"Brick and wood textures for MDF buildings" Topic

I recently acquired the task of painting some Sarissa Precision, Old West-themed mdf buildings. They are simple, nicely designed, and easy to assemble, but will look a little flat and characterless next to some highly textured resin buildings that I have already painted.

The incised wooden boards have enough depth (I think) that I can paint them adequately, but the incised brick seems too regular and too tightly spaced to ever really resemble bricks. Some examples can be seen here:
link
This is not a building in my to-do list, but the adobe "bricks" are similarly too tight and too regular to look natural, in my opinion. I have come up with solutions for the featureless and flat roofs (arguably the most visible and important part of a model building for gaming) but I am a little stumped on a good way to improve or replace the bricks and, possibly, add some wooden board textures to the inside of some buildings.

The easiest thing would probably be to buy some plastic brick sheets online, glue them on, and paint them. I haven't settled on this yet for a couple reasons--I don't have much in the way of tools or experience in precisely cutting plastic sheets, and I am a little apprehensive about it looking, in the end, like something plastic glued to mdf.

I also looked at brick texture rolling pins. What I can't quite figure out is what those could be used with that wouldn't mostly end up stuck to the roller. Every modelling putty I have ever tried has as much affinity for sticking to my fingers and tools as it does to the model, so I don't quite see how these are supposed to work.

Anyone have experience with these or other solutions?

A few things to try that work for me.

Lightly brush the exposed brick area with a metal bristle brush.

Run a sharp chisel or gouge blade down the horizontal edges, rolling your hand slightly as you do. This can decrease the uniformity of look.

Using a small chisel or knife remove the top half millimeter to millimeter of some of the bricks and then glue the removed pieces face down to other bricks, leaving a rough face.

If all else fails, practice this step on scrap first. Now a second time. Then use a chisel to remove the bricked area by a mm and a half. Dam off any edges as necessary and then pour a very will mixed and fine layer of dental plaster. When hardened score your bricks as you wish.

They make texture sheets that you can press clay into, let the clay dry, then glue the clay to your building.

Reflect that the exposed mud brick is the result of a layer of protective mud/plaster having fallen off. To be sure, it would have deposited at the foot of the wall. A sloped pile of crumbly looking debris/schmootz could mask a few courses of the offending bricks at the bottom.

Don't get too carried away. The protective layer would not have been super thick. Remember, loess is more.

Do a search for model railroad embossed paper sheets. HO scale is good for 15mm and O scale works just fine with 28mm.

Thanks for all suggestions. I am already aware of the printed texture sheets, I am just examining alternatives

@Editor in Chief Bill: Do you know what kind of clay or putty works well with these templates? Green Stuff and Milleput stick amazingly well to everything, including my "non-stick" sculpting tools. The sites I have seen (so far) selling brick and stone pattern molds, like the ones selling texture rolling pins, were a bit vague on what material might work best.

[edit]Finally got an answer for this second bit. According to Green Stuff World, Fimo or Sculpy both work OK with their rolling pin[/edit]

Lightly dust your texture rolling pin with talc.

As already mentioned Green Stuff World make texture rolling pins, in both 28mm and 15mm suitable sizes.

One of the MDF building manufacturers make some texture templates (forget who, think it might be Sarissa): place over the building apply filler, smooth and remove the template.

Pocho Azul: … Sarissa Precision, Old West-themed mdf buildings … flat and characterless … the incised brick seems too regular and too tightly spaced to ever really resemble bricks.

I wanted to see what you are describing, but I looked on the Sarissa Precision web site at the 28mm Old West line and couldn't find any examples of brick texture.

You are right those resin buildings have really deep texture. So for the MDF buildings to fit in, you want to increase the sculpture depth of the texture. Maybe glue torn tissue paper over the brick with gaps to resemble peeling stucco? Or for thicker stucco, apply wall filler?

The other alternative is to use the brick buildings at the edges of your layouts.

Pocho Azul:

I have used Sculpey clay in texture molds before. The Sculpey web site suggested using Armor All Original Protectant, as a mold release agent. It worked -- superbly. It makes a bit of a wet mess, but I just ran water over the clay, to wash it off. I then cured it, in the oven, per normal procedures. The Armor All Original Protectant had absolutely no effect on the polyforma clay, compared to clay projects which were not exposed to the Armor All Original Protectant mixture. The water rinse off also had no effect on the polyforma clay. Cheers!

OK, well I found out some stuff, so here is an update in case anyone is interested.

As KeepYourPowderDry indicated, the best selection of rollers seems to be from Green Stuff World, which is a bit ironic, as I suspect green stuff might be tricky to use with them (too sticky). They sell a lot of different ones at different scales and styles, but I am most interested in this one. I mostly work at 28mm, but it might do for 20mm as well. They also have some 15mm scale rollers and some of their rollers are less scale-dependent. There are a lot of 3D-printed rollers on Etsy, but most seem a bit chunky for 28mm, at least for something with a common size range like historical building bricks. Those of you with access to 3D printers can find the STL files online and scale them as needed,

Apparently the best material to use with texture rolling pins, or with the silicon molds that kinda do the same job, seems to be polymer clay, like Fimo or Sculpey. I haven't used Sculpey since I was a little kid (a long time ago) but there are a lot of different brands and styles. I haven't looked into the air-dry clay so much, but for the heat-cured clay, Soufflé, which a Sculpey brand, sounds like the best. According to this review, most polymer clays shrink noticeably when baked, except for two--Soufflé and Cernit. Soufflé is alleged (by the company that makes it) to have exceptional flexibility and ability to take detail, and is a lot less expensive than Cernit, abut which I have less info.

I haven't found any good molds or other fancy ideas for adding wood-plank textures to certain blank spots in my mdf buildings, but I did find actual wood, scored to look like planks at several different scales and at not too high a cost.

I played with Sculpey, years ago. I did not notice shrinkage after baking. I would recommend experimenting yourself, to gauge the shrinkage to see if it will be acceptable for your needs. Cheers!

I've seen gaming crafters use a wire brush, dragged across balsa/bass wood, to create more prominent wood grain structure. It works quite nicely. You can either paint it, or stain it, after scoring it with the wire brush. Search YouTube for model crafting wood texture techniques -- there are several that I have seen.

I would recommend using Minwax Polyshades Urethane Stain: it is both a wood stain, and polyurethane, combined; get the smallest can size, half-pint, as it goes a long ways… It does not give the best stain results, but it is a "one and done", formulation. Two coats are better than one, however.

Bear in mind that Wood PVA Glue will bond the wood only if the wood is bare -- no stain, no varnish on it. If you use Wood Glue between balsa/bass wood, and MDF, the glue bond will be stronger than the wood/MDF! Make certain to brush the glue on, thinly, but not too thinly; then press it, with Parchment Paper, against the wood/MDF, then a layer of wax paper on top of that, pressed down by a book. The book will ensure even adhesion; the Parchment Paper will prevent the glue from sticking to the wax paper, but it can transfer water through it; the wax paper will stop the water from damaging the book. Cheers!