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How to scratchbuild a handcar shed Roof


Since the handcar was built to be seen through the open shed door, it did not have to be super detailed. It was built using basswood, styrene, brass rod and commercial wheels.


Proceeding upwards, the next step in the construction was to build the rafters for the roof. In keeping with the worn-out, weathered theme, I decided to try to give the roof a subtle sag in the middle, as old roofs are prone to have. I wasn’t quite sure how to do this, but I figured it had to start with the rafters. Ordinarily, when building rafters, a jig would be used to ensure that each rafter is identical to the others. In this case, I didn’t want them to all be iden- tical. My intent was to make the rafters uneven, with those in the cen- ter lower than those on the outside. I was hoping that this would provide the roof sag that I wanted. I did, however, want the ridge of the roof to be straight, which meant the center king posts had to all be aligned and square. To accomplish this, I used a partial jig, which included only the bottom beam and the king post. Using 2″×6″ lum- ber, I cut 10′-0″ boards for the bottom beam of each rafter. I varied the height of the king posts, each is roughly 3′-0″ in length, and added the top chords af- ter removing the rafters from the jig. The final step was to sand off the square corners of each joint. After all of the rafters were built, I placed them on top of the shed, at 24″ intervals. I finished the rafter installa- tion by putting siding on the outside of the two end rafters, using the same pa- per and technique that I used on the walls. I also framed the door and win- dow openings using 2″×6″ boards. The final major piece of construction


was the roof itself, for which I simply used sheet balsa, ¹₁₆″ thick. From this I cut two pieces, each 18′×7′, and glued them to the tops of the rafters. After letting this glue dry thoroughly,


I


brushed the entire structure with the ink & alcohol solution.


Doors If you’ve been paying attention to


the top of each strip with the 4″ guide marks that I had previously put on each wall. Starting at the bottom of the shed I worked my way up, with the bottom of each new strip slightly overlapping the strip beneath it. Using this paper was absolutely the right decision. Cutting the paper strips with a knife eliminated any uniformity. Each piece was imperfect in a different way. Once installed on the building and viewed as a whole, the result was the look of warped, sagging wood siding


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that has been on the wrong side of harsh weather for several years. It was exactly what I wanted!


As the work progressed and I com- pleted the siding on two adjacent walls, I installed the corner trim posts. Each corner consists of a 2″×6″ board, eight feet in length, and a 2″×4″ board, also eight feet in length. These were in- stalled such that the two boards meet at 90 degrees, with the 2″×6″ board overlapping the narrow edge of the 2″×4″ board.


this point, you’ve no doubt noticed that the shed has no doors. When I first found the diagram for this shed, one of its components caught my eye–the doors. They have a diagonal structure that I had never seen before, and I thought was very unusual. I wanted to replicate this on my model, so I saved the doors for last, waiting to see how the rest of the structure turned out. So far, so good, the time had some to build those doors. Each door consists of a rectangular


frame, 3′×6′. The diagram shows them as being 3′-6″×6′-0″, but I ap- parently made an error somewhere, because my door opening was only 6′- 0″ wide. It was too late to turn back, so


DECEMBER 2011


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