What kind of materials/techniques do you guys use to model brick?
I was thinking building the fireplace brick-by-brick......is this the right way?
Do you have any suggestions that could help me out?

Seems to me that making a fireplace brick-by-brick would be tedious
I'd think there were some brick wall sets availible from someone... I know there's parts of a brick wall in a Tamiya kit. Maybe you could cut the sections and use them as needed?
It'd be neat if there was a mold for making brick walls, so we could make them out of plaster. That way it'd be easy to create battle damage and other wear.

YodaMan

I think that if you made a form from balsa wood or something similar, then filled it with plaster, you could scribe whatever brick pattern in it that you wanted. Although brick by brick would be more authentic, that would most likely drive you insane.

Patrick

I do a lot of scratch-building... and there are several ways to skin this cat...

1) Use the Tamiya "brick" kit... not actually 1:35 scale (more like 1:30th !!), but hey - who says brick is available only in one size, right? Once you have the basic shape, paint the brick base color, and then add in some highlight colors (darker browns, tan, beige, and maybe even some pinkish-red) to bring out the individual bricks. when this is all dry, dribble a white wash through the heavy crevices of the tamiya brick, to emulate the mortar. this really makes the brick pop out. Then, if creating a "ruin", come back and apply a black or dark charcoal wash where desired.

2) Go to a dollhouse store, and find a sheet (usually quite large!) for around 8.00 of the vacuformed brick veneer. Use this to create a master in RTV Silicone. When the mold is complete, use standard plaster-of-paris to create your own sheets of brick. Cut to size, file for smooth corners, and then paint as above. The great thing about this style is that is is easy to "crumble" to shape if a ruin is desired.

3) Cut out a section of styrofoam tha tmatched the size of the chimney flue. Glue together with white craft glue. When this dries completely, cut out a veneer using the Plastruct plastic sheets of Brick found in most modeling stores... especially those that cater to the train crowd. Paint as above.

4) My favorite way... the most realistic looking, but the most tedious. Again, create a styrofoam core as in #3. Coat this with a thin layer of modeling clay. Usng a baf of Custom Dioramic bricks, begin to put the rows of brick in place, one at a time. When this is complete, come back with some diluted "wall spackle" and smooth it into the joints to create a TRUE MORTAR that will hold the brick in place forever. Paint as in #1. The great thiing about #4 is that you can turn the bricks, alter the row spacing, and also add in designs to the brickwork as desired.

I also sell two different fireplace mantels that I have created myself. One is a very ornate mantel that looks like carved wood with carved stone/marble details. The othe is a more "rural" look, featureing a stone face with a rough wood mantel. Both sell for $3.50 each in plaster, or $6.00 in resin. If you would like pictures of any of this, lemme know! Might make a good article for the DIGITAL DIAMONDS column, eh?

Hey KFMagee,

It seems that you have a lot of nice things in your store, when will you get your website online I am still waiting

Ronny - per your message

"It seems that you have a lot of nice things in your store, when will you get your website online I am still waiting "

Well - two answers - I don't actually have a retail store... I have a studio where people can come by appointment to see what I have in stock (finished dios) or where they can come by to show me what they want me to build. I don't actually sell pieces "in the box" per se... but now and then when I see people are wanting a particular item that I have already made a mold for, I volunteer (for the group only) to sell that item if they are interested. Now and then a few people have taken me up on the offer(Spike is one).

As for the website... I started to hire someone several times to build it for me. I have a basic shell done, but unfortunatly, I'm not that talented at coding a site. Every time I think I'm ready to put something together, either the site designer has something come up, or else I get involved in more projects than I have time for. The pro and con of my business is that I pull in a nice paycheck from this business, and get to do what I love... the bad thing is, I don't get to pick what I build, or when I build it. It'll happen "someday". I have renewed the URL "ScaleMilitary" twice, but still all I have is a "parked" website under construction!

Any volunteers!?

The way I built a brick wall was this
1. I used a sheet of balsa wood the size I needed.
2. I put a thin layer of household spackle on it and let it dry. Be careful here because a high water content in the spackle can warp a larger sheet of balsa.
3. I measured brick on my house, converted to 1/35 scale.
4. I scribbed horizontal line on the spackle the correct height.
5. I then came back in and scirbbed the virtical lines in for each brick. This was the slow part because of the offset pattern. I made a template out of scrap wood that was the correct size of the bricks to it made it a bit easier.
6. I painted the gooves a mortar color, various shades of gray.
7. I base painted it a mix of red and brown.
8. I went back and selectively painted each brick a slightly different shade of red/brown.
9. I washed with a thin coat of black/brown wash.

Thanks for all the great help. I will put some of these ideas to the test and see which one i like better. Thanks again.


P.S. I like the new smily

A brick fire-place would be quite simple to build. Just draw it onto a used foam meat tray. Cut to desired size. Paint over in black or grey acrylics and dry brush in the stone colour. Your draw marks should be qutie visible then. Use hot glue or white glue fix in place. Use balsa wood as the mantle. Some little sticks cut to realistic size for wood and hey presto!
See below the same method I used for a bridge: