How to make them

Having looked at the price of ready-made 4mm scale corrugated iron sheeting and almost fallen off my chair :shock:, I set about making my own.

I recently purchased a 'tube roller' - a device for squeezing paint,  toothpaste or other substances out of tubes - for the princely sum of  Â£1.99p from 'The Works'. This has a strongly corrugated base and matching  roller.

I tried making some model 'corrugated iron' from ordinary printer paper but the result wasn't crisp enough.

I tried cooking foil. That looked good but was too weak. The corrugations failed with the lightest finger pressure.

I tried cereal box card, but that was too thick and stiff to take the shape properly.

Finally I hit upon a scheme to combine the two materials. I got SWMBO to  'donate' some baking foil - the thicker stuff used when one roasts a  turkey, not the thin, everyday stuff. I then took some thin card - so  thin it's more like a heavy paper.

I laid up a grid of 26mm x 12mm rectangles on the computer, using MS  Publisher, calculating that 26mm x 12mm equates to 6'6" x 3'0"; a  standard corrugated iron sheet size according to my research.

I printed out the grid onto the thin card, then coated the unprinted  side with spray adhesive. The baking foil was spread carefully onto the  adhesive and gently flattened out with a rubber roller.

Once the adhesive was dry, I cut the grid into individual sheets with a sharp knife.

I'm sure that corrugated iron connoisseurs might argue that the numbers  of channels isn't right, but not being a rivet-counter, I'm after an  overall effect and I think this method achieves that, and does it  cheaply.



The individual sheets will be glued to a base layer and once painted, I think the effect should be acceptable.

Perry

Not the first with that one Perry I'm afraid

http://yourmodelrailwa…c.php?id=6226&forum_id=19

Didn't go in the index though :roll: so I'm not surprised you didn't see it

Thanks, Nick.

It doesn't look as though anyone has used card and foil laminated together though, so perhaps it still has some value.

Perry

Hi Perry

I used Scalescenes corrugated iron sheets printed on good quality 120g paper when I made the coal office for Much Murkle.




The corrugations scale out at about 6 inches, which is ok for old large industrial buildings, but should be 3 inches for normal sheets, so are obviously massively overscale for most applications. Because the Scalescenes print has colour definition to fool the eye that it is already corrugated, putting it through the corrugator gives it a bit of relief which although doesn't bear scrutiny close up, seems to work well from normal viewing distances.Better with it than without it.

I'm very interested to see how you get on with your method. :thumbs

…saves a lot of painting too, by the look of it! :thumbs

Perry

Has anyone tried thin plasticard through the roller?

I haven't but like Perry I did unsuccessfully try thin card. I doubt very much if even thin styrene sheet would give a defined corrugation.

I must have mentioned this before but "in days of yore", "Merit" (I think) made corrugated iron sheets in "OO" gauge.  They were heavy, a scale foot thick and expensive.

If these were glued to a backing timber, they could be used as a press to form sheets from the old metal toothpaste tubes.  They worked a treat.

I wonder if such things are still available to use as presses - but then the old metal toothpaste tubes have long since gone to the "Happy rusting place in the sky" 

Your sheets look good Perry and, when viewed from "scale" distance, who's going to count the corrugations …………………….:roll:

Perry, have a look halfway down this thread…..

it may be of use…..

http://yourmodelrailway.net/view_topic.php?id=3290&forum_id=14

Doug

[user=401]pnwood[/user] wrote:

Not the first with that one Perry I'm afraid

http://yourmodelrailway.net/view_topic.php?id=6226&forum_id=19

Didn't go in the index though :roll: so I'm not surprised you didn't see it

How on earth did I miss that one Nick. Anyway it's in both Indexes now.

If you can get hold of empty hair colour tubes from your wifes hairdresser .They are similer to the old metal toothpaste tubes,after cutting one edge they are easy to flatten out and can be cut with scissors. Just get her to ask for the old empties.

we must be lucky then coz Down Under, locally, a kit manufacturer  makes & sells H0 corrugated card 3" x 9"  that has 21-22 corrugations to the inch. Pack of ten thin cards cost $9 - £5.40

Thats a lot of corrugated panels Sol ,got to be better than making your own at that price.

[user=401]pnwood[/user] wrote:

I haven't but like Perry I did unsuccessfully try thin card. I doubt very much if even thin styrene sheet would give a defined corrugation.

Thin styrene sheet doesn't work well.

Perry

[user=31]sparky[/user] wrote:

If you can get hold of empty hair colour tubes from your wifes hairdresser .They are similer to the old metal toothpaste tubes,after cutting one edge they are easy to flatten out and can be cut with scissors. Just get her to ask for the old empties.

I am my wife's hairdresser! Honestly. :???:

Perry

Thanks for all the helpful hints, but I feel you may be missing my point.

I set out to make a large number of scale-sized individual sheets cheaply. I want to lay them overlapping individually in a similar manner to the prototype.

I was trying to find a way of doing this using my 'crimper'. I tried various materials to get the effect I wanted and came up with laminating foil and card.

It was not a case of being able to make large pieces that I could cut to size. I wanted to make them scale-sized sheets, hence the printing out of the grid.

That is what I set out to do. That is what I have done.

Thank you all for your helpful suggestions, but I was not looking for a way to use corrugated packaging or ready-made sheet material. Maybe I should have made my aims clearer when I wrote this thread. Sorry.

Perry

I like the sheets made by A.M.R.I. (no website available on the packaging),  comes in scales:-    1:50  1:100   1:200   1:500 and   1:1000

It's thin styrene sheet and come in packs 140 x 190.

The corrugated card in Rons post is made by local South Australian cottage co BGB.

 All my corrugated roofing and fencing etc,  is made with it.

 There is no limit as to what can be done with it.

Another way to make your own which would also probably work using the foil stuck to thin card material, I use the thick type foil like that you get Chinese takeways and similar in.

I take a bolt with a suitable size thread & pitch to suit the corrugated I am after, then using strips of my choosen material laid on a old mouse mat use the thread of the bolt as a embosser, you have to just run the bolt along the material but do not let the bolt turn, I use the edge of my desk so that the bolt head is off the end if I am making sense, or you can chop the bolt head off.

That's a good tip Campaman. :thumbs