MBZ - Paint, Modeling Supplies, and More

Reynaulds is proud to announce to be the sole importer for MBZ in North America .

Thomas Oswald, the founder and owner of MBZ is an old-time friend of mine. The best way to describe him is that he is a hard working artist. As a professional photographer he was always looking for new ways to express himself and to introduce new techniques into his work. He even underwent a vocational training as a make-up artist just to have the skills for body painting. Then he introduced body painting to the industrial photography and was so successful with it that he was invited to numerous TV shows. He was also invited to the college of Coburg as a guest lecturer for photography, Interior Architecture and Integrated Product Design.

His whole live he was involved in model trains. In 1999 he started with a new layout and was very unhappy with the buildings and materials offered by the big companies.

Therefore he developed buildings and landscaping materials that are more realistic than you have ever seen from the model railroad industry.

Thomas Oswald ‘s skills and knowledge in model railroading has so progress that he is doing a lot of work for Josef Brandl, the most famous layout builder in Europe. Quite some of his models are featured in the latest Supermodellbahnanlagen magazine “Nebenbahn pur”. He also created a model of the Semper Operahouse for a museum in Dresden.

Buildings:

The buildings are made of cardboard and wood, but the material is cut and engraved by a high-powered laser. That gives you texture and the burn residue can be sealed with a primer so it looks already weathered. All the structures are models of actually existing buildings.

This is the way his buildings develop:

It starts with a picture or blue print, which will be scanned and edited. Then a reference scale will be computed and the files will be created for all the different parts. This is also the time when the surface texture will be put on file. A special cardboard is the material of choice because it has already the right properties.

After the shell of the construction is done you use his special primer to seal the cardboard. This is very important, because it will make the building resistant against moisture. To paint the structures you use his pigment- and acrylic paints, brush and a sponge. The advantage of pigment paints is that they dry completely in a matte finish. Plastic kits have always that shiny look and to get rid of it you have to paint the entire structure. The time you need to paint a plastic model is equivalent to construct and paint his laser cut and engraved models and still your results will be much more realistic. 95% of the time you just use the sponge to apply the paint. With this technique it takes you only minutes to finish your model. You conclude the process by inserting the windows, doors and the painted framework.

All the wooden parts are made of special birch plywood. This has the advantage that the wood will never warp.

Here is a little tip:

Question: What is the biggest enemy of the modeler?

Answer: The fear!

Only who is afraid to do something wrong will make mistakes.

Therefore – don't be afraid of putting together a cardboard model. It is easier than you think. In any event it is easier than putting a plastic model together and easier to make corrections.

Plants:

Plants, like ferns, turnips, butter burr, sunflowers, leek aso are actual photographs, which are cut out by a laser. So you have the realistic look from the picture but also the thinness of the material compared to the plastic look of other makers.

The fern, for example, consists of 8 leaves connected in the middle. You drill a hole in your table and press the center of the plant into hole. The leaves will stand up and you adjust them with tweezers.

Other plants are natural material dyed and cut to scale.