B2B6 1/24th paving bricks & roofing tiles

[Steve Bennett]

Well the title is a little misleading, as these are kinda half relief bricks, but that didnt sound right. Spotted on Steve Warrington's Back2Bay6 stand at Leeds last weekend were a new (I think) range of brick and tile products. One glance was enough, I had to give them a try. More on the tiles at a later time, but for now I'm concentrating on the bricks. These are designed for the 1/24th dollshouse market, individual bricks for cladding the walls. They are made of a clay material, a bit like terracotta, but not as hard, maybe they just havent been fired . A clever design feature is that they taper out a little toward the base on two sides, giving automatic spacing for the mortar.

Being as these are not fully 3D bricks, rather like tiles, they are quite thin, a little under 2mm thick. It struck me they looked a similar thickness to the height of code 100 rail, you can probably guess where this is heading, yup, ideal for inlaid track. Straight forward enough Well not quite, but more on that in a minute. Here's a few pics before you get too bored with my writings. A nice simple brick laid walkway across the tracks was used as a test piece. Here it is in place on a length of Peco Setrack, it works fine with the 0-16.5/On30 track aswell.



This second pic shows one of my wagon underframes fitted with Bachmann wheels, which have larger flanges than those I normally use, as I wanted to make sure the clearances were ok. It rolls through here fine.



I used what are described as "Weathered" bricks, I thought they would work better on the ground than the ordinary type. This overhead shot shows the variety, the edges are deliberately uneven, honest



And a second overhead with the wagon underframe on it. The clearance is quite tight, but I dont think would cause any problem on straight track, I'm not sure I would want to try this on a curve, but these things are so easy to work it should be possible if you have the patience.



Now, this you would think would have been a fairly simple task . It would have been if I had taken the sensible option and soldered rails to copperclad for the track. But no, I had to accept the challenge of using ready made track, the problems all came from the rail fixings, they do tend to get in the way if you want to put anything close to the rails. The solution once worked out was simple enough. Mounting the bricks onto card slightly inset from the edges, then using a file to put a taper on the underside of the bricks was enough to clear the rail fixings. It should be noted that the soft nature of the bricks makes them easy to work with a file, note how clogged up the file at the right of the picture below is. Hopefully this shows what is required to use them with ready made track.



Sorry, I have gone on a bit, but I really think these have a lot of potential uses. I suppose a few details on cost are in order . These brick slips, come in packs of 150 for £2.60. This should give a coverage of 11.5 square inches so it will be obvious that to do a complete building will be quite expensive, but to use in smaller areas as I have, the cost is not going to amount to much and I think this will be where they are most useful.

OK thats me done, maybe I will have a play with the roof tiles later, then I can bore you all again .

[Steve Bennett]

There is a grout/mortar which comes in powder form, it is a kind of buff sandy colour. I should have picked some up, it is only £0.60 a bag and goes a long way I would think. The makers recommend sealing the bricks before grouting, with a matte varnish, to avoid staining.

Creating patterns such as a herringbone one would be very easy with these, I will put some together dry later to show you.

The bricks appear to take paints and stains very readily, I have tried a thin wash of black poster paint on a couple and the effect is very good. A few with washes of burnt umber or sienna should give a nice bit of variety. Wetting a brick first, then adding a touch of black poster paint, does give a very good representation of a burnt or overfired brick, still experimenting here.

Another question I recieved off the forum on size and spacing so I will answer that here as well as it might be useful. The face of the bricks measure 9mm by 4.5mm nominally and as mentioned previously, the depth is a little under 2mm. The self spacing feature, which runs along one long side and one end of each brick, adds approx 0.5mm to the dimensions, leaving a 0.5mm space and approximately the same depth for the mortar.

[Steve Bennett]

Well this wasnt as easy as I thought to put together, they kept moving , would have been a lot easier to glue them down as I went, rather than having them loose, but you will get the idea.



I would think any acrylic matte varnish would do to seal them, probably better if diluted a bit so it soaked in rather than sitting on the surface. There is a good chance that it will intensify the colour though, much the same as happens with ballast when glued down, as any dust on the surface will get washed off.

[Steve Bennett]

Have you tried staining the bricks to get some colour variation?

Not really experimented much with staining them yet, but a quick test using very diluted poster paint shows that they absorb paint well, so I would say at this stage that they should take staining perfectly.

Now you must excuse me, need to get back to tiling a roof with products from the same range. More later, probably tomorrow now, but I will say, another really neat product .

[Steve Bennett]

Time for part 2 of this thread now, yes I finally got around to trying the roofing tiles from the same range. I know this thread is supposed to be about bricks , but it didnt seem worth starting a new thread for this.

The tiles are of the same material as the bricks, which thanks to the feedback on here, looks like it is slip clay which has been poured into moulds. The design of the tiles, is to my mind, very clever and they fit together perfectly. In the first photo below, which is larger than lifesize, you will see that the top surface is flat, the underside is the clever bit, they are tapered and stepped so they go into position correctly.



For this test exercise, I thought I would tile a roof for a small building that I had for trying out some other techniques. I decided to lay the tiles on a thin piece of card and then assemble the sub roof after, backwards I know, but I think it will work. First thing was to measure out the size, taking account that I will need to fit barge boards and the like later. Then a piece of index card was cut to size and sprayed with red car primer, dont want any white showing through between the tiles . No marking out is required, once the first row is in place, the rest will simply butt up against them. Here you can see the card with the first two rows of tiles in place.



Once the first row of tiles is in place, it is very easy to lay the rest. There is an instruction sheet which Steve provided with the tiles, which recommends putting a thin batten along the front edge of the roof and then butting the first row of tiles against this. Typically I chose to ignore this just using the edge of the card to line things up and this worked fine, though probably a little more open to error. The half tiles at the end of the rows were fairly easy to do following the makers recommendation of using side cutters to cut in half, I did have a couple which shattered, but they wont go to waste, they might find a home in the bottom of a miniature flower pot at some time . The next pic shows the tiling progressing, you might be able to make out that the roof is not perfectly flat, this was part of the reason for using the thin card for the base, I wanted a slightly rustic feel, without being too obvious.



Now I have to own up to my lack of planning , this is as far as I got with a single pack of these tiles and work has stopped until I get some more. In my defence, I didnt buy them to tile this building, I had intended to use them along the top of walls, for which there would have been plenty . One final shot for now of the end of the roof which shows well with the use of light, the profile of the tiles and how they fit together. This I think makes these highly suitable for a foreground model.



Apart from giving you all a few details now, that's as far as we go until more supplies arrive . The tiles are described as "Small Red Tiles" and they measure 10mm by 7mm, once in place the visable area is approx 7mm square. There are 110 to a pack which should cover 9 square inches (58 sq cm), which would tie in with the coverage I got. The cost is £2.90 per pack, slightly more than the bricks and for less pieces, a reflection I would think of being more difficult to mould.

[Steve Bennett]

A quick update as I received some samples of the ridge tiles this morning. Here is a quick snap of them.



These are not yet in stock at Back2Bay6, Steve is waiting for delivery from the producer. I cant tell you what the price will be either, as that is still being negotiated. The guy that makes them wants to supply them as individual pieces, but Steve would rather have them as multiple packs When I find out more I will post it, but to give you an idea, the price looks like it will be around 30-35 pence a single ridge tile.
Size I can give you though, they are 15mm long, so will span 2 tiles and are 8.5mm deep, just under 7mm on the inside.

Will have to think of a way of demonstrating these, the roof I was doing is obviously not much use, as you dont have ridge tiles on a single sided roof .

[Steve Bennett]

The angle looks to be 90 degrees Steve, am I right

Yes it is, not sure if that is correct or not, never really studied these things. I know the pitch of a roof can vary from one part of the country to another, they are a lot more shallow down this way than they are around you for instance. Does the ridge tile match the pitch, or just sit on top, I'm not sure, looking out of the window doesn't help much, some seem to be 90 degrees, others more, the buildings around here are all fairly new as well, so not a very good guide.

[Gerry Bullock]

Here's details from a Ridge Tile Manufacturer:

Hogback ridge. Length: 300 mm. Angles: 90°, 105°, 115°.
Angle ridge. Length: 450 mm. 90°, 105°, 115°.
Capped Angle ridge. Length: 450 mm. 90°, 105°, 115°.

They also do "Fancy" Ridge Tiles that come in 75°, 90°, 105°.
So 90° it is then

[Steve Bennett]

Well I finished the tiling and I'm really pleased with the way it looks. The tiles with the broken corners were done deliberately, in the two packs I had for this there wasn't a single broken one, a quick nip with some side cutters soon sorted that though. Could do with some weathering but as this is supposed to be showing the products as they come, I might need to resist, for a while anyway. So here are a few shots of the tiled roof, just need to finish the rest of the building now. Excuse the curled paper tiles on the floor, these are going to be replaced with some teracotta ones very soon.

Starting with a bird's eye view:



an end on shot:



now coming down to eye level:



and finally the view most would get with it placed on a layout:



Well I think that just about wraps this up, hopefully this saga has been of some use, now what to play with next .

[Steve Bennett]

The roof is great, but I didn't notice (amongst the dozens of posts) how you made the walls.

That was an experiment quite some time ago, you can read the saga of how the walls were done here John
http://forum.gn15.info/viewtopic.php?t=651

Probably one of my more successful experiments .

[Steve Bennett]

As I have recently received some bricks from http://www.richardstacey.com/ , I thought a direct comparison with the ones from Back2Bay6 might be helpful, so here you go.



While the Richard Stacey ones (top), are not stuck down, it makes an interesting comparison. Unlike the Back2Bay6 ones, which are flat pieces, the Richard Stacey ones are 3D, so have the advantage of being laid either way. The Stacy ones are also a bit oversize. The dimension of both are (sorry those stuck on inches )

Richard Lacey : 13mm x 5.75mm x 4mm.
Back2Bay6 : 10mm x 5mm x 2mm.

Just a bit more info to file away