Making corrugated sheets
For corrugated sheets in scale various standard products are commercially available, from e.g. Faller and Auhagen. But they are made out of plastic and hence perfectly neat. And up till now, I have never found satisfactory transparant corrugated sheets. But above all, making them yourself is of course much more fun. And quite easy to do.
Metal sheets
For the standard, often rusty metal corrugated sheet for roofs and walls I use the metal cover foil of margarine tubs, or the sturdy, thin metal lids of yoghurt or cottage cheese as a basis.
1. The first step is removing the relief inprint in the folie. This is best done, by placing the foil on an old newspaper and the flatten it out with from the middle towards the sides with the convex backside of an old teaspoon.
2. Then attach the foil at one side with some pieces of tape onto a standard plastic corrugated sheet. (Yes, you will need to buy such a sheet once. But is will last a modeling lifetime.
3. Press a blunt pencil on top of the foil into the first groove of the plastic under plate and gently pull the pencil downward throught the whole groove.
4. Repeat the procedure with further grooves, until the corrugated sheet has reached the required size.
Tip: Especially with thinner foils it can happen, that grooves that have been made earlier disappear partially when you 'carve' a new one near by. If this is the case, you best press a thin metal ruler or a hard piece of thin plastic straight down into the old groove, while making a new one. Please see the photo at the bottom left.
5. Afterwards you can glue the corrugated sheet onto a piece of thick paper or cardboard in oder to make it more sturdy. Or cut it with a pair of scissors* into strips and paint these. The paint will also make the sheet more sturdy.
If desired you can also cautiously apply wood glue to the front (and/or backside) with a soft brush. The glue will dry up hard and almost transparent. So this is a handy method when both sides of the corrugated sheets will be in view.
6. With some pencil stripes added across you can add the suggestion that the strips consists of loose single sheets.
*) Cutting with a pair of scissors appears to be working better than cutting with a knife. With the latter you are more likely to flatten the groove.
By pressing a ruler into the last groove made, you will prevent it from partially disappearing again when making a new groove next to it.
The margarine foil has been attached (on the left) onto the plastic underground and the first grooves have been drawn.
The sheets are being painted with various colours matte acrylic paint: rust brown, orange and black and then 'highlighted' with a blush of almost dry white.
Transparant corrugated sheets
For making transparant corrugated sheets you can basically use the same method as mentioned above. But as the basis material I use the 'glass' from window envelopes. Thin plastic foils from certain packages may also do the job. But if the sheets need to be matte, like often is the case in reality, you may need to sand one or both sides of the plastic with a fine grade sandpaper beforehand.
The complete corrugated sheet roof, with skyights. The roof-ridge is also made from margarine foil, but that still needs a lick of lead grey paint.