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Need help with roofing on building kit

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  • Member since
    August 2010
  • From: Columbia, IL
  • 394 posts
Need help with roofing on building kit
Posted by wdcrvr on Sunday, June 24, 2012 11:20 AM

I am assembling the DPM Kit #20100 Schultz's Garage.  It is a small brick building with a sloped roof and the front and back brick wall exceed the height of the roof.  But the slope of the roof overhangs the sides of the building.  The roof material is sheet styrene without any shingles, tiles, etc, embossed on it.  The picture provided with the kit looks like it is a tarpaper (tarred) roof.  I thought you only find tar or tarpaper on flat roofs.  Does tar make sense for this structure?  Other suggestions for roofing material on this building?  And any tips on building it.  This is my first structure kit.  My wall, windows and doors look pretty good so far.

Thanks

wdcrvr

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Posted by m horton on Sunday, June 24, 2012 11:46 AM

It,s actually rolled asphalt roofing, usually 3 feet wide. It can be black, white, red or even green. It has granules on it just like shingles. It's very common. You could also do shingles, or a galvanized metal roof. But rolled roofing is common with a peaked roof.mh

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Posted by rrebell on Sunday, June 24, 2012 2:42 PM

As long as the pitch is not too great, you can tar and gravel a roof!

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Posted by Grampys Trains on Sunday, June 24, 2012 3:52 PM

Hi: This is how I modeled rolled or "tar paper" roofing. I cut tissue paper into scale 3' wide strips. Then, I painted a section of the roof with Floquil Grimy Black paint.  While the paint is wet, I applied a strip of the tissue paper. Then I applied another coat of paint over the tissue paper.  I just continued up the roof, overlapping the the strips. DJ.

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Posted by hon30critter on Sunday, June 24, 2012 8:19 PM

wdcrvr

m horton is likely correct when he suggests that the prototype would have used rolled roofing. Some people like Grampy use strips of tissue paper to achieve the effect. I prefer to use paper from a manilla envelope. It is thicker than scale rolled roofing would be but I believe it shows the seams to better effect. With tissue paper the seams are barely visible.

Here is a station with the manilla paper:

 

Here is a roof with tissue paper. I have used a sharp pencil to highlight the seams because they did not show much.

 

Dave

I'm just a dude with a bad back having a lot of fun with model trains, and finally building a layout!

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  • From: Pittsburgh, PA
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Posted by ctyclsscs on Sunday, June 24, 2012 9:03 PM

How did you color the manilla paper, Dave? They look great.

Jim

  • Member since
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  • From: Bradford, Ontario
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Posted by hon30critter on Sunday, June 24, 2012 9:28 PM

Jim

Thanks!

The station has a coat of automotive primer to seal the paper to prevent wrinkling when acrylic paint is used. I should have mentioned that step in the first post.  It has yet to receive the final colour. What may appear to be weathering is simply the result of me handling the structure without wearing latex gloves. My bad!

The second structure which is an ice house is painted with PolyScale. I can't remember the exact colour. Just to clarify, the second structure was done using tissue paper, not manilla paper. The seams show because I have drawn a line down each seam with a very sharp lead pencil. Before using the pencil the seams really did not show.

Some will suggest that the manilla roofing seams are too pronounced. They would be right in terms of the seams being bigger than scale. However I personally think that some things should be modeled out of scale so that they "show". For example, I used real sand - very fine sand - to model my sanding facility. In reality individual grains of sand could not be seen with the naked eye in HO scale. The surface of the pile would appear to be almost smooth. In my humble opinion what may be right prototypically doesn't neccessarily look right when modeling. I wanted viewers to see 'sand' even though in HO scale the sand grains would be the size of coarse gravel.

Each to his or her own! This is a typical case of "its my railroad - I will do what I want", even if it means pouring gravel in the sanders!Smile, Wink & GrinLaugh

Dave

I'm just a dude with a bad back having a lot of fun with model trains, and finally building a layout!

  • Member since
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  • From: upstate NY
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Posted by galaxy on Monday, June 25, 2012 12:38 AM

I am gathering it is a shllow pitched roof front to back.

I would agree that it would most likely have been covered with rolled asphalt roofing. shallow pitched roofs are usually covered in the 3' wide {by like 50 ' long for fewer seams} rolled roofing.

SOme guys have great success in using very very very very very very fine sand paper strips cut to scale 3' wide. some paint it, others use the black sandpaper and weather it with gray chalks or paints.

I used this method to "improve" a stamped plastic rolled roofing impression I didn't like.

Others use masking tape to help simulate rolled roofing. That method I will try next time.

Geeked

-G .

Just my thoughts, ideas, opinions and experiences. Others may vary.

 HO and N Scale.

After long and careful thought, they have convinced me. I have come to the conclusion that they are right. The aliens did it.

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Posted by sschnabl on Tuesday, June 26, 2012 12:50 PM

I've used the fine sandpaper (400 or 600 grit) for my N scale buildings.  I've also used roofing material from Builders in Scale, which comes in several colors (gray, black, green, and red).  All this was used to simulate rolled roofing material.

Scott

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    April 2003
  • From: Clinton, MO, US
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Posted by Medina1128 on Saturday, July 7, 2012 8:15 AM

hon30critter

 

http://i785.photobucket.com/albums/yy132/HOn30critter/P7130142.jpg

 

Dave

Dave, that looks like the same station I built (a Blair Lines laser cut kit). I used some paper shingling that I cut into strips to cover the roof. One thing that needs to be mentioned is that if you use strip shingling or roofing ALWAYS start from the bottom, so that the overlap is on the top edge of the preceding strip.

Finished station. 

The shingles that cover the corners of the roof were made by cutting individual shingles out of the sheet of shingles. Yes, I needed a week of recovery!!

Corner caps applied. The same method was used across the top of the roof after the chimney was glued in place.

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Posted by doctorwayne on Saturday, July 7, 2012 3:24 PM

I've used .005" sheet styrene to simulate roll roofing on small structures.  At almost 1/2" in HO scale, it's too thick but is one of those situations where it "looks right", even though it's not. Smile, Wink & Grin




 

Another simple method, especially for larger structures, is to use paint.  Cut strips of masking tape into scale 3' widths, then apply it to the pre-painted roof as if you were going to leave it in place, with the only difference being to leave about  6" scale space both between the strips and anywhere you wish to simulate the end of a roll and the beginning of a new one.  Airbrush the masked-off roof with a contrasting colour - a fairly dark shade of grey seems to work well with most roof colours - then remove the lowest course of masking tape.  Using either the colour which you applied in the previous step or a similarly-coloured shade of "dirt", but thinned quite severely, make one or two light passes with the spray directed upwards, toward the bottom edge of the lowest remaining strip of tape.  Continue to remove the next lowest strips of tape, and spraying as before.  The result will be softly delineated lines of separation between the applied roofing, with run-off weathering below each course, and the weathering heaviest near the bottom of the roof, where it would naturally run.



 

Wayne

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