Scribing the Vertical Courses

You should now have a nice flat piece of filler with little tiny lines running across spaced 1mm apart.

As mentioned before, bricks at 00gauge are 3mm wide. So begin by marking along the very top course with a sharp pencil every 3mm all the way along the wall.

If your measurements have been done correctly then the last brick will be a perfect 3mm and not 2 or 4mm!

Now count down every other course until you reach the last course near the bottom that is in the same order as the top. Obviously this is because of the stretcher bond style of the bricks.

____|____|____|____|____|____|____|.   Top course marked

_______________________________.   Not this

_______________________________.   This

_______________________________.   Not this

_______________________________.   This

_______________________________.   Not this

____|____|____|____|____|____|____|.  Bottom course marked

Then you can line up your steel ruler against the top course and the bottom one and pencil in all the lines in between the alternating courses to the top. Careful you don't fall asleep.

Once you have these alternating courses marked out you can scribe away! I find it easiest to place the pin in the line below the course and place my thumb against my scriber right at the bottom like a little lever. Then a push will drive the pin through the filler upwards and cut the vertical line into it. Don't work too much about the inevitable bits of filler go into the lines. The filler is robust enough to withstand being scrubbed with a toothbrush and soaped up to remove all that at the end.

Once you have scribed these courses you can mark out the other ones with your pencil at the top and bottom.

____|____|____|____|

__|____|____|____|__2nd course marked

____|____|____|____| 

_________________  This one

____|____|____|____| 

_________________  This one

____|____|____|____|

__|____|____|____|__2nd course marked

____|____|____|____| 

Do the same scribing for these courses and that's it. Simple really. Just very repetitive!

As you can see from the above image, some of the bricks are "blown". To do this, simply dig into random areas with your scribing tool.

It is at this point you will be able to mark out where your windows and doors will go as you can make a brick course finish perfectly at a window opening without having random half bricks. See image below for an example of this.

Here you can see how the bricks and half bricks end correctly at the edges of windows, the doorframe and the wall edges. This is accurate to real life. Each window and door equals 4 bricks wide. for a wider window simply make it a brick or a half brick wider.

To mark out your windows simply use your ruler and a pencil and the bricks as a guide. Then scribe the edges deeply to define them for the next stage. Which is cutting out the windows and doors.