Superquick versus Metcalfe Models

[brossard]

9 minutes ago, DGO said:

Nice house with very nice lean to greenhouse , I always prefer the relief one gets on plastic brick vs paper/card, the trick is getting a nice finish on outside corners, the wills plastic sheets tend to be somewhat thicker than other manufacturers which can be blessing or curse, that extra thickness typically results in an obvious line just behind the corner of a wall where the seam occurs, but that extra thickness compared to other makers can be used to your benefit, instead of cutting the walls as butt joints you can use that stiffer thicker plastic to your benefit and mitre the joints instead, this can be a pain in the backside but when done well completely hides the joint, the alternative is to run a downpipe from any gutter down the butt joint and hide it that way

 

I agree that plastic can have better texture than just card.  I got fed up with the thick Wills plastic sheets which were always too small and hard to hide the join.  I recall getting some textured brick sheets from SEF (Slaters are similar) which were quite a lot bigger than Wills and easier to cut being just 0.020" thick.  These needed to be mounted on Evergreen 1mm (0.040") plastic sheet for strength.  Plastic wall edges can indeed be mitered.

 

Having said all that, for me, Scalescenes brick rendering is just too good to ignore so all my layout buildings have been done using that.

 

John

[Spotlc]

Hello John, some interesting observations there, and  I completely agree with your last sentiment about using paper printed coverings for card buildings!

 

I've thought for a long time that it's very difficult to justify wall textures in scales of 1/76 or less, unless they are produced with great accuracy, simply because to achieve any degree of realism the mortar joints would be so tiny.  In full size, standard practice for good quality load bearing walls is that the joint should be about 3/8" (9.5-10mm) thick and finished with a concave tool of around half that size, (commonly referred to as the "bucket handle recess", because that's how it used to be done - nowadays a cranked finishing tool is used), around 3/16" (4.5-5mm) deep.

 

Most railway buildings have, and had, high quality brickwork, and for the most part modern brickwork is also laid to these standards.  A hurriedly built single story building like a small shed, or a garden wall, might have perhaps, 1/2" (12mm) joints to speed up the work, and a cheapskate effort might have just 1/4" (6mm) joints to save on the mortar costs, but they are exceptions.

 

If we take the 3/16" full size recess as the norm, this translate to a recess 0.06mm deep in 1/76 scale, 0.05mm in 1/87, and a tiny 0.03mm in 1/148. For comparison, a 120GSM paper is about 0.12mm thick, and 90GSM is about 0.10mm, and I suggest that such tiny textures would be almost imperceptible to the human eye, except very close up.

 

Older, weather worn brick work would of course be an exception, and roofs are a bit different because the bond overlap of the roofing material is viewed to some extent "on edge", but even here, the ubiquitous Welsh slates were rarely more than 1/2" thick - yes, I know,  Delaboles, Brosleys, Marleys and so on, are thicker, but they are not so common around railways!

 

It's possible that modern resin printing or laser engraving can produce this level of accuracy, but most of the examples I've encountered are woefully over scale in depth, and the same goes for the plastic sheet offerings, but I'm happy to be corrected if I'm out of touch!

 

Best, Mike

 

Edited October 23, 2021 by Spotlc

[brossard]

Mike, your comments reflect my views.  As I have said above, I have tried various building materials.  Even in 7mm, the scale I model, brick paper looks acceptable to me.

 

I have also tried Lcut laser cut kits.  These are quite good if basic and benefit from the builders enhancements.  The things I noted  were:

 

1)  the mortar lines are not well defined and I haven't seen a model with this well done.  Prove me wrong.

 

2)  the material used, a laminated card and not ply (which means the kit cost is about half that of a laser cut ply kit), means that the laser process cuts through a layer of the card, leaving individual bricks prone to coming off.  Perhaps a coat of something, like shellac, would solve this.  My solution is to face the structure with Scalescenes brick and build it according to Scalescenes techniques:

 

 

This is the 7mm Lcut signal box, modified to look like an LNER example.

 

Lcut windows and doors are very good.

 

Most Lcut models are available in 4mm.

 

John

[locomad2]

Rarely mix the two but recently while thumbing though some free Railway Modeller at a local charity shop found one of these 

 

 

So having got it "Free" built it recently and fits quite well among the older Superquick 

 

Not a bad kit found a few more just need the time to complete 

[spsmiler]

I've mostly built Superquick - cannot use Scalescenes as I do not have a colour printer.

 

I'm making a Superquick Elizabethan cottage (as a pub!) and would like to kit bash it, but have found myself on the verge of being stuck because I need more roofing and their range does not include a 'brick paper' that matches the roof tiling of their kits. I would rather not do this but out of sheer desperation might have to pinch part of the roof from another unbuilt model!

 

The extension I'm adding is out the side of the of the building. Its only going to be single floor, with the structure being a sun lounge.

 

As an aside, rather than use the Superquick ridge tiles (which I dislike) I've bought some 3D printed ridge tiles from smart-models.co.uk I intend to paint these a terracotta type colour. I've aready painted the sides and (where visible) undersides of the roof and added interior lighting plus a few people by the front door, which is ajar.

 

Simon

Edited February 22, 2022 by spsmiler