Members Hints & Tips

Constructing walls from card

You will need corrugated cardboard of a scale thickness for your wall; ie. for 00 scale: 3mm thick card equals a 9" thick wall, 4mm = 12", etc. The more dense the corrugations, the better. You will also need sheets of brick or stone facing paper and scraps of suitable card for pillars and capping.

STAGE ONE

1. Draw a pencil line where you want your wall to be on your layout.

2. Cut corrugated cardboard into long strips equal to the scale height of your wall. Measure the length of your strips as you will need this measurement next.

3. Hammer small panel pins into baseboard along your wall line taking care to place a pin 4 - 6mm from the end of each cardboard strip, then about every 10cm apart. If constructing a curved wall, the pins will need placing every 2 - 3cm apart depending on the radius of the curve.

4. If the heads of the pins are large they will need to be cut off. If the pins have been left more than 15mm long, cut them to this length - this measurement is not critical & can be done by estimation.

5. Cut any strips of cardboard to required length & mark their position.

6. Run undiluted PVA glue along ONE edge of the first cardboard strip allowing glue to flow into the cardboard corrugations. If necessary, stand strip to one side for a moment to allow glue to flow and repeat this operation for the next strip. Do not work more than one strip ahead and clean sides of any excess glue. 7. Place strip with glued side down onto pins and leave to set. When joining the next strip run a small amount of glue in the joining edge and push together as you push strip down.

8. Leave to set for a couple of hours then run PVA glue into the top corrugations of your wall, and leave the whole to dry and set overnight.

STAGE TWO

9. Whilst the wall is drying, cut your chosen wall facing into strips to match the height of your wall.

10. If you require pillars/buttresses along, or at the end of, your wall, cut pieces of card of an appropriate width, height and thickness and put them to one side.

11. If using card capping for the wall, cut enough suitable strips and either paint or cover with a suitable facing paper. Eg. On a 12" wall (4mm cardboard) your capping strips need to be cut approx. 6mm wide.

STAGE THREE

12. Once the wall is thoroughly dry and feels hard and solid, paint a THIN layer of PVA glue on to a length of wall equal to the length of your facing strips and place strip onto wall smoothing with a clean paint brush or cloth if necessary. DO NOT OVER GLUE THIS and work fairly quickly. If you make a mistake, or you crumple the facing, immediately tear the strip off the wall and if necessary, use a damp (not wet) cloth to help remove strip. Allow wall to dry for a few minutes and start again.

13. Repeat this process until you have the entire wall covered taking care to keep joints in line at joints in the facing strips especially when using large stone facing.

14. At the end of your wall carefully fold the first side strip around the end of the wall; when fixing the second side glue and leave enough overlap to cover the end of your wall AND the end of any pillar but do not glue this yet. NOTE: If you have a curved wall, cut and glue strips of plain, thin paper onto wall first to smooth out the inevitable creases in the cardboard before gluing the facing strips in place.

15. Leave to thoroughly dry then trim any excess from top of wall.

16. Cover your pillars/buttresses with facing strip and glue to wall where required. Glue the overlapping side piece you left in 14 above over the join and carefully trim off excess. Also trim off any ends.

17. Run a marker pen of suitable colour along any edges which show.

18. Fix capping in place or glue capping strips to wall. You may find its easier to brush the PVA onto the capping strips to avoid dried glue showing

19. If you are going to ballast or use any form of sprayed water near your wall, complete this work before you fix the facings to the wall. If you only cover the wall after fixing the facing you may get colour distortion at the base of your wall.

20. Add paving, grass, weeds etc. as required. If you have made a mess of a joint disguise it with 'ivy'!

I use the facing/texture sheets from the www.Scalescenes.com range and are lightly sprayed with cheapest supermarket hair lacquer before use. A further coating can be given on completion.

Here are a sample of walls constructed using this method - more can be seen in pictures of Westonbury on this website.