There were two problems: my low skill level in this sort of thing is one, and the limit of the sheet size is another. The Wills Craftsman Kits are clever in that they maximise the sheet size on parts. In other words the kit is designed so that there are no major joins. The LH ridge is exactly the length of one sheet. Theoretically this works, but human nature being what it is means that the RH gable could well be a mil lower or higher on the angle. Then you're in trouble as the LH ridge is too short or too long. Deep joy. Here I was too high so that there was a gap at the bottom of the gully that you could drive a Reliant Robin through. The fix was to file the point down and sharpen the angle somewhat, but then the gutter line and the ridge drop out of horizontal. All this while trying to juggle all the bits with masking tape and blu-tak.
The hindsight tip is: if you get one of these kits, leave cutting the chimney hole until the roof sizes fit and give yourself a line or two of tiles at the bottom extra to that on the cutting plan. The length is fixed of course, but at least you're not having to deal with gaps at the gutter line as well, and this could be trimmed at the end.
I seem to remember that when faced with a similar situation (building the row of houses that are all wedge shaped for the tramway pizza) I had the same problem; in theory the roofs supplied in the IHC/Heljan Danish houses should have been big enough to cut down into the shapes required for the roofs.......only of course, in practice, they weren't!
ReplyDeleteI think I ended up scrapping the original roof mouldings, making templates from card, and using some Kibri sheets I had in the "strategic reserve" (sounds more organised than a scrap box!)........templates idea might be useful if it weren't too late, and I guess you don't really have the option of substituting a bigger sheet.
S.
Back when I was doing this for a job the boss used trigonometry to set the angle needed to cut a bit of plastic so it met nicely whatever the angle of the two roofs being joined. Given the number of possible variations, it was a long list.
ReplyDeleteAnd no, I no longer have access to it, but if you can do trigonometry it does work.
And no, I can't do trigonometry :(