Recently started working on this wood model that my wife's mother gave me. It's been many, many, many years since I've built a plastic model, never built a wood model before. Not only have I not built any sort of model in a long time, but I also can't really read/understand Japanese. I can read/write katakana and hiragana and I do know a few kanji, but I can't actually understanding anything. Luckily I have a phone app that can translate what I need, when my wife get's mad for pestering her to translate for me lol, but for the most part you can understand what you need to do just by looking at the pictures.
This is a model of a 5 story pagoda in Nara prefecture, Japan at the temple grounds of Hōryū-ji; apparently one of the worlds oldest wooden buildings with it's center pillar being dated to have been felled in 594.
Started yesterday actually. Just about finished step two. Been a fun challenge so far figuring out the best course of doing things. You can see that the square base isn't exactly perfect. I had glued two pieces together forming two sections, let them dry for about 30 minutes, then glued the two sections together forming a square. But when putting them together it was a little off which then gave the square board a tight fight which a gave a light sanding.
Have to give the sides of the stairs a trim on top and bottom to make them flat, letting the pieces dry for now. On the short corner pieces you can see little squares. Had to trim those down from longer pieces, and the corner squares I had to shave an angle so they would meet up correctly. Fun figuring out the best way to go about doing this stuff.
Need to get something like a picture frame glass so I can do the trimming with my X-acto knife without marring up our table... :)
Clickable images to take you to full size view.