I’m looking to imitate the appearance of bricks on some plastic. Was curious how people have done this. I’m sure it’s mostly scribing along a straight edge but I was curious if this wasn’t covered somewhere already.
You can get styrene that is already embossed to look like bricks, if you want.
Plastruct comes to mind.
Welcome James!
It depends on what type of plastic. Foamed PVC Board (Sintra, Azek etc.) is soft and can be scribed with an awl or other dull pointed object.
Closed cell foam board (Signfoam and other brands) is very soft and can be scribed or carved.
Styrene is much harder, while it can be scribed, impressions aren’t very deep.
Acrylics are too hard to do much other that CNC route or laser cut.
In any case, it is very labor intensive and difficult to get good believable results. That’s probably why most folks go with vacuum molded brick sheets.
This was my experiment using closed cell foam board. While it looks OK, it was way to difficult for the size wall I was planning…
JTT makes brick sheets in 1/24 that work well for us.
You can usually find the two packs for around $6.
the last time i tried to get the Plastruct brick in the big sheets it was unavailable. 
AL P.
The best brick structure I’ve seen was done by Burl Rice. He made plaster castings of bricks, roughed the edges a bit, then glued them all down to a sheet. Then cast that in RTV to make a mold, then made resin walls. Lots of work.
For 1/20.3 scale, the embossed foamed PVC board looks great because the brick size is big enough. I wouldn’t do a embossed brick wall in 1/29 as the bricks are too small. A cinder block wall is definitely doable (about the same size as a 1/20.3 regular brick)
@manimal has done some experiments with 3d printing brick walls. This might be an option to pursue as well.
Welcome James,
Are you putting this on top of and existing building/structure or are you planning on building it from scratch? Do you have a picture of what you plastic that you plan to put the bricks on?
be welcome!
for plastic sheets and smallish brics the easiest way might be a steel-rule and a new flat screwdriver (where the edges are still not rounded)
the horizontal lines are easy. the verticals need attention for not being too long and hitting only every second layer.
(don’t try that while the TV runs, it needs concentration)
on styrodur or styropor (for bigger “stoneblocks” ) a weak soldering iron or one of these thingies for adorning leather belts work wonders.
I haven’t used mine yet, but it looks to be quality.
I have used Ozark Miniatures they are slow to ship. I ordered some 11/1 and according to USPS it will be here 12/1. I use the 1:24 scale and the sheets are 16x16" they are white so you will have to paint them. Ozark Miniatures