Friday, March 18, 2011

Tin Roof Sunday

Wow, it's been almost two weeks since my last post.  During the first of those two weeks, I took a break from modeling to participate in a Polar Bear Plunge event to benefit the Special Olympics.  Raised a lot of money, had a lot of fun, and made a video commemorating the event.  If you're interested, it's on YouTube.

Work on the warehouse resumed on Sunday, with the focus on the tin roof.  It's been a busy week at work, but I managed to get the entire roof covered, and part of it weathered.

The key to making a convincing tin roof is a ribbon cable from a computer hard drive.

What does that have to do with a tin roof?  I'll show you.  We start with a piece of common aluminum foil, cut to the proper size for a scale piece of corrugated tin roofing.

That piece of foil is placed on the ribbon cable, aligned with the grooves in the cable.  By rubbing firmly with a fingertip, the foil picks up the impression of the grooves.


We now have a scaled down piece of tin roofing, ready to be placed onto the roof of our building.


Repeat about a million times, and we end up with something like this:

Notice in that last photo that there is a slight "patchwork" look to the roof.  Common aluminum foil, like that used in the kitchen, typically has one shiny side and one dull side.  To get this patchwork effect, I purposely placed some pieces with the shiny side up, totally at random.  It gives the appearance that some of the panels are newer than the others.

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