Family Adams Project - Modelmaking blog: The Cromwellian Barn

Having decided that is was in fact a good idea to take time out and exhibit the model at the recent informal Open Day, my plan was to concentrate on the separate barn model. This aspect of the overall scheme was the closest to being finished and is mounted on its own, smaller baseboard and plinth.

In the posting - Barn part 2, I had completed the roof support framework before putting it aside. It was now time to think about cladding the roof structure. Internally, the roof is lined with a herringbone pattern "thatch". Research shows that rather than being a thatch, this is actually "Fleeking" which is a sort of reed undercoat layer instead of using battens. On top of this layer would have been a full layer of true thatch. This had long ceased to be effective in the 19th century, when the current corrugated iron cladding was installed.

The eroded reed "fleeking" reveals sing of the later installed iron cladding

Many experiments were conducted in order to find the best way to reproduce the fleeking, including woven rafia, but it was all too thick and out of scale. In the end, we opted for a printed graphic solution. We employed Photoshop to build up the whole roof from a small sampled area of a photograph.

Interior of model roof showing the printed fleeking
beneath the representation of the galvanised iron.

The corrugated iron cladding was made from a specialised grade of board from GF Smith. The inside was sprayed with a can of silver paint, then spattered with a matt grey primer to give an impression of a galvanised surface.

On the outer surface, a further layer of this material was mounted back to back onto the inner layer. The natural colour was left as-is because it very closely matched the iron oxide (rusted) effect of the exposed face.

The rather ad-hoc method treatment the the ends of the original roof were replicated by folding the material over the edges ad fixing with Uho adhesive - obviously, the 19th century roofers would not have had Uhu to work with.

This shot shows the roof with antiquing applied to the cladding. Also the printed reed fleeking layer is exposed and the edges carefully eroded with a scalpel.

Further developments evident here are, the wall planking is well under way and a printed replica of the enamel sign is mounted in place. Just visible inside the barn door is the galvanised water tank - more of that later.

After some careful dry-brushing of the end wall, the barn starts to look lived in. Before assembly, the sheet foam end wall was engraved to the required brickwork layout. By lightly wafting acrylic colours over the top surface of the wall, the colour was applied to the brick, but the "mortar grooves" remain in contrast.