Need help: Weathered tarpaper

[Hauk]

That big red warehouse needs a tarpaper roof. As the darn thing is quite tall, I have no good photos of the roof.

So if anyone have good pictures of weathered black tarpaper, I would love to see them!

Tips & suggestions for painting and weathering tarpaper is also appreciated!

Regards, Hauk

[finescalerr]

Didn't Marc Reusser recently post photos of a shed he pulled out of the closet for a weekend project? He put exactly the kind of tarpaper roofing on it that you want, Havard, and described how he did it. (It's simple and effective.) I can't remember the name of the thread but I think it's one of the two recent projects he is describing. -- Russ

[jacq01]

Hauk,

for tarpaper on my H0 layout "Dreimühlentalbahn" I used strips of unprinted newspaper, cut to scale roll width.
The strips were painted with Humbrol or Revell black straight from the jar and sprinkled with sieved very fine sharp sand.
When dry, the roof was brushed with a soft brush to create worn spots.

Jacq

[marc_reusser]

What Russ was thinking of....



The base tar paper was done using the old Nash-Greenberg technique, of placing a single ply of Klenex on a telephone book page, and then giving it a brush application of Floquil grey(s) [you can use reds or greens, to do other tarpaper colors]. When dry the tissue will be bonded to the phone book sheet. The piece can then either be cut into strips, or left as sheet,....and weathered with pigmnets, dirt, acrylic washes, and as in this case, heavily thinned AK washes. N&G also used to use dity, and old dity Floquil thinner to color the tarpaper.

I did a good amount of the weatheing once the strips were glued in place over thin board-by-board roof sheathing...this helped deform contour the paper, and create areas for the weathering to collect.

[Ray Dunakin]

A few Google image searches revealed surprisingly few good pics of old, weathered roofing of this type. (I got the best results with "old rolled roofing".)  Anyway, here's the best I found:



Here's the second place winner:



And the third best I could find:




A couple years ago I noticed a paucity of roofing in my own collection of old building pics, and have made it my goal to try to remedy that. Unfortunately, opportunities to obtain good, detailed photos of rooftops are few and far between.

[mabloodhound]

Those photos Ray showed are of rolled roofing...a much better material for long term roofs.
Tar paper has a very limited lifetime (one year if you're lucky) so the labor to put it up would have to be repeated almost every year.
And it must have wood strapping to keep it from blowing off.
Rolled roofing has the granules embedded in it and will last as long as asphalt shingles.   And it can be nailed directly without strapping.
Frugal building owners would only use tarpaper on a temporary or small structure.

[Hauk]

Those photos Ray showed are of rolled roofing...a much better material for long term roofs.
Tar paper has a very limited lifetime (one year if you're lucky) so the labor to put it up would have to be repeated almost every year.
And it must have wood strapping to keep it from blowing off.
Rolled roofing has the granules embedded in it and will last as long as asphalt shingles.   And it can be nailed directly without strapping.
Frugal building owners would only use tarpaper on a temporary or small structure.

Thanks for the input!
As so many times before, I should have searched my own archive before bothering others. On the other end of the aerial tram terminal I am building there was a large mill/mine. Some of my images shows the roofing quite well.







It seems that when I say "tarpaper", the correct would have been "Rolled Roofing". That roof in the pictures have not been replaced every other year, far from it!

[Lawton Maner]

Tar paper is also known as Alabama Shiplap.  

[Barney]

See -coming out of a modeling slump -

Hosted on Fotki

Barney

[Ray Dunakin]

I love the look of that mine building -- lots of interesting angles, gables, details and textures!