'Spanish' Pantile/Canal Tile Roofs for 28mm Wargame Buildings

thingiverse

Pantile roofs are extremely useful for wargames buildings due to their authentic look in southern Europe and parts of the Americas throughout any period. However, they can be quite challenging to manufacture, sometimes difficult to acquire commercially, and hard to find STL files for. I have created some pantile roof designs that should see extensive use with my Peninsular War Napoleonics. These designs are not perfect but I believe they work effectively. The sizes match a model I am currently building; if design is not your forte and you want some made to a specific size, feel free to get in touch and I will do my best to accommodate your request. They are scaled to "look about right" with commercially-made resin buildings and 28mm wargames miniatures that I own (mostly Warlord Games and Perry Miniatures), so you may need to scale them up or down a bit: I'd suggest trying around 55% for 1/100 or 15mm, 78% for 1/72 or 20mm, and 115% for 'heroic' 32mm (although they would likely look fine as-is in 32mm). You will need to print two panels to create a full roof, and you will require some sort of ridge-cap on the pair. A half-straw, thin dowel, bamboo skewer, or piece of scrap filament should work adequately. As a rule, more southern regions use a shallower pitch while northern areas employ a steeper pitch to allow snow to slide off. My model will feature two longer panels to roof a 3" x 6" (75x150mm) section with a gable rising 0.5" (~13mm) above the side walls, and one shorter panel to roof an extension 2 x 3" (50x75mm) with a gable rising 17mm above the outer wall. The shallow pitch of these roofs is consistent with my resin buildings that will be used alongside the scratch-built model. There is some overhang at the bottom and on both sides of each panel; I believe this will help it to look authentic and might facilitate gluing into place. The 2mm thick base of each panel represents the traditional plank sub-roof found in this type of architecture. I printed with supports just to ensure the overhanging edges didn't collapse, and they removed easily enough. If you want taller roofs, you could butt two panels together and glue them; however, this doesn't leave much overhang, so you might need to trim out some of the base of the "top" one to adjust the fit before gluing. You could also load two into your slicer, overlap them to achieve the look you want, and print as a single piece, but I haven't tested this yet. I would recommend painting the underlying "planks" in dark brown or grey-brown and the tiles in reds and oranges for terracotta, blues and greys for slates, or browns for cedar shakes. At a pinch, you could even paint it in yellows and tans as thatch. Extra support beams underneath could be added to the full model and would look authentic; I suggest using matchsticks or similar for these. My prints have some layer lines, which I expected but don't bother me too much. You might be able to avoid these by using a finer resolution, and they should print nicely in resin. I haven't tested either as yet due to lack of both time and a resin printer (someday!). I would love to see what you do with these designs and hear how they work out for you, so please post comments and make.