The Temple of Love: Building a Sisters of Battle Cathedral pt 2 - cutting up Pegasus kits

Two posts in one day? Must be the end times! Or maybe I just didn't want to make the first post a huge long one and so I am breaking it up (also, full disclosure; I am off work today and so have plenty of time!)

Assembling the Pegasus Hobbies "Gothic" kits is very simple; they fit together well and would hold even without glue (I am gluing, of course - I have discovered that the Oatey All-Purpose Cement, while gloopy, can be applied with a little brush and allows one to assemble the larger sections without a problem. I've used it to glue the columns together, reserving regular plastic cement for more delicate things). There are a few issues I have discovered, however.

That is a picture of the front section of the building - the space between the two U-shaped sections will be filled by the Shrine of the Aquila as a facade, and the rear space will butt up against the body of the cathedral. Astute observers will notice each of the U-shaped sections has three panels but four columns. Even-more-astute observers will have noticed that the Pegasus sections are a panel and column joined together. There are no separate panels or columns.

This has been noticed in some reviews of the product, so I was ready for it. I found it easy to remedy this and, with a bit of thought, I was able to produce these U-shaped sections very easily and with minimal glue seams. Here is how I did it;

I took advantage of the double-wide sections Pegasus provides. For each level of each U-shaped piece, I used two double-wide sections and cut them so I had the red-shaded pieces above. Cutting them was easy; all I did was use a razor saw to cut through the thicker plastic at the top and bottom (shown below as a RED line) and then scored with a sharp Stanley knife (shown below as a BLUE line). The thinner plastic of the central panel was cut all the way through and it was easy to turn the piece over and score the rest of the line so it would break easily. A little bit of cleaning up and the job's a good 'un!

The spare panels and column do not go to waste - I need panels without columns for the central circle and elsewhere, and I need columns without panels for some of the planned flying buttresses.

With these cuts, I'd created two new pieces - one "reversed" section (I couldn't just mount a normal section the other way around, because the designs on the two sides are different) and one "two column" section. I was able to easily glue these together with a normal section to make the U-shaped sections.

The column rears aren't glued in place here - this is just a demo fit for the photo

So that is how I have been hacking up the Pegasus kits. The glue seems to hold them together well, although I suspect it will take some time for it to fully cure.

Let me know what you think in the comments!

Danforth Laertes =][=