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constructing Scalescene roofs

Fen End Pit

Entry posted by Fen End Pit

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The last few days have been spent putting a hipped roof on top of my Scalescenes constructed goods warehouse. As I've built the various units I've been developing the method and thought people might be interested in the order of construction which worked best for me.

 

First up is a general picture of the building I've been putting the roof on. This is a railway owned goods warehouse positioned next the a viaduct on my North-East London 'Empire Basin' layout in P4.

 

post-7212-0-28849500-1293798970_thumb.jpg

 

The shape of the roof was drawn up in TurboCAD, you can see a finished hipped section and the net drawn out next to it. In addition to drawing the outline I also put a number of parallel lines to help align the rows of slates. The distance apart isn't really critical as these are just there to help me keep a straight line.

 

post-7212-0-20407300-1293799084_thumb.jpg

 

The paper net was cut out and then positioned on the building, as this part of the building is against a backscene I the trimmed the paper to the back of the building by eye.

 

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The paper was then stuck to 1mm card using a glue stick. I've found that not all glue sticks are the same and you can use the different characteristics to your advantage when building Scalescenes models. For large areas of paper where you want some degree of adjustment before it 'holds' I particularly like WHSmith own brand glue stick. This is slightly slippy when applied and allows for movement as you put the two work pieces together. Where you want more immediate 'stick' for example on the 'fold over' on buttresses I prefer original Pritt stick or Power Pritt.

 

The complete unit was then bent to shape, the ridge stuck with PVA and a length of masking tape while the PVA set.

 

post-7212-0-08610200-1293799601_thumb.jpg

 

Next up comes the slates. Here I found the order to do things made a significant difference to the speed at which you could put things together. On the first roof section I cut a line of slates out, applied the glue, stuck it on the roof, repeat..... This works fine but it is tedious constantly changing tool and trying to apply glue to a narrow strip wastes glue and gets a waste piece of material covered in glue.

 

I settled on the following method:

 

Firstly I cut between the rows of slates all in one go, keeping the ruler consistently to one side of the grey line on paper. By positioning the paper with the cuts going left to right and then working with a steel ruler cutting each row moving towards me I found I could always see which row I'd just cut and avoided cutting a 'diagonal' across of row of slates when I lost my concentration (yes, I did this once when I was cutting one row at a time)

 

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Then I turn the whole paper over and apply glue stick the a number of strips simultaneously.

 

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Then the ends of a strip can be cut and a single strip, pre-glued, taken from the paper and applied to the roof. I found applying a coating of glue stick to the roof made for easier sticking, the WHSmith slippy glue stick means you can move the strip once on the roof and the horizontal lines drawn on the net help you to align then rows of slates well.

 

post-7212-0-70011400-1293800274_thumb.jpg

 

Once a whole side of the roof was completed I moved on to the other sides of the roof. Remember that you can trim off the excess strip and put to one side to use on another section of roof later.

 

post-7212-0-83308100-1293800388_thumb.jpg

 

Trimming the slates to the roof seems to be best done with a pair off sharp large scissors. I found I could hold one blade of the scissors against the roof and then cut along the ridge of the hip without too much problem.

 

post-7212-0-95839600-1293800520_thumb.jpg

 

Finally ridge tiles were applied, I found sticking these with PVA worked for me. If you apply a little pressure to the sides of the ridge tile strip as you stick it down you can get a little ridge along of the fold. It might even be worth trying to put a length of plasticard rod under the paper, maybe I'll try that next time.

 

post-7212-0-50503900-1293800675_thumb.jpg

 

I hope people find this useful and once again thanks to John Wiffen for an excellent range of kits and resources for scratch builders.

 

David Barham

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4 Comments

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  • RMweb Gold
Captain Kernow
  • RMweb Gold

Hi David,

 

I find that most of the methods you describe work fine for me, too, although I baulk at the idea of applying glue to several slate strips at once, so I just plod along, one row at a time...

 

It's great that you can use computer programmes to work out the hipped roof angles, I wish that I could get on with computer programmes like that as easily!

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54Strat

Hi David,

 

Interesting use of the word 'net' to describe the 2D layout. I've not come across this term in over 20 years in the CAD and 3D industry and I'm wondering if it's a TurboCAD term? Technically, it's called a development, though I have used the crude term 'pelting' for laying out texture space for characters.

 

Paul

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  • RMweb Gold
Fen End Pit
  • RMweb Gold

Hi David,

 

Interesting use of the word 'net' to describe the 2D layout. I've not come across this term in over 20 years in the CAD and 3D industry and I'm wondering if it's a TurboCAD term? Technically, it's called a development, though I have used the crude term 'pelting' for laying out texture space for characters.

 

Paul

 

Hi Paul

 

I'm probably getting my terms wrong, I just seem to vaguely remember being told to 'draw the net of a shape' in O level technical drawing in 1980. I'll have to ask around work next week and see if anyone else remembers the term. Mind you, with the bunch of Phd mathematicians who write Parasolid (3D solid modelling engine used in SolidEdge, NX and a multiple of other CAD systems) my chances of understanding their answers are low!

 

David

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54Strat

Hi David,

 

You're in the best company at work to answer this question :).

 

One pet project I've got ticking over is a tool to take a fully textured 3d model and interactively unfold it to a single plane in order to print it and assembly it. There are lots of tools that'll do this in texture space (UV space) but very few that'll do this in 3D space. So for the case of your hipped roof, one could model it in 3D and discreetly unwrap (or develop) it to a 2D plane without any calculations.

 

One thing that's similar is this pepakura, which is a standalone app that pretty much does what I'm after, though I've not used it before it does seem quite a bit of fun and quite cheap for what it is too.

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