Gutter Strips
Gutter Strip Application
These are 3D-printed in UV resin, and are available in a selection of styles, gutter shapes, and in a variety of scales. These strips are intended to be fitted under the eaves of your model building, as shown in the diagram opposite. Note that, as shown in the diagram, the finished roof surface (slates or tiles, etc.) should overlap the edge of the gutter.
The current range of strips is for the modern style of eaves in which the underside of the roof beams/trusses are boxed in to form the soffit. A fascia board is then attached to the front and the gutter attached to that. Strips for older styles of eaves in which the roof beams/trusses remain open and the fascia board is attached to their ends, or the gutter is attached directly to the beam ends without a fascia, are currently in preparation.
The range of gutter shapes is shown in the table below. The Round and Square shapes are for moderately sized buildings, such as ordinary houses. The Mini shape is for small buildings, such as sheds, outbuildings and greenhouses. The Deep, XL and Offset shapes are for buldings with larger roof areas.
To make things simple, you can select round or square downpipe shapes with any of the gutter shapes. Round pipes would normally be used with the round gutter shapes, while square pipes would be used with the square and offset gutter shapes. The matching pipe size (diameter) depends on the gutter size, as shown in the table below. For square pipes, the "diameter" is the distance between opposite faces.
To accommodate a range of prototypes, the strips are configurable for fascia board height (bh), eaves width (ew), and eaves box or soffit height (xh). The other dimensions (gw, gd, gh and bw) are fixed for a specific gutter shape and scale. Other important dimensions, not shown in the diagram, are the downpipe diameter (dd) and downpipe offset (do), the distance from the centre of the gutter downpipe junction to the wall; you'll need these when ordering matching downpipes.
In the table below two cross-section drawings are shown for each gutter shape: flat-topped and recessed. The flat top applies where gd is less than 2mm, the recessed top applies for larger gd values. This is for reasons of strength, particularly during printing.
To keep the range of configurable values down across the range of scales, the dimensions of the gutter strips are specified in the table below, and configurable as, scale (prototype) inches, rather than model dimensions. A table to help convert scale inches into model mm is given at the bottom of this page.
| Shape | bw | gw | gd | gh | dd | do | Cross-Section / Scale | |
| Round | 3.0 | 6.0 | 4.5 | 3.0 | 3.0 | 2.25 + ew |  2–4 mm |
 7–16 mm |
| Round Mini | 3.0 | 4.5 | 3.0 | 2.0 | 2.0 | 1.5 + ew | 2–7 mm |
10–16 mm |
| Round Deep | 3.0 | 6.0 | 4.5 | 4.0 | 3.0 | 2.25 + ew |  2–4 mm |
 7–16 mm |
| Round XL | 3.0 | 8.0 | 7.0 | 4.5 | 4.0 | 3.5 + ew |  2–3 mm |
 3.5–16 mm |
| Square | 3.0 | 6.0 | 4.5 | 3.0 | 3.0 | 2.25 + ew |  2–4 mm |
 7–16 mm |
| Offset | 3.0 | 8.0 | 7.0 | 4.5 | 4.0 | 2.5 + ew |  2–3 mm |
 3.5–16 mm |
Scales are mm:1ft, all dimensions in scale inches.
However, for the smaller scales exact scale downpipes would be rather small and fragile. Therefore, for reasons of strength and printability, the smaller downpipe diameters in the smaller scales are rounded up, resulting in the following set of downpipe sizes:
| Gutter Shape | Pipe Size | Scale | ||||||
| 2 mm | 3 mm | 3.5 mm | 4 mm | 7 mm | 10 mm | 16 mm | ||
| Round Mini | Mini | 0.5 | 0.6 | 0.7 | 0.75 | 1.3 | 1.9 | 3.0 |
| Round Std | Std | 0.6 | 0.8 | 0.9 | 1.0 | 1.75 | 2.5 | 4.0 |
| Round Deep | Std | 0.6 | 0.8 | 0.9 | 1.0 | 1.75 | 2.5 | 4.0 |
| Round XL | XL | 0.8 | 1.0 | 1.2 | 1.4 | 2.4 | 3.5 | 5.6 |
| Square | Std | 0.6 | 0.8 | 0.9 | 1.0 | 1.75 | 2.5 | 4.0 |
| Offset | XL | 0.8 | 1.0 | 1.2 | 1.4 | 2.4 | 3.5 | 5.6 |
Scales are mm:1ft, all dimensions in mm.
Strip Types
Gutter strips are available in 5 basic types:
- A: Plain strip, no downpipe junction,
- B: Plain strip with middle downpipe junction,
- C: End strip for gable roof, with end downpipe junction,
- D: Outside corner strip for hipped roof, with downpipe junction,
- E: Inside corner strip for 'L' or 'T' shaped roof (gable or hipped), with downpipe junction.
Strips C-E are available in left-hand and right hand versions (the special end is to the left or right of the strip, as viewed when fitted to the building).
Strips A-C are 100 mm long; strips D and E are a little longer by the width of the end strips (ew + gd). To make longer runs, the strips can be joined end-to-end. They are easily cut with a fine-toothed razor saw (using a knife may distort or break the fascia board, especially for the larger strips sizes), and I recommend making the joint immediately to one side of a moulded support bracket, to make the joint less visible.
Where the gutter strips have a recesed top, the strips have open ends, to allow two or more strips to be joined together for longer runs. However, strips type A and C are closed at one (gable) end.
The downpipe junction consists of a short cylinder or square tube projecting below the gutter, with a recess in its end to accept the downpipe. The junction is slightly larger than the diameter of the downpipe it is inteded to accept.
The strips include moulded support brackets at nominal scale 4ft intervals.
These are illustrated in the diagram below, for a round gutter shape in 4mm scale. The strips C-E shown are all right-hand versions..
Gutter Strip Types
Configure Your Pack
Note: If you want a gutter component that is not covered by the standard options below, I will be happy to quote you for a customised set of components. Please contact me with full details.
To order some of my gutter strips, you can select one or more basic packs from the following (£9.50 each):
Pack G, for gable roof: |
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Pack H, for hipped roof: |
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Pack XM, extension pack: |
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Pack XP, extension pack: |
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And/or, make up your own pack by selecting 1 or more individual strips (of any mixture of types) as required (£0.95 each):
Strip Type A |
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Strip Type B |
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Strip Type C, LH |
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Strip Type C, RH |
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Strip Type D, LH |
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Strip Type D, RH |
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Strip Type E, LH |
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Strip Type E, RH |
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Finally select your scale, gutter shape and configure the dimensions ew, bh and xh (applies to all strips in your pack):
Conversion Table
The following table is to help convert scale inches into model dimensions (mm). To convert larger dimensions, multiply the scale (mm) by the number of whole feet, then add the remaining converted inches. The smallest dimensions have been rounded up where the accurate conversion would cause problems with the printing process and/or strength of the resulting component. In these cases the accurate conversion is given in parentheses – use the accurate version when converting dimensions greater than 1ft.
For those used to using metric units for full size measurments, 1 inch = 25.4 mm.
Note: The rounding of small dimensions in this table is different than that used for the pipe diameters given above because of the importance of the pipe diameter to the component strength.
| Scale in. | Scale (mm : ft) | ||||||
| 2 mm | 3 mm | 3.5 mm | 4 mm | 7 mm | 10 mm | 16 mm | |
| 1 | 0.3 (0.17) | 0.3 (0.25) | 0.3 | 0.4 (0.33) | 0.6 | 0.9 | 1.3 |
| 2 | 0.4 (0.33) | 0.5 | 0.6 | 0.7 | 1.2 | 1.7 | 2.7 |
| 3 | 0.5 | 0.8 | 0.9 | 1.0 | 1.8 | 2.5 | 4.0 |
| 4 | 0.7 | 1.0 | 1.2 | 1.3 | 2.3 | 3.3 | 5.3 |
| 5 | 0.8 | 1.3 | 1.5 | 1.7 | 2.9 | 4.2 | 6.7 |
| 6 | 1.0 | 1.5 | 1.8 | 2.0 | 3.5 | 5.0 | 8.0 |
| 7 | 1.2 | 1.8 | 2.0 | 2.3 | 4.1 | 5.8 | 9.3 |
| 8 | 1.3 | 2.0 | 2.3 | 2.7 | 4.7 | 6.7 | 10.7 |
| 9 | 1.5 | 2.3 | 2.6 | 3.0 | 5.3 | 7.5 | 12.0 |
| 10 | 1.7 | 2.5 | 2.9 | 3.3 | 5.8 | 8.3 | 13.3 |
| 11 | 1.8 | 2.8 | 3.2 | 3.7 | 6.4 | 9.2 | 14.7 |
| 12 | 2.0 | 3.0 | 3.5 | 4.0 | 7.0 | 10.0 | 16.0 |
All model dimensions in mm.