Brick sheet?

[PAL_Houston]

That PRR tower is awesome 

+1.  How thick is that paper?  I guess what I am asking about is how you managed to get those trim-bricks to look so convincing?

[MVW]

Beautiful tower, Doug. I was aware brick paper may be an option, and am even more interested after seeing your work.

Plenty of options to consider. I think I'll be trying at least 2-3 materials to gather my own impressions.

Thanks again, everyone, for the input. Especially the photos. From what I had read, I was afraid there may not be a good choice available. But there are obviously several to choose from, with apparently more on the way.

Jim

[wazzou]

Keep in mind that Paper Creek is no longer in business either.   

[MVW]

Here's a link to the JTT brick sheet.

http://miniaturetree.com/viewproduct.asp

As pointed out earlier, it is 1:200 scale instead of 1:160. That means individual bricks would be .04" wide instead of .05". Noticeable, I imagine, but probably not egregious enough to be a deal-breaker. And the price is certainly right -- 2.75 cents per square inch, compared to 7 cents per square inch for NSA and 42 cents per square inch for Monster. RS Laserkits comes in at about 32 cents per square inch.

I'll probably give 'em all a try.

Anybody have any experience with JTT trees or tree kits?

It appears Paper Creek is out of business. And Ratio may be so difficult to find that it doesn't matter.

Jim

[Philip H]

Paper Creek may be gone, but I have had great success with card models from Scale Scenes, which is. British firm. They sell their stuff, including bricks, as PDFs so you can print as many sheets as you want.

[daniel_leavitt2000]

Any idea what size that HO/N brick off eBay scales to? I'm done looking at cinder-block sized bricks on my buildings.

[MVW]

Paper Creek may be gone, but I have had great success with card models from Scale Scenes, which is. British firm. They sell their stuff, including bricks, as PDFs so you can print as many sheets as you want.

Care to share any examples, Philip?

I've been playing a bit with printed sheets. I downloaded some files from cgtextures.com, then used Photoshop to create large sheets from the relatively small samples. I had 'em printed at a print shop, on a coated paper stock to help the details pop a little bit. I'll probably do something similar to mock up structures before I start trying to scratchbuild.

Philip, do you print the brick sheets on your home printer? What are you using for paper?

Jim

[Philip H]

I do my printing on the laser printer at work - we get to do small personal stuff after hours as long as its not more then 8 or 9 sheets, etc.  I grabbed  apace of white card stock out of the discount bin at Office Depot one day, but I've also had good results using paling copper paper with the laser - then fixing it with a matte spray designed from scrapbooking work that I got at Michael's.

Examples . . .



This is a parking lot I did with the Scale Scenes Car Park (http://scalescenes.com/products/TX22-Car-Park) - but since it's  British Prototype I had to enlarge it to almost 200% when I printed it so the spaces would fit American cars.

[Pomperaugrr]

I've looked at a lot of printed brick and block offerings.  My major concern is fading of the ink, if printed at home.  Color laser may be more durable though.  I would just hate to spend time building a structure just to have it fade from my flourescent lighting in a couple of years.   

Eric

[dougnelson]

+1.  How thick is that paper?  I guess what I am asking about is how you managed to get those trim-bricks to look so convincing?

The Paper Creek brick paper is (was?) standard laser printer paper weight (20 lb?).  You want it pretty thin so you can conform to the base.  I used styrene, but something like illustration board could also be used.  The moisture from white glue softens the brick paper so it can conform to its support. 

It would not be too hard to create your own brick paper with photography, Photoshop, and a printer.