Day 9 was spent shingling the roof which was glued on yesterday. I figure 24 hours of excessive taping should result in a well secured roof. I've looked at a couple of different methods of finishing off the roof. There was the option of going with the railroad scale corrugated roofing, making shingles out of sandpaper, wooden shingles (which in my opinion are never the right scale for the house and look out of place), painting the roof, or fashioning a roof out of clay. My intention from the beginning of this project was to have an end result that looks like it's out of the pages of a childhood book. Mother is crafty, loves folk art and Americana, new and pristine would just not be what I feel would be a proper fit.
I searched high and low over the last few weeks for a tutorial on how these amazing little clay shingles were made but everyone is quite tight lipped about the whole procedure. After examining some of the pictures, I formulated an idea - so far it's working,1. run your air dry clay through a pasta press several times until you get a uniform rectangle of clay
2. Run your rectangle through the fettucini portion of the pasta press to get strips. Lay your strips on a moist towel so they don't dry out. I also spritzed the strips with my plant mister occassionally.
3. Cut the strips about 3/4 of the way through their width to make individual "shingles"4. Apply glue to the roof section of your house and then lay the strip over the glue. The air dry clay soaks up moisture so I'm not concerned at all about this stuff sticking, I am concerned however about cracking. Start at the bottom of your roof. If you have gables, work both sides of the gable towards the top so your shingles are even.
5. Every couple of rows, go back and texture your shingles with the edge of your knife
6. Wrap corners with individual shingles, secure with glue.
I used white tacky glue in this case. I will follow up with the state of the clay roof tomorrow, cracks and all
Thank you so much for posting this how to! I too have been curious how it's done but most people who do this type of work have paid to take Rik Pearce's workshop and then they don't want to give away his technique for free. Makes sense but really isn't great for people like me who can't take his class. I love how you came up with this and have shared it. It looks wonderful!
ReplyDeleteI can see why people are close lipped about it if they paid to learn how. I figured it out on my own so I figured I'd share my technique. The benefit of having a "crafty" mother I suppose, I learned how to pick a finished product apart into pieces which can be mass produced lol
ReplyDeleteI'm wanting to build a cottage and have my eye on the Chantilly. I love the shingles you made!
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