N scale plastic brick sheets

[NScaleNotes]

Hello

I'm looking to do some scratchbuilding of brick buildings and I'd like to use plastic/styrene. I know there's loads of good paper products but painting/weathering those isn't quite as easy.

I've got some Slaters brick sheet but it's only available in English bond pattern and most buildings I'm looking at use Stretcher brick bond.
So... does anyone have experience of using Kibri/Vollmer plastic brick sheets? Are the bricks to scale? How thick is it?

I've seen some American stuff by a company called N Scale Architects but it's quite expensive once you include shipping from the US and it's a bit over size (picky I know but like I say it's expensive).

Thanks

Simon

[NScaleNotes]

Of course as usual, right after I posted I remembered something: Redutex sheets.

These look pretty good, anyone have any experience of using these?
They look pretty scale to me (they have rulers next to the pictures of the sheets on their website, other manufacturers take note  ).

Expensive but might be worth it; can anyone know how thick they are?

[MyRule1]

I am presuming from various hints in your posting that you are looking for bricks in 2mm/ N gauge. I faced the same question as did some experiments by photographing buildings such that the image was correct for that scale. In all cases, for N gauge, you could not see the bond at normal viewing distance. A brick being 215mm x 65mm (to scale: 1.4mm x 0.43mm - the mortar course being about 0.06mm). Through digital photography and Adobe Elements I am now constructing most of my buildings using self printed material sheets. I am happy with the results.

[NScaleNotes]

22 hours ago, MyRule1 said:

I am presuming from various hints in your posting that you are looking for bricks in 2mm/ N gauge. I faced the same question as did some experiments by photographing buildings such that the image was correct for that scale. In all cases, for N gauge, you could not see the bond at normal viewing distance. A brick being 215mm x 65mm (to scale: 1.4mm x 0.43mm - the mortar course being about 0.06mm). Through digital photography and Adobe Elements I am now constructing most of my buildings using self printed material sheets. I am happy with the results.

 

Thought the title of the thread might give it away but you presume right...

Yes, it's a tricky balance to strike between being true to scale and incorporating detail/features that the eye expects to see and I'm aware plastic will lean more towards including features that the eye expects to see rather than being absolutely true to scale. For now I want to experiment with plastic but I remember seeing some 2mm/finescale buildings built with brick papers at an exhibition that were very effective and I'm sure your results are similar.

 

In a similar vein I think creating effective scenes is also down to having a similar or complimentary colour palette throughout the layout to help blend everything together which is easier to achieve if you're doing your own artwork and printing; sometimes I find the colours of unweathered commercial products sat together clash and at least for me that can break the illusion. Do you have any pictures of your work you can share?

[grahame]

On 22/01/2021 at 10:35, MyRule1 said:

 In all cases, for N gauge, you could not see the bond at normal viewing distance. 

 

Not necessarily true in all cases. Firstly there is no such thing as a 'normal viewing distance' standard - it's a variable feast and often a matter of how close you can get and how good is your eyesight.

And with N gauge models being small and easily handled they are often picked up to view closely. Plus with modern digital photography it is easy and quick to take a snap and zoom in to inspect the detail.

 

However it is often possible to 'get away' with suggesting fine detail in a small scale like N/2mm. There are many techniques for that.