Yorkshire Slate Roofing

This guide demonstrates my method for modelling slate.
The barn I'm building is roofed in Yorkshire Falgstone Slates which I needed to replicate in miniature. This was done using mountboard. First it was cut into rectangles of decreasing sizes as the slates get smaller the further up the roof they get. Then the edges where trimmed to round them off.



Slates aren't a continuous thickness so some more work was needed to get the right look. Using a craft knife I peeled the edges, weathing them and adding in the appearance of layers like real slates.

With the slates now ready they can be layed just like the real thing. For the barn I want the roof to be removable so a border is fitted around the roof lines (painted black) with a lip underneath that the main roof sheet (white in the photo), again made of mountboard sits ontop of. Slates are then glued to the main sheet, overlapping the border.

This is built up along the whole roof. When reaching the top it was necessary to put a shim of cereal card inplace to glue the top layer of slates too, as otherwise they would be glued to the border and the roof wouldn't be removable.

Paint is next. A liberal coat of Reeves Naples Yellow Acrylic was added, and to get the gritty texture of sandstone tile grout was sprinkled on and blended in while wet

The paint now needs weathering, to do this I apply two washes of black acrylic, watered down by about 50% and really scrubbed on with a paintbrush so that only a thin layer is applied. Making sure that all the cracks and crevices are highlighted by the black.

Thi