Wild Flower Walks of Upper Teesdale - Christopher and Gayle Lowe
Price:£7.95
Swapped his magistrates’ bench for the workbench!
Aug 22, 2002
BOB Trotter from Startforth has swapped the magistrates’ bench for the workbench for his retirement project – well nearly!Bob, a retired magistrate and physiotherapist, put the finishing touches on Sunday to his project – an enormous scale model of a cathedral that he has painstakingly made out of MDF. And over the past year, wife Margaret has had the model – which is four feet long and two feet wide – stuck on her kitchen table!
“I didn’t have a design or a plan and it’s not based on anything except my imagination,” said Bob on Monday. “I just set off to do it. I built the two towers first, which determined its size, and filled in the centre.”
The end result is an elaborate model that looks a little like Notre Dame, all hand-crafted, with stained glass windows and an interior complete with pews, an organ, altar and pulpit, plus a rear chapel. There are 3,000 three quarter by half inch tiles on the roof, all individually cut from grey Marley tiles.
“I suppose I will sell it now,” said Bob, of Gill Lane, “because it’s the construction that interests me and the care needed to put it together.”
He’s already thinking about his next model – which will be even more elaborate and with a hinged front, which will enable him to build more intricate interior arches, which are currently precluded by the lift-off lid.