Roof experts!! Come on everyone?

[SDFarmer]

I have been driving by this barn for the last couple of years. I am in love with the roof. I live in very rural South Dakota. They stopped maintaining buildings back in the middle to late fifties and this is just one example.

What I am trying to figure out is the order of the roofing materials. The roof is made up of the underlayment (the horizontal 1x12's) on top of that is (I believe) cedar-iish shakes, then green asphalt shingles and over that is the corrugated metal (out here called 'tin'). But when you expand the image it gets really hard to see whether the shake is over the shingles or???  But, the tin is definitely last layer.

I want to model this exactly. Including the holes and all. I believe we to often ignore the roofs of out models and you end up with naked roofs, with no wind turbines and so on.

Russ, you have any opinions. I left this at the resolution I shot it at. You may ask the question why didn't I move in closer. Seems there were a whole bunch of angry cattle milling around the fence and since I didn't have any hay they would have gotten me.

Ken

[darrylhuffman]

I'm not an expert but I do look carefully at roofs.

I think you have them in the right order.

PS  Cows do not carry weapons.

[SDFarmer]

Oh, see what I meant? Follow the top of the roof and you will see a dent/hole. This is where they would have put a wind turbine or those steeple like louvered vents. Nearly missed that one. We have huge dairy barns that have fallen down. There is one on Hwy 90 that is enormous. Had to be two or three stories with a huge vent on top laying on the ground.

Oh well, see what you can figure out...

Ken

[SDFarmer]

In South Dakota they do and no one takes notice. I wanted to buy a Suppressor. Went by the Sheriffs office mentioned I wanted to buy one. He told me to bring in the paperwork, he'd sign it... he said,  everyone has one.

Oh BTW, SD is an open carry and concealed carry state. Took me ten minutes to get my CC. I paid my ten dollars and left with a temporary permit. Four days later the permanent came in the mail.

Eighty yr. old ladies are packin' .38's in their purses. Well, I can only attest to the old ladies in the country.

The Sheriff told me he got tired of going through the trouble of asking all the questions about firearms. He said anyone driving in the country is carrying some kind of a firearm and has the paperwork to do so. (a "pistol permit") is what they call a CC permit out here.

Ken

[mabloodhound]

Ken,
Yup, I think your order is correct.  The asphalt shingles just don't last as long as the wood shingles.
A shame that old barns are left to rot.  Maybe those folks are going to buy some more tin to finish the job.

And yes, I still call it a pistol permit in Massachusetts.

[finescalerr]

I agree with the roofing order and expect the model barn to be a charismatic eye-catcher.

Last time I was in a cow pasture the cow pies were more dangerous than the cows but the rancher warned me never to get between a cow and a wall or fence.

As for firearms, I've lived in the Midwest, Southwest, and California. In the rural states most people take firearms for granted (although a few might balk at assault rifles). Urban areas are quite another story. Thirty years ago here in Southern California I once showed an unloaded flintlock display replica with a beautifully hand carved walnut stock to my sister's in-laws and they called me every name short of murderer! (Yes, really.) I've heard similar but milder reactions from countless people in urban California to the mere mention of the word "gun". I've concluded emotions about firearms are analogous to those about religion.

More on firearms? Let's move it to the Blue Room. Now back to modeling.

[Ray Dunakin]

It seems most likely that the shakes came first, followed by the asphalt shingles, then the "tin". Usually the oldest layer has the most "primitive" material, in this case cedar shakes. Then as that layer aged and wore out, they went over it with something more modern such as rolled roofing or in this case, asphalt shingles. And when _that_ got too old, they went over it all with the corrugated metal.

In this case it looks like they started to put on the metal but haven't finished yet, or perhaps gave up.

[SDFarmer]

It just dawned on me I have photographs, low oblique aerial photos of farm buildings from 1955-ish era, the barns are new and finely painted with good roofs. Then this is probably about/over ten years later.  I mean the roof replacement began about ten years maybe fifteen years later.

I think to do this roof justice I am going to have to use the scale veneer shingles, then create scale damaged asphalt shingles using fine sandpaper as a scale asphalt shingle and finally I can spend a couple of days looking for my plastic 'tin' maker I bought a few years ago and never got around to using. Oh, yeah... I'm going to have to make that barn or something else I can put it on.

BTW, the other side of the barn roof is in great shape. This side good shaped side is east. Here in SD the winter winds come out of the North West and buildings are oriented to not show large surfaces this way.

My current house has clapboards on it, but that is only the current layer. The house starts with underlayment boards which are true 1"x12" hard pine. The following is beaver board (this house was owned by the rich family which ran the department store) The next layer is tar paper and finally a layer of stamped steel incorporated with more beaver board. The stamped steel was made to look like bricks and stone. Very upscale siding in its day. Later the steel was covered with tarpaper and finally the real wood clapboard siding. There is a model T garage on the property with a two holer that has a concrete walkway from the house to the privy which was lighted! The garage had a large coal stove in it and a shower. The shower was fed from a 55 gallon drum on the back of the garage and being in SD this was a summer event. 

[finescalerr]

All that material in the walls suggests good insulation. Does the house stay any cooler in summer and warmer in winter than other places you have lived? -- Russ

[SDFarmer]

It didn't leak wind, but it was still cold!! What it took was blowing cellulose into the walls. While I had all that mass it did not trap any air. A needed component of insulation.

A few years ago the state gave me insulation in the walls and it was great!! They had an IR camera and you could see the cold leaks were in the tops of the walls and any of the studs are transferring cold. Wall design is leaning towards double wall construction. Here in SD code is 2x6 studs. They are thinking of using staggered 2x3 studs. So, the inner and outer walls don't touch each other and there is insulation between all of them.

[detail_stymied]

http://www.oldhousejournal.com/magazine/2005/jul/amazing.shtml

i think the green shingles are what Henry called "giant individual". outdated since the late '40s - see figure 50 page 3:

http://files.umwblogs.org/blogs.dir/7608/files/roofing_walls/asphalt%20_shingles.pdf

depending how deep you choose to delve:

https://archive.org/stream/TheCatalogOfJohns-manvilleBuildingMaterials#page/n5/mode/2up   about 6 pages in French Diamond JM #90

[SDFarmer]

Thank you for this detailed history of Asphalt and Asbestos shingles. Wonder how many buildings I have been in which were Asbestos enhanced. In all honesty how did you end up with this collection of shingle details?

I want to apologize to Lane Stewart for calling him John Doe. Considering all the drugs I am on it is hard to believe I can remember my own name. I had to get out my collection of NG&SL gazette (Thanks Darryl), looked through the indexes to finally find an issue with his name. Mr. Stewart is the man who got me into building with detail. I hated building layouts with Lionel style buildings. Believe it or not I couldn't figure out what was missing and then I stumbled across Lane Stewart's level of work. I believe it was Truman's haberdashery that lit the flame... thank you Lane.

Ken

[detail_stymied]

i just did an internet search based on my roofing experience (terminology/ references). for what it's worth, roofing is a young man's game. the last roof i shingled was 20 years ago, at 45, and even with the luxury of it not being stripped but overlaid the first roof and having the shingles brought up by conveyor instead of carried up a ladder, i thought i was a goner!

i use Duckduckgo.com as my search engine if that helps. i think it combines a few others and doesn't track your searches.