Progress with the Pharmacy building has continued and the roof is now nearing completion.   I preferred using sheet metal (in this case nickle silver) for roofs as I find it is the easiest was to then include gutters.  In this case, I designed the roof as a simple fold up etch and subsequently the gutters were formed by half round section from Eileen’s Emporium.

One of the pieces of artistic licence I went for relative to the real Kyle Pharmacy was to elongate the building slightly.  This was partly because the prototype was a bit square and squat but also because I fancied including a decorative ridge piece.  The Victorians and Edwardians did love a bit of decoration and this included the details to their buildings.  There were numerous contemporary catalogues of architectural bits and pieces from which to choose from and I liked the idea of something pretty – especially given that this model will be right at the front of the layout.  So I created a design of my own and etched it; along also with the characteristic sign that is so prominent in the photo in my last post.

Those that looked carefully at the prototype photograph in the last post will have noted that the roof slates were diamond shaped.  These were, in fact, asbestos slates and were quite a common material for pre-fabricated and simple buildings such as the Kyle Pharmacy.  Clearly they needed to be modelled but I did no fancy my chances of cutting the odd couple of thousand slates consistently.  I toyed with getting some laser cut or cut on a silhouette machine but then had a brainwave – pinking shears.

For reasons I don’t quite know, dressmakers use these to create zigzag cuts and even better, my wife had a set.  However, she spotted me taking a look at them which meant I had a very firm talking too and was immediately banned from using them!!  Researching them on the internet showed that they come in a variety of pitches but be warned not all of them have 90º serrations.  I did find a set with a 4mm pitch which was a bit less than the 5mm that I thought was scale for the Kyle Pharmacy but as this equates to a 12 inch slate, I thought it was plausible and not a bodge too far.  As you can see below, they produce a neat and consistent serration.

I cut the slates from plain paper in strips which I then sprayed a mid-grey colour because I felt that asbestos tiles might be a bit lighter than normal welsh slates.  I deliberately allowed a tiny bit of inconsistency of colour to creep in, to provide a little texture to the roof.  However, painting them was not easy as the air of the airbrush sent them flying – so I had to create a cradle to mount them in for spraying.

Once painted, I secured them with spraymount and carefully set them out, with the point of the diamond to the row above meeting the apex of the one below.

It takes some time (around 2 hours for a fairly small roof!) but I think the effect is quite convincing.  I find the the best effect to make it look natural is to lay the slates as consistently as possible – you don’t achieve perfect consistency and these small imperfections end up making it that little bit more.  Deliberately introducing inconsistencies tends to look a little contrived; including in this case my slightly differing shades, however, this was expected and can be overcome.

The blend the colours together, I washed the slates with artist’s acrylic always ensuring that the brush stroke was down the roof to mimic the flow of the weather.

I also formed the ridge and hip flashings with cigarette paper which I had first sprayed with grey primer and then secured with more spraymount.  This was laid over 0.6mm brass rod to give the central lead roll effect – this was secured in place with superglue.  I initially tried to make the lead flashings in sections so that the correct laps between one piece and the other was achieved but I never got close to a neat or believable finish.  Thus I ended up doing this in one piece per run.

The front signboard will need some more work yet (partly because I have damaged it!), which will feature in a future post as I am going to have a bash at producing transfers.