I've glued all the roof layers together now and started shaping the roof. I made up a new concave template as the previous convex one would have been quite useless. here's the new one

I started cutting the roof with a craft knife and the card cut almost like soft wood quite surprisingly, part of me was saying it was cardboard yet physically it was like carving wood, a strange feeling somehow.

The process of shaping the roof was a bit messy, producing a lot of dust and shavings. I thought the dust might come in handy for making a filler by combining it with PVA (shown previously) in this next photo you can also see where I marked up the roof with centre lines, lines where the end curves started and two lines 7mm each side of the centre line as a control to stop me sanding too much from the top of the roof

I hadn't made the top section small enough it could have done with one more layer because ro get the curve to meet at the top would have meant sanding off another millimetre and as I'd been sanding away for a couple of hours, that sounds nuts as it's only card but it's surprising how tough it can be when bonded into a large chunk.

I have now added another layer which when the glue has dried thoroughly will be sanded to complete the profile. I might add at this stage that I want to try to keep it as a card model with as little other materials as possible. The only other materials will be in the etched brass detailing. Oh yes! I've enough confidence in the model now to splash out a few quid on extras. Here's a pic of the roof to date with the added layer

The little 'flags' beside it are the louvred panels which after some catastrophic attempts by hand I drew up in Inkscape I copied one of each size of panel and pasted into a new page. I created a 'block' 1mm thick (just a short line really) and used that to space horizontal lines within the panel, these were ina different colour (green) to the outline the panels (red) these were then grouped. I then made an oblong about 200mm long by 2mm wide and duplicated it several times and coloured this different again (blue).

When I came to cut the parts in the Silhouette I just ticked the green box in the cut control menu and scored these lines then ticked the red box and cut all these, finally ticking the blue box and cutting these only. That way I can produce only the parts I need.

I used the score lines as a guide to stick the 2mm strips overlapping each other by 1mm to make the louvres, a very intricate fiddly job I might add. That's what the little flags are, half completed louvres.

I've made a start on fitting the doors these were cut in two widths one fits inside the opening and one larger one behind to stick to the inside. Successive layers were then applied to bring the face of the door to somewhere near the face of the side.

So there you have it up to date, on with the sanding and louvre making

more soon