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Ian Smith
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Nice little box Ian. One of the things we do with Slaters brick plastikard on CF is to sand down the brick faces to take away their rather blobby/shiny appearance.

 

Tim

Thank you Tim.  I'll bear the tip about sanding down the brickwork in mind.  I must admit that it is a concern that the bricks are a bit blobby in appearance.  I can feel an experiment coming on with a piece of the sheet, sanding an area and leaving another part natural before applying some colour.

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Nice little box Ian. One of the things we do with Slaters brick plastikard on CF is to sand down the brick faces to take away their rather blobby/shiny appearance.

 

Tim

I did the same for the sides of the turntable well on Kirkallanmuir.  For other buildings, though, I'm planning on using the downloadable brick and stone papers from Smart Models.  Apart from bull-faced stonework, I feel that using embossed plasticard is 'overkill' in 2mm scale, having seen the use of printed surfaces on Wansbeck and the Metcalf kits we used on a previous group layout.   I'll still use paper strips for slates, though, as a bit of texture helps there.

 

Jim

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Interesting comments on slates Jim. Again, on CF we use the Slaters Plastikard slates, but sanded to lose much of the relief. This moulding is better than the bricks, but still works better with a textured surface. The acreage of slates that we have rather precludes individual strips and I prefer the reliability of a solid and subtle styrene roof. Sorry to hijack the thread Ian.

 

Tim

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I did the same for the sides of the turntable well on Kirkallanmuir.  For other buildings, though, I'm planning on using the downloadable brick and stone papers from Smart Models.  Apart from bull-faced stonework, I feel that using embossed plasticard is 'overkill' in 2mm scale, having seen the use of printed surfaces on Wansbeck and the Metcalf kits we used on a previous group layout.   I'll still use paper strips for slates, though, as a bit of texture helps there.

 

Jim

Do you have any concerns over the fastness of the colours on computer-printed texture papers, Jim? I ask because a friend made a number of buildings in 4mm using the downloadable sheets from Scalescenes and found they faded badly over time, even though they weren't exposed to direct sunlight.

 

Steve

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Interesting comments on slates Jim. Again, on CF we use the Slaters Plastikard slates, but sanded to lose much of the relief. This moulding is better than the bricks, but still works better with a textured surface. The acreage of slates that we have rather precludes individual strips and I prefer the reliability of a solid and subtle styrene roof. Sorry to hijack the thread Ian.

 

Tim

Tim,

No apology needed, it's nice to get feedback (both constructive and critical) and equally importantly ideas from others - it's one of the reasons that I decided to blog / thread some of the things I'm working on.

 

For the roofs I intended to apply strips of self adhesive printer labels for the slates - a little over scale I know but I sometimes feel that the eye / brain expects there to be some texture / relief, and to my eye if it looks flat it doesn't quite look right.  A purely personal view, and I appreciate that some people use printed paper to great effect (especially in N/2mm), but one of the things I am fearful of is the colour fastness of a printed sheet.

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Do you have any concerns over the fastness of the colours on computer-printed texture papers, Jim? I ask because a friend made a number of buildings in 4mm using the downloadable sheets from Scalescenes and found they faded badly over time, even though they weren't exposed to direct sunlight.

 

Steve

I think it depends on the ink used and the paper.  Brian Taylor of Smart Models recommends using matt photographic paper to print on  He had two versions of one of his kits at Perth, one printed on 80gsm paper and the other on matt photo paper.  The difference, not only in the detail, but also in the colour was quite noticeable.   the reason is that on plain paper the inks tend to run together to a small extent, while this doesn't happen on the photo paper.

 

Below are a some photos of the Station, Signal box and Goods shed roofs on Connerburn, all done with 80gsm strips.

 

post-25077-0-30745600-1448494325.jpg

post-25077-0-72361300-1448494370.jpg

post-25077-0-39152300-1448494406.jpg

 

Jim

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I printed out some brickwork on ordinary paper on an ink jet printer to use for the walls of a platform. I gave it a coat of matt varnish to seal it. When fixing the ballast of the track alongside using PVA a couple of patches were affected and the colours ran slightly. Either I had missed a couple of bits with the varnish or moisture had been drawn up from the edge of the paper. Photographic paper might be better in that respect.

Don

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  • 2 weeks later...

Since the last Signal Box instalment the painters have been in, and the glaziers are currently trying to make the place water tight.

 

post-12089-0-59425100-1449526170_thumb.jpg

 

The brick and stone work were painted all over with a mortar colour and once dry the bricks and stones picked out in suitable colours of enamel using a dry brush / side of brush technique to deposit colour just on the surface of the raised bricks/stones.  The wooden parts of the box were all painted in Precision Paints, predominantly Light & Dark Stone (although the Dark Stone I felt was a little too dark for 2mm so I let it down with a drop of white.  The roof has been "slated" with strips of slates printed on my inkjet onto self adhesive label paper.  The windows are simply "scrawked" onto glazing material (actually some clear plastic that covered some of the wife's new make up as I couldn't find my stock of Cobex), and flooded with white ink.  The surplus ink being buffed off once it had dried.  I had originally intended to get the windows and doors etched but decided that I would try the spring method for the glazing bars first (the window frames are also self adhesive printer paper).

 

Ian

 

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When I attempted a similar method of printing slates I found the shiny backing paper of the labels caused it to "skid" slightly as the rollers pulled it through the printer, stretching the slates by varying amounts and making them very difficult to use effectively.

Did you simply not have this problem or did you find a way of overcoming it?

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When I attempted a similar method of printing slates I found the shiny backing paper of the labels caused it to "skid" slightly as the rollers pulled it through the printer, stretching the slates by varying amounts and making them very difficult to use effectively.

Did you simply not have this problem or did you find a way of overcoming it?

 

It is possible to get printable labels with 'matt' backing paper. Maybe you should do a search for self-adhesive labels intended for inkjet printers.

 

Personally, I'm not a great fan of home printed surfaces on models, especially in 2mm scale. The printed raster patterns tend to show up badly in close-up photos.

 

Edit: Having said that, I have printed signs and posters in 4mm scale. These were done at the finest settings on glossy photo paper but you can still see the individual dots when viewed closely.

 

Back to the OP ...   :offtopic:

Edited by Kylestrome
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When I attempted a similar method of printing slates I found the shiny backing paper of the labels caused it to "skid" slightly as the rollers pulled it through the printer, stretching the slates by varying amounts and making them very difficult to use effectively.

Did you simply not have this problem or did you find a way of overcoming it?

Mike,

I used A4 sized labels (I thought that the largest possible would suit any future needs I might have), that were specifically for Inkjet printers, I did not have any issue of the paper not feeding through properly.

 

 

It is possible to get printable labels with 'matt' backing paper. Maybe you should do a search for self-adhesive labels intended for inkjet printers.

 

Personally, I'm not a great fan of home printed surfaces on models, especially in 2mm scale. The printed raster patterns tend to show up badly in close-up photos.

 

Edit: Having said that, I have printed signs and posters in 4mm scale. These were done at the finest settings on glossy photo paper but you can still see the individual dots when viewed closely.

 

Back to the OP ...   :offtopic:

 

Kylestrome,

I only printed the outlines of the slates (with a feint line half way up to aid the overlap).  I have nicked the joins between slates with a scalpel to hopefully give a little further relief horizontally when I paint them.  Hopefully the photo below should illustrate better what I did - It should be pointed out that because I was drawing up the "artwork" for the slates I was able to ensure that 1.5X width ones were drawn at the ends of each alternative row.

 

post-12089-0-93605600-1449571750_thumb.jpg

 

Ian

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Kylestrome,

I only printed the outlines of the slates (with a feint line half way up to aid the overlap).  I have nicked the joins between slates with a scalpel to hopefully give a little further relief horizontally when I paint them.  Hopefully the photo below should illustrate better what I did - It should be pointed out that because I was drawing up the "artwork" for the slates I was able to ensure that 1.5X width ones were drawn at the ends of each alternative row.

 

Ian

 

Ian,

 

That was a classic case of me missing the point. Sorry. I thought we were discussing brickwork.

 

Your method of making slates is exactly the way I do mine!

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I'm not convinced by the "represent slate roofs by overlapping strips of paper" method.

 

In my opinion, this method has simply hardened into dogma, which few people challenge.

 

I was recently in the National Archives, and was looking over the courtyard (and ponds) to the new(ish) extension, which has a slate roof. This was at a distance comparable to the normal viewing distance for a 4mm, let alone a 2mm model.

 

The roof looked flat.

 

There were no obvious ridges marking the slates, although the slates could be clearly seen. Remember that slates can be as little as a 1/4 inch thick---this translates to somewhat less than 0.05mm, and I defy you to find, let alone work with a paper that thin.

 

Frankly slate roofs are better portrayed by flat paper sheets, rather than go to the extent of cutting out strips, in order to lead to a grossly over scale finish. For tiles, yes, this works

 

Mark A

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There were no obvious ridges marking the slates, although the slates could be clearly seen. Remember that slates can be as little as a 1/4 inch thick---this translates to somewhat less than 0.05mm, and I defy you to find, let alone work with a paper that thin.

 

The labels that I have here are 0.1 mm thick, so we really are splitting gnats whiskers here, aren't we?  

 

Edit: Thanks for info on slate thickness, which means my 4mm scale slates are exactly to scale!   :sungum:

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I'm not convinced by the "represent slate roofs by overlapping strips of paper" method.

 

Frankly slate roofs are better portrayed by flat paper sheets, rather than go to the extent of cutting out strips, in order to lead to a grossly over scale finish. For tiles, yes, this works

 

Mark A

On the buildings for Bath and Wadebridge amongst others I've tended to use the Slaters product, one of the main reasons being that I'm unlikely to live long enough to do them using paper strips. If rubbed down, as Tim advocated for bricks, and carefully painted they can look very good. On Tucking Mill and the Wharf, which have very few buildings, I have used sticky paper labels like Ian although I mark mine out with a pencil as I'm not good at driving a computer!

 

Could you show us some of your buildings Mark, I'd be interested to see the effect you get with flat paper sheets.

 

Jerry

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When I built the various buildings on Bembridge some 45 years ago using, admittedly in 4mm scale, the then brand new Slater's brickwork, I painted them overall with the colour(s) that I wanted the mortar to be, let the paint dry thoroughly and then scraped it off using a scalpel blade. This had the double effect of flattening and tinting the moulded brick faces and leaving appropriately coloured "mortar", even mossy mortar can be reproduced if green is used as the initial colour. The effect worked well then and I have used it for other scales since including 1:160. The only refinement to the method that I use today is to finish with a very light burnish with a large fibreglass stick which helps to ensure a natural matt finish.

 

In fact the bricks on the real station building at Bembridge (demolished during the course of the model construction) had been fired with a lot of impurities in the clay and there were significant patches of dark blue within the faces of many of the bricks. After some head scratching, I tried lightly dabbing on some ultramarine cellulose paint (more easily obtained in small quantities then than now) as a first stage. This of course reacted with the plastic but not so much as to destroy the moulding and, after I was certain that it was not only dry but that the plastic had rehardened, I commenced the procedure outlined above. The result was very convincing from a normal viewing distance.

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...I defy you to find, let alone work with a paper that thin.

 

 

You haven't seen the toilet paper we have at work. 

 

Thinner than gold leaf and possibly more precious as it's kept in locked holders.

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I think there is an issue with how our brains work. In many cases especially in 2mm the textural relief in brickwork/slates etc. would not be visible at normal viewing distances but because we know it is there we expect to see it.  You can see could examples of both flat and relief. What I would suggest is showing relief on foreground buildings and using flat papers for those at the rear it seems to enhance the sense of depth to me. Incidentally I seem unable to obtain 5thou plastic sheet these days which doesn't help.

Don

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I think there is an issue with how our brains work. In many cases especially in 2mm the textural relief in brickwork/slates etc. would not be visible at normal viewing distances but because we know it is there we expect to see it.  You can see could examples of both flat and relief. What I would suggest is showing relief on foreground buildings and using flat papers for those at the rear it seems to enhance the sense of depth to me. Incidentally I seem unable to obtain 5thou plastic sheet these days which doesn't help.

Don

 

Evergreen do 5 thou sheet. But be warned, do more than just wave liquid glue near it and it's dissolves into a puddle before your eyes.

 

Don't want to impose more than needed on Ian's thread, but just to say all printed tonal matter is achieved using dots of various sizes, and at larger than normal viewing distance will be seen. Normal/average eyesight is judged as being able to see 20 lppm - 20 line pairs per millimetre - at that distance, and most printing standards are arranged around this. With inkjets a high res file as well as printing at high res on the right paper is needed to reduce seeing them at close distance/under magnification. You cannot lay too much ink down on plain paper - it can't absorb the levels of ink - so looks low res and/or with muted colours.

 

Izzy

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I'm not convinced by the "represent slate roofs by overlapping strips of paper" method.

 

In my opinion, this method has simply hardened into dogma, which few people challenge.

 

I was recently in the National Archives, and was looking over the courtyard (and ponds) to the new(ish) extension, which has a slate roof. This was at a distance comparable to the normal viewing distance for a 4mm, let alone a 2mm model.

 

The roof looked flat.

 

There were no obvious ridges marking the slates, although the slates could be clearly seen. Remember that slates can be as little as a 1/4 inch thick---this translates to somewhat less than 0.05mm, and I defy you to find, let alone work with a paper that thin.

 

Frankly slate roofs are better portrayed by flat paper sheets, rather than go to the extent of cutting out strips, in order to lead to a grossly over scale finish. For tiles, yes, this works

 

Mark A

Mark,

 

I quite agree that the real thing from normal viewing distances that slate roofs look completely flat.  However, I do feel that the brain knows that the rows overlap and have a "lip".  The label paper that I am using has an adhesive part (rather than the backing paper) of some 0.0035", obviously thicker than scale but personally I am happy to accept that just to get that "lip" that my brain says is there.  I attach a photo of the painted roof to illustrate the final effect, I'll let others decide for themselves whether it is over-stated.

post-12089-0-63191300-1449746917_thumb.jpg

 

I do feel that we do have to include some relief on some things that if true scale was adopted simply wouldn't be seen.  As well as buildings, I think that wagon strapping would look flat from normal viewing distances but we all seem happy and expect to have that raised from the planked areas of a wagon, if it were flat it just wouldn't look right.  I think that part of the reason for that is simply that we (or others) tend to take photos of our models which enable a view much closer than we could achieve with the naked eye.

 

Ian

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I do feel that we do have to include some relief on some things that if true scale was adopted simply wouldn't be seen.  As well as buildings, I think that wagon strapping would look flat from normal viewing distances but we all seem happy and expect to have that raised from the planked areas of a wagon, if it were flat it just wouldn't look right.  I think that part of the reason for that is simply that we (or others) tend to take photos of our models which enable a view much closer than we could achieve with the naked eye.

I'm with Ian on this one.  Apart from anything else, using layers of slates allows you to have the odd one slightly raised, with a corner broken, slipped, or missing all together.  All of these in moderation help to take the 'perfect' look off the building.  Of course if you want a really dilapidated roof you can go to town with it!  the roof is, after all, the most prominent part of a model building in most circumstances.

 

Jim

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Mark,

 

.  I attach a photo of the painted roof to illustrate the final effect, I'll let others decide for themselves whether it is over-stated.

 

 

 

Ian

Ian,

 

I think it looks very nice and not over-slated at all.

 

Nig H

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