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
Here's a site that used corrugated cardboard for tiles:
<http://www.staff.ncl.ac.uk/nikolas.lloyd/models/scenery/build2.html .
Not sure that will suit your scale.
David
Bruce Favinger wrote:
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
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