Spanish Tile Roofs

Spanish tile is half-round sections, but the thickness of the half-rounds is going to have a big effect on the final appearance. Plastic is going to be too thick but perhaps thin walled brass tubing would be about right. More practically, paper drinking straws might do the job, but you'd have to make a jig to cut them all evenly.

Scott, I've never made them but you might try to half some tubing and cut it into short pieces. Then make jig or form on a small board with the pieces and see if aluminum foil or some other material could be used to emboss strips of the tile shingles. Another way to make a form might be to glue some tubing or rod to a board with thin strips of wood or card stock to half the thickness of the tubing between each piece of tube. If you have a drill press or a steady hand and a drill you might be able to clamp two pieces of wood together. Then with an appropriate sized drill bit drill holes spaced along the meeting line giving you half round notches in each piece. With pieces of tubing glued into the notches of one piece you might have might a useful device to stick some foil in and form strips of shingles rapidly by punching them out. When it comes to laying out your shingles start at the bottom of your roof and put down the tile strips to make a single row, then your next row can be overlapped accordingly and so on for each row. For the cap at the peak of your roof cut individual pieces of from your strips, start at one end and glue each one down over lapping other. If you model has valleys it might be best to fit your roof but not glue it down until after you have the shingles in place. This would make cutting your tile off at an angle more easy and also it would also be more easy to pop back up any tile that got mashed or flattened out when cut. I think that the short time making a cutting jig or embossing form of some sorts might give you faster more consistent results even if making individual tiles. And you will have your jig ready to go if you ever make another model with the same type of roof. Do a google image search on "Spanish Tile Roof" and you will find some close up pictures that can help you decide on the spacing for your tiles. Anyway these are just some ideas to kick around as I have not tried them out. Let us know what you come up and how it works out. Bruce

I am modeling in HO Scale.
Thanks!
Scott

Here's a site that used corrugated cardboard for tiles: . Not sure that will suit your scale. David
Bruce Fav> Scott,

Go find a piece textured aluminum siding, spray it the color you would like and off the end of the piece, cut strips at the desired width. Touch up the edges and overlay the strips on the roof.
My 2 cents Dave

Plastruct #91638 is HO scale spanish tile.
Package contains two 7" by 12" sheets.
$7.90 per pkg from Peach Creek Shops
peachcreekshops.com