Looking for ways to make brick and stone panels to use
for buildings, I checked out different materials and bought
a kit's to make bricks and flag-stone. The kit "Magic Brick" is made for 1" doll
house brick, but can be used as cut stone if left rough, when finished
flat it looks as good brick. Magic brick came in 1/2" scale
but is very hard to work with, I don't think it is still
available. The kit contains everything needed to cover 9
square feet of surface. The masking material is easy to work
with.
After working with the "Magic Brick Kit" I started
thinking how I could use a similar material for use in
making models. Workers were laying floor tile at work and
used a material to fill in the depressions and flaws in the
finished concrete floor and it set up very fast.
I acquired a small amount and tried using it different
ways for modeling. It set up in about eight minutes and
when dried it has a very hard surface, I tried working it
with my hand held Dremel Tool, it worked just fine, the
dust it made was the big draw back.
As I rinsed the dust off under a faucet I noticed when wet
the surface of material became soft enough to scrape away
with a knife blade.
That was the start of making my "Custom Bricks and Stone
Work". There are different types of floor leveling material
to be found, you will have to fine the best for your use in
modeling. The type I use is almost like dust and looks and
feels like flour used in baking.
Click for a larger picture.
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I used a piece of 1/8" paneling as a work area for trial
purposes. When you build your structure it should be made
rigid enough to hold the weight of the siding material. I
find that 1/8" plywood paneling works for me. I bought up a
lot of damaged 1/8" paneling a few years back, real plywood
not the composition type material .
I wanted a way to put the mix on at an even depth, so I
added a wood strip to edges of the plywood as a guide, put
on the mix and used a steel rule resting on the guides to
scrap off the extra mix to get an even depth of material.
An 1/8" to 3/16" depth is about right for brick work, if
making stone work you will want more depth to work with, a
1/4" or more depending on your design. Then set it aside to
dry.
With the surface of the model coated and dried it's time
to layout the pattern for the brick or stone work. There
are a lot of ways you can go about it. One is to lay out
the brick work with a rule and pencil. I've reused the
Magic Brick mask to lay out a pattern and it saves a lot of work .
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I am working on way to lay down a pattern, and it looks
like it has a lot of potential.
Using this method of transferring designs it could be
possible to use a photo resized to scale for doors, windows
or ornamental work.
