You have your building just about finished. Your thinking about the roof.
What kind? Made of what? How will it holdup out side? How hard will it be to make?
What do you want in a roof? If for outdoor use it must keep rain out of the building. Then it has to look good and be easy to make. This type roof should cover all of those needs.
It only takes a few simple tools to make this type of a roof. A
marking pen, a old Ball Point Pen, a ruler, straight edge, and a pair of Scissors. Another useful tool when working with metal, but not necessary for this project, is a Hand Brake.
There are other sources of metal in throw away pans of all kinds, in different gauges. I found the local recycle center to be a source of rolls of used metal. They refer to the metal as a Aluminum Foil, even though it comes in a heavy gauge and hardness. Some of the metal is soft and works fine in the different types of crimpers, and some of the metal is thin but to hard to use in a crimper. Metal beverage cans are an example of thin metal that is to hard to crimp without first heating it to temper and softening the metal.
The only hard part in making this type of roof in one section is a piece of Aluminum that is large enough.
These Roasting Pans make good roofing and siding when you burnish, "rub", the design into the metal. These pans are too heavy for making corrugated metal using the Fiskars Paper Crimper. But work well for roofing.
The pans have ridges in them that have to be removed. I use the flat end of a stick to rub out the design to make a flat surface to work with. These pans have a fair amount of metal in them.
The pan as it came from the package.
Corners cut out and sides and ends bent flat.
After the ridges have been smoothed out using a flat stick. I worked a couple of raised lines in the metal to show that the original design in the metal has been removed.
This shows the before and after rubbing the original ridges out of the Pan.
On the reveres side I used a ball point pen to work the design into the metal.
For clarity, I used a marking pen to bring out the design worked into the metal.
I make all of my measurements for 1/2" scale, 1/2" = 1'. This makes laying out and building models easier as most common widow and door manufactures make their doors and windows in 1/2" scale.
Grandt Line offers a free 1/2" "G" scale catalog for their doors and windows and other scratch building products. On the Grandt Line site they have images of all of their products.
Measure the roof to see where your want your panels to start and end. Laying out the panels’ one inch apart will give you a two-foot panel in 1/2" scale.
Depending on the type of metal roof covering I am using, I bend the edges of the metal to the approximate size of the roof, then make the sub-roof to fit the metal work if necessary.
On the backside of the metal using a straight edge and a felt marker layout the lines for the panels.
Use a ball point pen and straight edge to work the lines into the metal.
Use the end of a flat stick to smooth out the metal between the lines if needed on the finished roof, this helps the metal lay flat.
Now that you have the design burnished into the metal and if you don't have a flat roof you can bend it so that there will not be a seam at the peak of the roof to leak. If you didn't have a piece of metal big enough to make the roof in one piece you can add a strip of metal along the peak of the roof to keep it from leaking at the seam.
Mark where you want your bend to be on the roof. You can use a ball point pen to mark it. This will give you a sharper bend when you make the bend in the roof.
Lay a straight edge on the line and carefully bend the roof on the line you made.
As you bend the roof refer to your building to get the right angle. It is a lot easier to add more bend then to take it out.
I hope you find this page helpful. Good luck on your Project.
