Castle Aching

[monkeysarefun]

Just now, St Enodoc said:

...but usually Rivergum or Monument.

 

 

Yes, my fence is rivergum....

[Edwardian]

17 minutes ago, monkeysarefun said:

Since I've taken to 3D printing of buildings I'm constantly surprised at the size of the finished models. Unlike card or styrene modelling where you get to have an idea of how big it will be from the  moment you draw up the sides on a bit of card, using CAD I have no idea until I have drawn it all up and  produced the print file and then find it is too big to fit on the printer in one piece. 

 

Keeping with the church theme, this one just down the road from me is a small building.

 

 

But even  in HO scale it is 6 inches long. If I hadn't measured the original with a tape I'd have assumed I had made a mistake, but no, it IS that big.

 

 

 

Conversely, I have found the opposite with cars. Lacking Australian outline cars in HO scale I've taken to designing them in Blender and  3D printing them, and there the opposite occurs - the resulting models  seem much smaller than expected and I have to recheck the scaling. Perhaps that is due to many HO  layouts here using OO scale cars or even Matchbox due to a general  lack of HO cars and I'm used to the larger sizes. 

 

Once I put them against a building though, they all match ok though in my mind taken individually  these are  undersized  cars in front of an oversized building!

 

 

 

 

 

I elected for craftsman clever as a testament to the skill and work involved, but also interesting, informative,  thought provoking etc.

 

5 minutes ago, monkeysarefun said:

This would not be an RM thread without posts about leaking shed roofs. What is it with all this felt and bitumen and thatch etc?   Is there an advantage in using all this stuff  in the 21st  century instead of say metal?

 

Here you wont find a shed that doesn't have a  zincalume or colourbond roof.

 

Colorbond is multicoated zincalume, which is a zinc/aluminium alloy. This is coated in a corrosion resistant layer, then an adhesive primer, then an oven baked finish in a range of colours. This is toppped with a UV and heat-resistant reflective coating made of ceramic and titanium dioxide particles, then a clear acrylic glaze.

 

The panels will last 70 years, and if the correct cyclone rated fastenings are used it can withstand winds of 275km/hr. 

 

I've never heard anyone complain about a leak in their shed roof here, unless a tree falls on it.

 

 

UK parishioners seem to think I need something called coraline ....!

 

 

3 minutes ago, St Enodoc said:

...but usually Rivergum or Monument.

 

You fascinate me strangely with such talk.

 

[Donw]

1 hour ago, monkeysarefun said:

Since I've taken to 3D printing of buildings I'm constantly surprised at the size of the finished models. Unlike card or styrene modelling where you get to have an idea of how big it will be from the  moment you draw up the sides on a bit of card, using CAD I have no idea until I have drawn it all up and  produced the print file and then find it is too big to fit on the printer in one piece. 

 

Keeping with the church theme, this one just down the road from me is a small building.

 

 

But even  in HO scale it is 6 inches long. If I hadn't measured the original with a tape I'd have assumed I had made a mistake, but no, it IS that big.

 

 

 

Conversely, I have found the opposite with cars. Lacking Australian outline cars in HO scale I've taken to designing them in Blender and  3D printing them, and there the opposite occurs - the resulting models  seem much smaller than expected and I have to recheck the scaling. Perhaps that is due to many HO  layouts here using OO scale cars or even Matchbox due to a general  lack of HO cars and I'm used to the larger sizes. 

 

Once I put them against a building though, they all match ok though in my mind taken individually  these are  undersized  cars in front of an oversized building!

 

 

 

 

 

If you are putting it into some kind of drawing package do you not know the size?

 

Don

[Tom Burnham]

8 minutes ago, Donw said:

 

If you are putting it into some kind of drawing package do you not know the size?

 

Don

I think the thought is that you may know the numbers but you don't appreciate what the size is until you see the finished (or with traditional methods part finished) model.  

[Donw]

If I was using a shed for something like a layout I would opt for an EDPM  not the cheapest but  25years+  life. It is easy for DIY. I have redone the garage which will be used for a layout.

You buy the sheet cut to a size allowing for the edges lay it onto the roof fold have back using a roller cover one half with adhesive smooth that half back over using a softish broom. Fold over the undone half  roll on adhesive then smooth that back fix round the edges ( used the fittings they can supply for neatness) all done.

Basically its a top quality pondline just as good at keeping water out as in. If any puddles stay on the roof ( old roofs mag sag a little) it matters not a jot.

I have done two extensions, two garages and a large shed with no problems

 

Don

 

 

ps if you happen to damage it it can be repaired like a bicycle tube puncture but I have walked over such roofs on one I stacked tiles onto boards to dedo the abutting sloping roof with no ill effects.

 

 

Edited February 3 by Donw
postscript

[Donw]

2 minutes ago, Tom Burnham said:

I think the thought is that you may know the numbers but you don't appreciate what the size is until you see the finished (or with traditional methods part finished) model.  

 

It is well worth cutting out a stiff paper mockup to check the size before going to the trouble of making a 3d print even when you know the size a building can look out of place if a bit too large (or two small). A roll of 1000 or 1200  lining wallpaper is good stuff to use espically if you have part of a roll left over but is pretty cheap anyway.

 

Don

[TurboSnail]

I'm not familiar with how they make those resin cast buildings but I suspect the cost is largely tied to the physical size of whatever moulds they have to use, coupled with (and this is pure speculation) probably lower expected sales numbers.

 

While I've 3D printed a lot of locos, I've never got fully on board with it for buildings, not sure why. I prefer to use plasticard sheet around a card shell, but do use 3D printing for some details like doors and windows. However, it's less fun when, as I did on Friday evening, you dig out your stock of plasticard for a weekend project and discover it's gone brittle and now shatters at the slightest touch of the knife! The Slaters thick stuff is fine, as is the SE Finecast sheet, but whatever this other brand is is now virtually unusable.

[Compound2632]

15 minutes ago, TurboSnail said:

I'm not familiar with how they make those resin cast buildings but I suspect the cost is largely tied to the physical size of whatever moulds they have to use, coupled with (and this is pure speculation) probably lower expected sales numbers.

 

The cost presumably goes up as somewhere between the square of the linear dimensions - surface area hence amount of material - and the cube - volume of the mould. So making a building that tin tab to 4 mm scale would presumably increase the cost by around (4/2.6)^2 to (4/2.6)^3 i.e. by a factor of 2.4 to 3.6.

 

Hornby have done various well-known railway buildings such as Settle & Carlisle stations; presumably these are to scale?

[BlueLightning]

23 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

Hornby have done various well-known railway buildings such as Settle & Carlisle stations; presumably these are to scale?

 

No idea about the Hornby ones, but my Bachmann Sheffield Park building is to the correct scale

Although reading this thread over the last couple of days has me looking at my Skaledale houses and thinking they are too small, and quite obviously so, but I'm not going to measure them to find out how much, I'm not 3D printing scale replacements!

Gary

[Annie]

3 hours ago, Edwardian said:

UK parishioners seem to think I need something called coraline ....!

 

 

Having just sprayed my cup of tea across the room I'm finding it difficult to stop giggling.

 

Like the Australian parish members I'm finding it difficult to understand why any number of a variety of rust resistant corrugated steel roofing products that are commonplace here in Australia and New Zealand aren't made use of in the UK.  The corrugated steel roof on my 1930s miners cottage might be getting on a bit, but it still keeps the water out.  It even managed to make a heroic job of it during the tropical cyclones we suffered during our 2023 Summer that wasn't.

[Nearholmer]

When Bunnings (iirc) briefly owned a UK DIY store chain, they started to sell some very fancy Aussie roofing sheets, and fencing systems made from similar material, rolled aluminium I think. Except that they didn’t sell it, because nobody bought it, and it just sat there gathering dust.

 

Buying barely-preserved timber and frail roofing felt seem to be such a part of British tradition that it’s hard to flog anything else, I guess. People would much rather have leaking roofs on their sheds, and fence posts that rot through at ground level and fall over every time the wind blows, than invest in fancy foreign stuff. I mean, it’s not as if we have a climate that encourages wood-rot, is it?

 

The one positive feature is that wood is a fairly sustainable product compared with aluminium - you can grow a tree quicker than geological processes give rise aluminium ore, and you don’t need  vast amounts of energy to smelt a stick.

[Andy Hayter]

Ut's not just Bachmann either.  Many years ago I bought the Jouef apartment block kit in H0.  N scale figures would not be able to get through the doors!

 

 

As well as materials costs for resin castings, you have to consider the shipping costs - much of which is the fresh air inside the casting.  Double the size of the model and the shipping cost goes up by a factor of 8.

[Edwardian]

3 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

 

Buying barely-preserved timber and frail roofing felt seem to be such a part of British tradition that it’s hard to flog anything else, I guess.

 

I had not realised you'd visited my shed!

 

3 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

 

People would much rather have leaking roofs on their sheds, and fence posts that rot through at ground level and fall over every time the wind blows, than invest in fancy foreign stuff. I mean, it’s not as if we have a climate that encourages wood-rot, is it?

 

 

We know best! British Exceptionalism, we have so much to thank it for!

 

[Annie]

5 hours ago, TurboSnail said:

However, it's less fun when, as I did on Friday evening, you dig out your stock of plasticard for a weekend project and discover it's gone brittle and now shatters at the slightest touch of the knife! The Slaters thick stuff is fine, as is the SE Finecast sheet, but whatever this other brand is is now virtually unusable.

I can remember when the plasticard revolution hit the shops and the railway mags.  Many articles were published about how plasticard was the miracle material that was going to transform modelling.  Not in any way wishing to denigrate Brother TurboSnail's  modelling skills or methods, but I knew the day would come when my adherence to the John Ahern school of model building construction would be shown to be worthy.  Wood and card models have their own ways of demonstrating their aging with the passing of time, but at least shattering isn't one of them.

[monkeysarefun]

 

8 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

When Bunnings (iirc) briefly owned a UK DIY store chain, they started to sell some very fancy Aussie roofing sheets, and fencing systems made from similar material, rolled aluminium I think. Except that they didn’t sell it, because nobody bought it, and it just sat there gathering dust.

 

 

 

That would have been it - Colorbond, made by Bluescope/BHP.  The BHP steelworks at Wollongong was one of the big employers who used to visit our school  with leaflets to encourage us to work there, them and the coal mines around here.   Though in the coal mining case it wasn't for any role that sent you  underground to actually dig  the coal up because you had to practically be the offspring of a miner to get that lucrative role.

 

I was down there recently and the steelworks have cleaned up their act a whole lot since the 80's when we'd go on school excursions there, I even took a photo because  it looks almost picturesque now with its rusty patina,  nestled on the beach with the Illawarra  escarpment in the background. Hopefully the locals no longer  complain about the fallout from the  chimneys eating holes in their washing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I'm not sure what the alternative shed roofing here would be if we didnt have metal.  Corrugated asbestos sheeting was a popular option  up until the 1950's or 60's but that's obviously off  the list. Tiles are expensive and  heavy and impractical on small structures. Timber is prone to white ants, rot  and birds and wildlife chewing on it,  and bitumen sheets  and roofing felt would be bloody awesome in a bushfire...

Edited February 3 by monkeysarefun

[Nearholmer]

24 minutes ago, monkeysarefun said:

Colorbond

That was the stuff. Coated steel then, rather than aluminium.

 

A few fencing contractors in very well-off areas do offer it here, but it is incredibly rare to see a fence of it “in the wild”.

 

If it is steel, doesn’t one scratch in the coating result in an instant rust-fest? It certainly would here.

[monkeysarefun]

18 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

That was the stuff. Coated steel then, rather than aluminium.

 

A few fencing contractors in very well-off areas do offer it here, but it is incredibly rare to see a fence of it “in the wild”.

 

If it is steel, doesn’t one scratch in the coating result in an instant rust-fest? It certainly would here.

 

 

From the colorbond website (hence terms like "industry leading"):

 

 

Manufactured in Australia to Australian Standards (AS1397 and AS/NZS 2728) and tested in some of the harshest Australian conditions over the last 50 years, genuine COLORBOND® steel is far more than just ‘paint on steel’.

The steel base is manufactured to meet relevant Australian Standards, ensuring strict adherence to the required grade and strength.

The base is then coated in BlueScope’s industry leading metallic coating , to provide enhanced corrosion resistance.

A thin pretreatment layer is applied to optimise the adhesion of further coatings.

A corrosion inhibitive primer is baked onto the surface.

A topcoat of specially developed, exterior grade paint is baked on to provide resistance to chipping, flaking and blistering and to ensure the finish retains its look for longer.

 

I've definitely never seen a rusty colorbond panel and it is ubiquitous here - I don't think anything else is used for suburban fencing  now for example. Bottoms of fences in constant contact with  damp ground may rust  if damaged but I don't think roofing would be prone to it in our climate.

 

 

 

Edited February 3 by monkeysarefun

[Andy Hayter]

I have done a search on the Activate (tm) coating, which they say is an aluminium/zinc/magnesium blend (alloy?).  As such it would be a sacrificial coating - eroding/ corroding  in favour of protecting the steel but they also say that the coating has a degree of self protection.  I guess generating a protective oxide coating to prevent further degradation.  

 

This seems to be a higher tech version of simple zinc galvanisation.

[Buhar]

Glass fibre roofs are an option and they've usually got a 20 year guarantee.  For my railway house (some way off yet, regrettably) I'm planning on using Insulated Steel Panels, basically Kingspan PIR sandwiched between shaped, coated steel sheets.  They're about 1m wide and can span 3.5m unsupported, interlocking with each other.  You can get a whole building made from them.

 

Alan

[Nearholmer]

^^^
 

They are very good indeed.

[Donw]

Given our climate the EDPM is a good solution. I have used coated corrugated steel as it had to match the other half our garage then had two halves one for us the other for the neighbour his still had asbestos someone had replaced ours with onduline which across spans is useless. The  corrugated sheets were coated with flock underneath to stop condensation drips. They supplied them to length mine were 6.3m long.

However the EDPM on sterlng board is warmer.

 

Don

[St Enodoc]

11 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

When Bunnings (iirc) briefly owned a UK DIY store chain, they started to sell some very fancy Aussie roofing sheets, and fencing systems made from similar material, rolled aluminium I think. Except that they didn’t sell it, because nobody bought it, and it just sat there gathering dust.

 

Buying barely-preserved timber and frail roofing felt seem to be such a part of British tradition that it’s hard to flog anything else, I guess. People would much rather have leaking roofs on their sheds, and fence posts that rot through at ground level and fall over every time the wind blows, than invest in fancy foreign stuff. I mean, it’s not as if we have a climate that encourages wood-rot, is it?

 

The one positive feature is that wood is a fairly sustainable product compared with aluminium - you can grow a tree quicker than geological processes give rise aluminium ore, and you don’t need  vast amounts of energy to smelt a stick.

You don't generally have termites to contend with.

[monkeysarefun]

19 minutes ago, St Enodoc said:

You don't generally have termites to contend with.

 

 

Or cockies.

 

 

 

 

[Nearholmer]

Would make a good tag line for one of those dull-trying-to-be-exciting business documentaries on telly:

 

”If only they’d told us they didn’t have termites! How Bunnings bombed in Britain”

 

They had to write-off a billion Australian dollars due to totally misunderstanding how the big DIY shop market in the UK works, which is by selling cushions and aspirations to women. They paid I think £350M for the Homebase chain of stores, made a huge trading loss, got tangled in a long site leases problem, shut some of the stores, then sold the rest for £1.

 

 

Edited February 4 by Nearholmer

[monkeysarefun]

1 hour ago, Nearholmer said:

shut some of the stores, then sold the rest for £1.

 

 

Wish I'd known that at the time. Instead of paying 50 bucks for a litre of paint, I could have bought the whole UK business instead, got my tin of paint, thrown all the rest away and saved 48 dollars.

Edited February 4 by monkeysarefun