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The interior of the temple in the dark. I later placed a wood bead under the altar so that the gap was filled up. A 60mm King & Country senator is shown for size comparison. |
I wanted to add a small round Roman temple to my city, one that is small enough to not overwhelm all of the other buildings that I have made so far; yet I also wanted it to be large enough to make a statement.
I think that I may have achieved this with my new round Roman temple.
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The nearly completed temple with a battery operated flame on the altar. |
I have limited carpentry tools and talents so I needed some already-made round components to build the temple. A trip to Hobby Lobby secured a 7-inch diameter round wood base. I then found two different sizes of round bases that would comprise the roof of the temple. I also found a round ring that looks like it might be made from hard compressed card board.
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This picture shows the various wood components that I found at Hobby Lobby. The wedding cake plastic columns were found on eBay. |
The interior of the temple needed a mosaic floor and an altar. I did an internet search for Roman mosaics and found this image of a round mosaic. I cut out the round part from the paper and discarded the rectangular components. For the altar, I used a kitchen cabinet door knob and a wood round bead.
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A Roman floor mosaic image from the internet serves as the temple floor. |
Finally, a visit to the cloth section produced some rolls of different gold bricbrac to use for gold trim around the roof. I got the latter idea from a 28mm round temple that Herb Gundt made for me many years ago.
The various parts of the floor were glued together with wood glue, and then clamped together with "C" Clamps over night. I did the same for the roof structure. I cut out the mosaic pattern and glued it to the floor using spray adhesive.
I had previously drilled a hole through the center of the round base and screwed in the door knob that would become the temple's altar. The base wasn't thick/deep enough for me to screw the entire threaded piece into the wood. There was a gap between the knob and the floor. I filled this with a wooden bead, painted with the Antique White chalk paint.
Now I am at the most difficult step in the assembly project: gluing the columns to the floor and the roof to the columns so that every piece is lined up true. Fortunately the mosaic floor has some rectangular patterns on the edge of the round and these served as perfect location guides for the placement of the columns.
I will use two-part epoxy glue to attached the columns to the temple floor. Allowing for some time for the glue to set, say, a couple of hours. I will then glue the roof to the columns. This latter step makes me a little uneasy because once the glue is spread over the top of the column, I have to lower the roof section from above so that it sits "just right" and even on all sides of the temple.
The final touch is the battery powered flickering light bulb that I will place atop the altar when it is being used in a game. I don't want to run down the battery, of course, so the flickering flame is not turned on when it is stored away.
I am rather pleased with the results of this build. Nearly all of its components were sourced from Hobby Lobby and so I didn't need to cut out round pieces of wood with a jig saw. This model will truly stand out on the table top and catch the attention of passers by at the Historicon convention in July.