There are a lot of different how-to’s and discussions on many of the model railroad pages around that talk about how to put mortar on your brick structures.
Some of the tutorials you’ll find require you to purchase special spackling or mortar materials and others are the “hack” or bootstrap way to make your own mortars. Many of them achieve the same results and they do look very good. Adding mortar to your brick structures in any way is a great way to achieve more depth to your layout’s structures.
The 5 Minute Mortar Wash for Your Structures:
Here’s how I quickly made my own Mortar wash with a few simple items. Most of these items you most likely already have and use for your kits, so a trip to the store probably isn’t necessary (even if it is… a trip to the craft store isn’t ever a bad thing right?)
What you’ll need:
- Medium Paint Brush
- Paint Palette
- White-ish Acrylic Paint (mix up shades on your structure so they don’t all have the same color mortar)
- Piece of Damp Paper Towel (it shouldn’t be dripping wet)
For this model, we used Folk Art 515 Vintage White and the model was the Downtown Deco – Cooter’s Liquor Store.
Okay, this is pretty straightforward and should take you about 5 mins. Larger structures will obviously take longer than the small kit I used as an example here.
Step 1: You’ll want to get your paint palette and squirt about a pea sized amount of your white paint into one of the wells.
Fill the rest of the palette well with the paint in it with water and mix it up.
Step 2: Take your paint brush and apply the white mortar wash to the side of the brick structure.
Step 3: Before the wash begins to dry, get your damp paper towel and gently wipe the wash off the side of the walls. It should leave the mortar wash in the brick texture of the wall.
Repeat this for all the sections you wish to add mortar to.
Quick Tip: If your mortar washes off too easily or doesn’t stick inside the brick texture it might be too watery or your paper towel might be too wet. Different paint brands are thinner and thicker than others so you might need to experiment with this to get your mortar exactly the way you like it.
Remember to make it the way YOU like it because this is your world you are creating and the beautiful thing about this hobby is that it’s YOURS.
