Any Hot Tips For Putting Up Backdrops?

Where do you find polycarbonate sheet material?

Home Depot or Lowes maybe?

Rod

12' by 36" of back drop is going to cost a ton of $$ if you're going to use polycarbonate sheets.

Home depot and Lowes carry it but nothing that big. You would have to piece it together unless you can find a sign supply or glass company that can get you full size piece that you need. It still will NOT be cheap!

Fffreddd;

I would love to know if you can get sheets that size, and how much?

Rod

I agree with Laidoffsick. Many ideas sound like excessive effort and cost for a fairly simple aspect of layout building. One key is that there is no real need for anything beyond Masonite and water-based contact cement for any kind of backdrop.

Mount the Masonite early in the benchwork construction process. Don't skimp - make it tall enough to rise well above the tallest landforms or buildings (something I wish I had done a better job with!).

Paint the Masonite a sky blue. You will find that deeper colors show better in photos (another case of "wish I had...")

Cut away the sky portion of your printed backdrop. Glue the backdrop to the painted Masonite with a latex contact cement. Wrinkling or air pockets will be much easier to avoid with the sky cut away. If wrinkling is still a problem maybe your backdrops aren't printed on heavy enough paper, or you are using too much glue and soaking the paper.

You also can then mix backdrops from different companies without worrying about sky colors matching.

Don't be afraid to use a collage technique by cutting and pasting pieces of various backdrops to fit your needs.

No section of any of the following photo backdrops was larger than 8-1/2" x 11", printed on heavyweight  (80 lb) paper on my home printer.

If dealing with glues, wrinkles, and air pockets seems like too much hassle, there is always the very simple hand-painted approach. No artistry needed - just very, very light colors to give a sense of distance - no details needed.

Jim

Very nice work Jim.

I really like your collage effect with various overlayed building prints with actual fronts at the, well, front!

rod

Thanks, Rod.

I've always subscribed to the KISS principle in most aspects of layout building. I really wanted to show newcomers who may be reading this thread that a backdrop does not necessarily have to be a tricky, expensive part of layout building.

Another advantage of the piecemeal/collage technique is that it can be created on the fly as scenery work progresses from one area on the layout to another.

One piece backdrops require that you have a fairly good idea of where towns, mountains, industries, etc. will be on the finished layout. Sometimes they even dictate where foreground items must be placed to fit in with the backdrop.

By working in sections, you have more control and can adjust the backdrop scenes to blend in better with foreground scenery.

All you need do initially is to install the Masonite and paint it blue. The rest of the backdrop will develop along with the finished scenery. 

Jim

The backdrop on my switching layout is exactly as Jim says....plain Masonite, painted blue, with some flat white spray paint to create the horizon.

Its very basic and cheap, but easy to add to later. I started putting building flats up against it for a 3rd effect, and you could also cut out building pictures and attach them directly to the masonite.