The roof tiles
Soon after I started this project I came to realise that one of the biggest challenges that lay ahead was going to be the roof tiles. Many Mediterranean houses - and certainly, from what I could see from photographs, almost all Italian ones of the WWII era - had a distinctive style of terracotta roof tile with a curved profile slightly tapering to their bottom end.
At first I could find no source for these tiles in 1/35, but then I came across these moulds sold by
Diorama Debris:
1:35 Scale Spanish Barrel Roof Tiles Mould (1350047) from
http://www.dioramadebris.co.uk/135-scale-spanish-barrel-roof-tiles-mould-1350047-50-p.asp
To my knowledge, this is the only way to make these tiles in the authentic manner out of real terracotta plaster. I tried one of these moulds and, after a bit of practice, it worked very well. But it was
very time-consuming. By a stroke of luck I happened to mention my dilemma to someone at a model show and - hey presto! - he came up with a supply of ready-cast tiles (I believe made from the same moulds) at a very reasonable price. I'm not sure he is still making them, so I won't name him for now. Let's just say that I was a very lucky guy because - as you will already have seen - I needed hundreds of the things..!
Making the actual roof structures themselves was hardly easy either. Because I had plans to add interior lighting and other details, I needed to ensure that each roof was removable - and strong enough not to warp once in place. The answer was to make a false internal structure out of foam board that slotted into each of the buildings. To this I then added the roof from thick card before starting to lay the tiles.
Here is the one for the main church roof...
For this roof and that of the houses I used a style which I had seen in Tuscany where the half-round tiles are interspersed with flat tiles of roughly equal width. This way I would be using half as many tiles for the same area of roof.
To give the impression of the flat tiles laid between the others I used strips of brown card laid from the bottom up with a slight overlap. The half-round tiles were then laid in rows on top of them over a ribbon of
Bostick glue. This sets pretty quickly - but not so fast that you don't have time to adjust the rows if needed.
Last of all I added the ridge tiles and bedded these in with Magic Sculp to represent the render which would be used in real life.
The steeple roof, which was actually the first that I tackled, was made slightly differently.
I began by building a triangular inner frame from foam board, mounted this on a square balsa wood base and then covered the structure with thin basswood. This was glued and tacked in place to give it a slightly concave profile - a little 'sag' - and then some suitable holes for damage added. This belfry would have been an observation post for the defending Germans and thus a prime target for the Allied guns.
The tiles were laid more closely together than on the other roofs (see the reference picture above) because this crowded look seemed to suit the smaller structure better then the more widely spaced variety. For this style there are no flat tiles - only more barrel tiles laid beneath the others, but upside down (so the curve faces up).
However, rather than do this the authentic way (and thus use twice as many of my precious tiles), I cheated by adding the upside-down tiles only at the very bottom of the roof.
It's a bit messy, I admit, but - hey - this church had already stood for quite a long time before the Allies started taking pot-shots at it.
Finally, I added cement render from Magicsculp and - as a
piece de resistance - a little
finiale from a photo etch set called
'WEATHER VANES & PUB SIGNS' (SLOF07) made for model railways by
Scale Link.
All in all, these roofs were a
lot of work. But to my mind they were
at least as important as the buildings that they sit above. There's just something
so Italian about them! At least I hope so...