painting mortor lines between brick

[bigray1964]

Can someone give me some ideas on how to make the brick work on my bulidings look realistic. The buildings are Walthers Cornerstone Roundhouse and back shop. I've tried to paint over the bricks with Acrylic white paint and then sanding the white off and then spraying a lite coat of dullcoat. This dosent look bad but is there a easyer way?

[larak]

http://cs.trains.com/TRCCS/forums/p/146975/1634108.aspx#1634108

 

[hon30critter]

bigray1964

First, welcome to the forums!

There are several ways to colour mortor. I have used a wash of very thin concrete coloured acrylic paint followed by a rub down with a slightly damp cloth to remove the excess. Others have used baby powder rubbed into the brick lines followed by hair spray. One method that may help your current situation is to paint the structure the desired mortor colour and then use a brick coloured craft pencil to go over the walls to restore the colour of the brick. 

There are many more ways to do it.

There is a search engine on the right side of this page about half way down. When I typed in 'mortor' I got lots of hits. You may find a method there that suites you.

Dave

P.S. Just in case some of you don't think I know how to spell 'colour', don't forget I'm Canadian and we use the British spelling!

[The Ferroequinologist]

Dear Sir: Try Roberts Brick Mortar. It is applied with a paint brush, let dry and wipe off. You can leave it on a month, doesn't matter. An excellent product! Address in P.O. Box 27057, Milwaukee, Wi. 53227. They may have a web site.

[jacon12]

Here is one of the commercial products I've used..

and I'm trying Roberts Brick Mortar right now and like it..  This structure was done with Roberts

http://www.robertsbrickmortar.com/index.html 

I like them both though the Roberts is more forgiving in that you can let it completely dry before removing the excess.

Jarrell

[wsdimenna]

Recently I tried the white cottage stain from hunterline for my greyhound bus station.  Dilute it  a bit with rubbing alcohol. It was the easiest mortar procedure I have used.

[dstarr]

I just did that last night.  It's a plastic brick building.  I gave it a coat of red auto primer for a good brick color and then applied a wash of  craft store acrylic white with a dash of light gray.  The wash soaked into all the mortar lines, no sweat.  I gave it a minute or two to dry some, and then wiped it down with a damp rag.  This wiped the wash off the surface of the brick.  The result looks OK by eye.  The red brick now has a whiteish cast.  I am going to give it a harder rubbing out today now that the wash is good and dry.  Last night, while the wash was still somewhat wet, a hard rub would take it out of the mortar lines altogether, so I went easy. 

   It does NOT photograph well.  My little point&shoot's color balance got confused by the white reflecting a lot of overhead fluorescent light into the camera lens and the color came out odd.  I'm going to try a shot by daylight to see if it looks any better.

[WinRI]

I attended  a "Building" clinic put on Bar-Mills at the Amherst Show last month.. The speaker recommended "Spackle" found at any hardware store - the benefits - cheap, easy to apply, water soluble, and will take a stain...

w/re

Walter

[selector]

Most households have a sealed small container of drywall patching plaster, or mud, to fix holes and gouges.  That would do.  Some have even used white flour.  Stain with India Ink wash.

Crandell

[bigray1964]

Thanks Crandell and everyone else that replied to my questions. There was a lot of really good ideas. I tried the spackle or dry wall patch and it works really good. I figure after it drys i will try to go over with a brick colored weathering powder and then hit it with a dull coat.

[strider]

I use drywall compound (Sheetrock plus 3) on mine. The good thing is that its cheap and even after it dries you can wash it off as long as you haven't sealed it with dullcoat. I paint the brick with Floquil zinc chromium primer, let it dry, apply joint compound and wipe most of it off then let joint compound dry. Next take a damp rag and wipe off the top of brick, joint compound will stay in mortar lines  When all looks right spray with dullcoat to seal.

[Robby]

I'm still a fan of spraying the entire structure with concrete and then using Prismcolor pencils to color the raised brick surface.  It's so fast and fail-safe there is no way I will go back to brick color first and then trying to flow in lighter color after the fact.  The pencils come in dozens of colors for that much wanted color variation.  Over spray with dilute grimy black and seal with dullcoat.

 

All the brick work in this shot, including the chimneys on the station were done in this manner.

[img]http://s226.photobucket.com/albums/dd247/robby-ky/CV%20Subdivision%20Layout/?action=view&current=Barbourville_001.jpg[img]

[Robby]

Why didn't that link work?  It's active on photobucket???