V-Groove Siding (1,0 x 3,2 x 0,53)

A spacing of three point two millimeters

The value is no accident; it corresponds to an eighth of an inch, the measure in which lumber was commonly produced in the English-speaking world. The grooves are therefore widely spaced and the groove goes more than half a millimeter deep, so it casts a bold shadow on the finished part. The carrier sheet stays a millimeter thick, which leaves enough material between the grooves for sanding and forming.

Why styrene and not cardboard

Any modeler who has tried building from cardboard knows its two weaknesses. Paper reacts to moisture, so it warps after a coat of water-based paint and never straightens again, and its cut edge always frayed. With plastic both fall away: the dimension holds regardless of the weather, the edge stays smooth and can be sanded to a crisp line. There is a difference in repairability too, because cured putty sands on plastic just like the material around it and the seam disappears. Cardboard, on the other hand, has the advantage that it can be divided with scissors. Styrene pays for its qualities with sensitivity to heat and to solvents, which when forming it works in the builder's favor.

Which structures the pattern suits

At a reduction of one to twenty-four it comes out at a plank roughly eight centimeters wide, and in one twelfth at almost four. The sheet therefore serves for deck floors, piers, rough boarding, warehouse doors and walkways in large scales. In one thirty-fifth, by contrast, it stands in for wide board cladding or for facing made of boards laid butt to butt. The coarser pattern has one more virtue: the grooves are far enough apart for vertical battens to be glued in between them, giving board-and-batten siding, which cannot be made from the finer sheets.