors are officially complete. Hey, they only took nine months!<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The last time I worked on the Victorianna’s right tower, I had assembled the cupola (a bashed 1:48 gazebo) to look like this. To finish it, I needed to fill those gaps between the wall pieces, and also clean up the platform that goes around the cupola. I cut dowel pieces to fill up the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[58,19],"class_list":["post-12837","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dollhouses","tag-greenleaf-victorianna","tag-half-scale","post-preview"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.emilymorganti.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12837","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.emilymorganti.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.emilymorganti.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.emilymorganti.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.emilymorganti.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12837"}],"version-history":[{"count":30,"href":"https:\/\/www.emilymorganti.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12837\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13206,"href":"https:\/\/www.emilymorganti.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12837\/revisions\/13206"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.emilymorganti.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12837"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.emilymorganti.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12837"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.emilymorganti.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12837"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}