Clapboard Siding

I have always bought commercial siding and stacked them. On some you have to clean up the straight edge a bit to get the mating of the clapboards to look right. I’m not one for detailed interiors so everything is well braced inside. Including the seam.

If you don’t already. Check out Al Pugliese Trains on You Tube. The builds with Howard Zane. He’s building a good number of large O scale structures using exclusively clapboard. While it’s not a step by step tutorial. There’s still some good tips on design, consruction and weathering.

thank you! I love youtube for learning. i appreciate the recommendations

My last few builds I’ve used these from Micromark. The ones I use are the 1/8 ones. Which would be a 6” board. They are used on the corners. They help square them up. If you get a good fit they can be your corner trim boards. Or give you a good flat surface to glue them to as they end up being the height of the raised portion of the clapboard.

@Coaltronn posted:

Have you been able to find or better yet make your own clapboard siding? if you found the clapboard siding was it larger than 6" as that's what I'm going for. n

Have always used commercial stuff from Northeastern, Mt. Albert, Midwest, or Kappler.  Only source I ever found for 6" was Kappler.

If I ever need wider, I just edge glue up a section or 2 to get to what I need. May take a little sanding to get a good joint, but I've always found that to be "good enough".

Anything that's too perfect looks wrong!

The old-school method of making clapboard is by cutting strips of Bristol board.

If you want an old-weathered look, here is one very effective technique.

Take a sheet of Bristol board and paint a random swirly pattern with hobby acrylic paints:

Then slice yourself some "boards", mix them up randomly, and glue them to a piece of foam-core:

This example isn't clapboard, but if you glue the strips horizontally and slightly overlapped, you will get a very nice weathered clapboard look.

If you want larger scale buildings, I'd suggest build an inside framed structure (esp. with a laser cutter and 1/8th basswood ply ) and then add the clapboard pieces to this strong structure.  Anything really tall would have a support structure for the thin clapboard.

That's a great point Dave!

Whenever I use milled clapboard I follow three rules... always stain the wood first (to minimize warping), pay particular attention to squaring up the horizontal joints, and mount the wood on a bainbridge or foam board substrate. If you get it right the horizontal joints will not be visible. If you are scratch building tall structures, you might also consider occasional horizontal trim boards to break up the unrelieved clapboard expanse.