Chapter 111 & 112 - Finishing Edges and Decorations Left Front Roof, The Onigawara

 

October 21st - 25th 2014

No tiles in this chapter.  So short reprieve...yet this chapter was challenging and perhaps overly explanatory...sorry.  The purpose of the blog was actually to help anyone mounting this kit and trust me, these chapters needed some tweeking.

There were lots of pieces here for decorating the peaks of the front and back left side of the roof.  First was to sand out any impurities and then paint them.  Before I did that, there was a decorative piece which will fit in the very top of the peak.  It had some weird holes and markings on them.  Checking the instructions,  the carved lines were supposed to be curved - like elaborate little bubbles or something.  Anyway, I really hated the way the bubbles were made so I recarved them using a dremel bit and flipping the pieces over and redrawing some of the lines.  I also deepened the external curves.  One was cut quite well whereas the other didn’t really have matching holes.  So I’ll use that one for the back peak.  I then painted the pieces and glued together the first sections for the decorations for the inside of the peaks.

You can see the lousy carving on the right.  Mine isn't much better but at least it's rounded.

Next I pulled out the pieces for Chapter 112 because I had to test fit them as I was building.  The instructions called for the bottom piece to line up perfectly but of course it didn’t so a small lip does show underneath.  Still, I needed to make a piece that would fit flush to the peak wall and it did.  I had to just trim it somewhat to the shape of the roof’s slant and glued it into place.  The piece didn’t match up perfectly with the tile edging but close enough.  I believe the mistake was again my installation of the eaves.  Since I had to overhang the first row of tiles by half a millimeter at the start, when I got to the top row it was more space than anticipated.  Still maybe it was better that there was more space between the tiles and the wooden peak since I’m not sure how much sanding would have been effective on the horizontal piece for this part of the installation.

I started on the peak’s decoration and right off the first piece’s installment instruction was not very clear.  It says “fit piece #3 to the front of the peak”.  This piece is heavy black cardboard with a precreased fold in the middle.  I couldn’t figure out if, in the Italian, they meant fit it to the front peak or fit it to the front of the front peak.  I tried dry fitting pieces a few steps ahead and it didn’t really clarify much. And the illustrations were not zoomed in enough to understand.  But since the piece #3 will eventually support some tiles, I figured it’d be best to glue it to the very top edge of the front peak.  Which I did.

Horizontal beam fitted and test fitting the paper piece #3.

Next up was fitting the decorative beams from the Chapter 111.  I had to saw off about 2mm of excess on the bottom and once I fitted that, I realized that the horizontal beam had been too far cut at the corners.  Even if I was sure to have done it correctly, I think it needed to extend out past the sloping edge of the roof.  Since I really didn’t want to ruin the front by ripping off piece 3 and the horizontal beam, I’m just going to see if I can use some other way of hiding the gaping holes.  (Maybe with more bird’s nests?) One thing I did realize was that the decorative beams are to be installed lining up to the paper piece three and not flush with the peak’s wall surface.  So that it gives a 3D spacial look inside the roof.  Actually very nice if it works out that way.

Gluing the beam decoration on the table - easier for installation afterwards.

Once I had cut the decorative beams, I glued them together and fit the bubble piece. The kit had me installing each piece and fitting the peak perfectly in place on the house which would be pretty impossible given the nature of piece #3 which is heavy card stock.  I figured I could best fit the piece whole beforehand on my table.  Which I did....but...
I still had to take it all apart.  When it came time to attach the tiles across the top, it was pretty clear that the famous paper piece #3 needed to be attached closer to the tiles already installed across the tops of the roof.  Luckily, the the decorative beams were attached to the paper piece so I just cut it away from the roof with the beams still attached, trimmed it to fit closer to the installed tiles and reglued it into place.  Now the beams and the bubble piece were closer to the peak’s surface (no longer 3D) but still looked fine.  I then attached the two tiles across the top.  All of this because I looked ahead (many many pages ahead) and found that the space between these tiles and the roof tiles running along the sides would be filled with some kind of black filler beam (in wood maybe...) so the open space would be diminished by repositioning as I did and then filling later...hopefully.

Fitting the peak decoration and discovering it was too far forward of the roof tiles so...

....I rmoved the whole piece, trimmed piece #3, and...

...reinstalled it.  Then I added the two side tiles.

Next up was the installation of the onigawara (roof ornamentation) used on houses and temples.  Sort of like gargoyles.  Wish mine were gargoyles.  Maybe I’ll have to keep that in the back of my mind and see if I can stumble upon some small gargoyles to stick up there eventually.  Anyway, one side of the roof tile was the valley part of the wave tile so I needed to glue a small piece to level out that side and make an even placement for the onigawara.  I had to also glue a cylindrical piece between the top of the two tiles on the sides of the peak.  I then could install the ornament.  And this side was complete.  Now, I just had to do the peak on the left back of the house following the same procedure!

Adding the onigawara.

Adding a tile to the row that butts up against the back roof peak tile.

I should have installed the back peak first since it was a first time trying it but hey, I have three more to do.  I noticed while installing the back part that since the back roof has yet to be tiled, the left side of the peak tiling was not really matching up.  So, I installed a tile there, then I installed my two peak tiles.  I could not install the onigawara here tho because the tiles for it to rest upon on the left are not there yet! How could they miss that.  So, I put it aside and will proceed with the rest leaving that for when I have actually finished tiling the sides of the back roof.  Odd tho...

Back roof peak installed except for the onigawara. Later....