Raising the roof part 3…
[Otherwise known as tiling madness]
So diamond pattern roof tiles… I’ve learnt a lot about these of late. I started to notice them as I looked at images of the towns and villages along Peiper’s advance. By way of example, have a look at these images taken of abandoned Panthers in La Gleize after the town’s recapture.
Heinz Knappich’s Panther (with tactical number ‘221’) was photographed many times from different angles. In the one above you can see the diamond pattern tiles on the roof and upper walls of the house on the left. Note also the distinctive chimney stack.
In a better quality image taken looking in the opposite direction you can see two adjacent houses with different sized of tiles, plus the familiar chimney, etc.
Although the image below has some quality issues, you can still see the roof tile pattern as well as many other interesting details such as a round end window, brick window surrounds and the guttering.
The vehicle, by the way, is panther ‘201’, formerly cammanded by Friedrich Christ and abandoned near the Aux Écuries de la Reine (Rediger Hotel).
Doing some research I found that these tiles, which are commonly known as
‘asbestos shingles’, were actually made from a mixture of asbestos, mineral fibre and cement. The asbestos ingredient helped to make them fire proof.
Although laid in a diamond pattern, they are actually a square tipped on one of its corners. However, in order to ensure that they overlap it is necessary to trim a little off two of the corners (or perhaps they were made this way) to allow for them to fit closer together. This diagram helps to explain:
So how big should these tiles be? As we have seen, they came in different sizes. With hindsight I might have chosen a bigger option because the larger the tiles, the less you need and less work is required. However, I committed myself to a size I found on the internet which looked about right: 400 x 400mm. This works out in 1/35 as 11.42mm square. I rounded that up to 12mm and then got to work using a guillotine to cut the tiles / shingles out of black card.
The guillotine was around £30 from Amazon. It worked very well. I tried to find a clever way to trim the corners in a uniform way, but in the end I had to just do it by hand with a pair of scissors.
The shingles were then fixed in place with PVA applied with a brush, which gives a little more time for adjustment than UHU. I started on the rear roof (i.e. the one facing the tree) because this would be the least visible if I mucked it up. In the end, I was glad that I did. At first I started to lay the tiles in diagonal lines, but quickly discovered that it was very hard to keep the horizontal lines consistent. If you look at these roofs in real life they are actually pretty neat.
So for the other roof I worked my way along horizontally, using lines drawn on the card to help guide me straight. I was also able to cheat with the lowest row because once the row above is put in place you cannot see anything more than the triangular outline.