Clapboard Siding (1,0 x 1,0)

A horizontal board every millimeter

A sheet of white polystyrene in the fifteen by thirty centimeter format, one millimeter thick, carries milled horizontal grooves across its whole surface. Their spacing is 1.0 mm and it is the only number that tells you how large a world the siding belongs to.

The conversion is simple division. Take the cover width of a board on a real structure, divide it by the spacing, and out comes the reduction the pattern fits. A wooden board one hundred and fifty millimeters wide divided by one millimeter gives one to one hundred and fifty; a narrower batten of around ninety millimeters gives one to ninety. Both measures occur commonly on country buildings, so this sheet is aimed at railroad sizes and at the background of a scene.

The opposite direction is just as instructive. If you want to know what the sheet does at a reduction of one to thirty-five, multiply the spacing by that number: one millimeter times thirty-five gives thirty-five millimeters, that is a batten just under four centimeters wide. Siding like that exists, but in a figure scene next to a wheel hub or a helmet it looks exaggeratedly fine and the pattern disappears under the paint before the viewer manages to read it.

Working the material is undemanding: a groove is made with a knife, the sheet is snapped along it, and the joints hold with super glue as well as with ordinary modeling cement for polystyrene. Once degreased it takes paint without filling, but keep the coat thin, or the groove will lose its shadow and the surface will stay smooth.

The pattern runs along the longer side of the sheet, so mark the layout of the walls out in advance and save the offcuts. A stored sheet has to lie flat; stood against a wall it will bow within a few weeks and you will never get a flat surface out of it again. The remains after cutting come in handy for internal partitions, where the texture does no harm, because nobody will see it from the outside anyway.