Cupola Chaos

Did you hear that? That huge sigh of relief? That was me.  The caboose finally has a cupola, and the damned thing almost drove me over the edge.  This is actually the third cupola that I've built for this caboose.

With the first one, I cut out all of the pieces, and as I was cutting out the window openings, the walls split.  I tried gluing them back together, but once assembled, they looked terrible - misaligned, crooked, and warped.  I trashed that one and started over.

On the second cupola, I cut the walls and glued them together, THEN tried to cut out the window openings.  Again, problems with the wood splitting, and again, I glued them back together again.  This one didn't turn out too bad, but then I dropped it.  It didn't survive the fall.

For attempt number three, I again cut out the walls, and again tried to cut out the window openings before assembling the cupola.  This time, however, I cut the openings out in small chunks.  I only split one wall.  I quickly glued the roof on to add strength, and added some internal bracing.  Windows glass was installed next, along with the window frames.  The roof was given the same treatment as the caboose roof, with strips of aluminum foil glued on top.

With that accomplished, I proceeded to paint the "metal" roof of the caboose and the cupola.  For now, the cupola is not glued down.  I'm going to give the paint a couple of days to dry, then I'll sand some of it off to expose the metal underneath.  I'll glue the cupola down once that is done.