Moe Lass': Applying brick paper

[The walls have been temporarily tilted up to see how things look before aging and adding the fireplace.]

I covered the balsa walls with MicroMark brick paper – specifically with their ‘aged brick’ product. I’m not a paid shill for that company, but I am rather partial to their line of brick papers. The detailing and colour are quite good, and I like the adhesive backing.

Looking at the photos in Mr. Moore’s article it looks like the Northeastern brick material he used only has the brick pattern on one side, and the other, the interior side in this project, is simply an un-patterned wood. I decided to brick both sides since that seemed more appropriate for this sort of backwoods building.

I think the most important tip to working with brick paper I can give is to always have a sharp blade in your knife when making cuts. At the slightest sign of tearing, or drag on the blade, change it for a sharp new one. This does use up blades – I think I used maybe 5 or 6 all told for balsa and brick paper cutting so far – but it’s probably the single most important technique to helping get the cleanest and most accurate build at this stage. You don’t necessary need to discard those slightly dulled blades, just set them aside for other tasks like working with styrene.

One other tip I should note is that I use a thin application of thick super glue on the balsa edges when I’m applying 1/16 inch strips of brick paper to cover them. I’ve found that the brick paper’s adhesive sometimes isn’t enough to hold these thin strips in place on the often uneven and rough balsa end-cuts. When covering large, flat expanses of wall, the paper’s own adhesive backing is sufficient and doesn’t need anything extra to hold it in place.