More on foamboard walls

There are 70 centimeters of rough old brick wall to build for the backscene behind the goods yard on the club layout, and the same length of footpath to go with it.

The walls are 3mm foamboard, marked out as shown in the previous post.  A quick and patchy coat of grey acrylic is followed by picking out all the individual bricks with a nice brick red colour, it takes a while, but it's strangely relaxing.
Random bricks are either lightened or darkened and a light grey/white mixture of mostly water and little paint is run into selected mortar joints and the excess dabbed off with a moist tissue. A dusting over with weathering powder made from Reeves soft chalk pastels takes any shine off the acrylic paint.

The brick pillars are stacks of 3mm foamboard squares stuck together with banner tape for speed. The bricks are impressed between the joints with my trusty dibber. the pillars are coloured in the same way as the walling.

The footpath is again just 3mm foamboard, scribed, and then coloured by painting on a generous coating of dark acrylic, then wiping most of it off with a dry cloth leaving paint in the scribed lines

The wall still needs some form of capping stones before it gets plonked into place on the club layout.

It's not perfect, but then again, 'It aint Pendon'

Stamping out brickwork

Dib dib dib

It's not easy to accurately mark out brickwork in long runs on foam. Here is the method I currently use.

The 'dibber' is made from an old paint brush with the bristles removed and the end opening formed into a brick sized punch. I cut the handle down to prevent me poking myself in the eye with the end.

With the foam cut to size, I first mark in the horizontal pointing by gently scribing with a straight edge and small point such as a rollerball pen or fine technical pencil. Then, starting from round about the centre of the top course, I mark in  bricks vertically in alternate courses  using a small set square to guide the dibber and keep things square.

When I've done all the odd courses, I fill in the even courses taking care to keep the bond accurate (well, fairly accurate!) Again starting from the centre and doing a whole vertical column at a time.

You can do a fair sized wall in a remarkable short time.

Tudor tavern 4

Just about finished

There's a bit of tidying and weathering to do, and some detailing, maybe a few more weeds, some suitable pub tables and chairs outside, and some barrels and beer crates in the yard.
A dray and horses would be nice, but those kits are mighty expensive in 7mm scale and I can't see me scratch building a pair of horses!.

A few white bits have appeared between the roof tiles, I'll touch those in, and that finial needs painting black. I need to think up a name for the place, and erect a sign.

Foam walls

Here's one I made earlier.

I had an email asking how I made the foam garden walls for the railway cottages. As it happens, I'm just making some more for the Tudor tavern, they are very easy, but I`ll go through it anyway.
The photo shows a partly complete item illustrating several of the steps.

First I make a blank wall, in this case a scale 6 feet high and 18" wide. this is done by sticking two lengths of 5mm foamboard together. Banner tape is the quickest and easiest method.

I start to round off the top by slicing off a thin sliver at roughly 45 degrees from the length on both sides to help round it off. (I wouldn't need to do this if the wall were to be flat topped or topped with capping stones) In this case the top is supposed to look like concrete.

I lightly score lines down the length of the wall just below where the concrete starts and if the wall is going to be built of dressed stones or bricks in courses, further lines to show the horizontals between the courses of bricks.
Next, I mark in the vertical joints between the bricks by pricking with the scalpel.
If I want a neat and tidy wall, I use a small set square to get the lines accurate and vertical. If it's a rough old stone wall, accuracy isn't so important. It's best to break right through the outer skin of the foamboard.

I score out the stones or bricks using a pencil or biro point, a slim tip will produce fine tidy brickwork, whereas a thick one will make big chunky slabs with deep recesses in the pointing.  I also add some texture to the stone faces at this time.
If the wall is going to be random stone, or dry walling, I omit drawing the course lines and just begin scoring the stones from one end trying to keep it irregular but convincing.

Lastly, I round off the top a bit using the edge of my thumbnail.

You can paint with acrylic straight onto the foamboard, or give it a light blast of aerosol acrylic grey primer, Not too heavy as it does eat away at the edges of the foam a little if you overdo it.
You can, if you wish, instead of car primer, give it a coat of Astonish wood floor polish
 (which is actually a thin acrylic laquer) which helps with paint adhesion.

Here are the finished walls in situ click here

Tudor tavern roofed

Chim chimenee chim chimenee

The previous part of this project is here

Click here for the first part of this project.

The Tudor house is almost complete, just a bit of detailing and some tidying up to do.
It's had quite a bit of handling owing to the empirical nature of my building so some of the blackwork needs retouching, but I'm fairly happy with the result.
I'm not too sure about the lower brickwork, I did base it on a photograph, but maybe the bricks are too large ( Tudor bricks generally were a lot smaller than modern ones) I can fairly easily cut those parts out and remake them - we'll see.

I still have the lighting to add, not too bright, a couple of grain of wheat bulbs in series should do it.

I had a plan to make the carved gable by laminating something like a paper doily or maybe some fancy lace onto card, but I didn't have either so I went for card with holes made with a leather punch and small disks courtesy of the same device - I'm quite happy with that.

The chimney stacks are made from some 00 embossed brick plasticard stuck to dalerboard with banner tape, and the flashing is masking tape. The chimney pots are short sections of Biro tube with strips of paper label wrapped around. They are lightly glued to the stacks as they will inevitably get knocked off, and I'd rather lose just a chimney pot than a whole stack and a load of roof tiles!

Next job is to pop down to the club and measure up a baseboard for it. The village is starting to come together nicely.

Jump to next installment click here