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I read a long time ago that you should save your old sprues because you can use them to make rubble for scenery/basing.

Can anyone tell me a good way to do this or point me to somewhere that I can look it up?

Thanks

Easy, take sprue length in one hand, clippers in the other

Start clipping and stop when the bleeding starts

Could also take a stanley knife/craft knife to it, shave or carve bits of rubble. Faily easy concept, but a great idea non the less

I use sprues for broken bricks , aswell as gluing them together and use it as a wall(needs a LOT of filling with plasticard or GS!!)

Gretar

MrToxichazard wrote:Easy, take sprue length in one hand, clippers in the other

Start clipping and stop when the bleeding starts

Could also take a stanley knife/craft knife to it, shave or carve bits of rubble. Faily easy concept, but a great idea non the less

He's got the idea!

My FLGS has a bunch of scenery using this method. I would recommend mixing it with other materials to get it more convincing. I have to start making more terrain, just need to figure out how to use the space I have; I am not a huge fan of the idea of drowning in my own models.

I'll see if I can carve a few bits as an example. It really isn't all that important as some skilled spray painting is the real key to making nice rubble. Airbrushes are most likely better, but I have seen some really nice (and ridiculously fast) freehand terrain done.

Oh yea its SUPER EASY terrain. Just hack them up in random lengths. I dont even clean them off, just c ut them. The I glue and stack them randomly onto bases I made from card stock. Then for flavor, I add some home made barb wire to some of the posts and PRESTO! youve got some sweet looking terrain.

They can also be used to make plants . By carfully using a knife to shave down leaves.

Ok, I have just made a bucketload of sprue rubble in anticipation of making a lot of CoD/Planetstrike terrain.

Old sprue is easier to make rubble of since they have less things on them, like Devilfish sprues.
What I do is "de-bone" the sprue. I follow the inside of the outer edge and clip off anything that stick inside. Having done that I cut at the corners leaving me with 4 straight pieces.
Next I trim the inside pieces. I only use relatively straight pieces and simply throw the small fidly pieces away.

Next I trim the straight pieces, cutting off any annoying small bits that wont look block-like when cut.
I'm left with straight pieces that are very simple to cut up using a clipper.
I prefer to only use block-like pieces of sprue, so when ever I get to a inlet/outlet point (the round thingies), I cut that piece off and throw it away. I used a Leman Russ box with a tubberware box (half the size of the LR box) inside.
Good pieces goes in the tubberware, bad pieces in the LR box.

It might sound like a lot of work, but take it from a guy who literally filled a bucket with sprue rubble, IT WORKS.
Watch a movie or two (or three) and get to work.

Can someone actually post a good, finished piece of terrain using this technique? Everytime I've seen someone use bits of sprue to make rubble, it looks nothing like rubble, but simply, bits of sprue.

Have you taken a good look through the DakkaDakka photo galleries? I often go there to find inspiration.

the_Armyman wrote:Can someone actually post a good, finished piece of terrain using this technique?

You can't use sprue rubble exclusively and have it look "right". You need to mix it in with other rubble-y basing material.


Some sprue rubble examples:





In the top middle, just above the gear thing:



Below the tires, on the left:



Bottom right of the barrels:



One strip between the two tank traps on the right:



Right in the middle:



Three brass pieces and one tan:



Here you can see little piles:



Little pile in front of the door:



If you look, you can see it all over here:



and here:





...and there you have it. It's up to you to decide if it qualifies for your definition of "looks like rubble" vs. "looks like bits of sprue".



Ghidorah

I made this wall out of sprue rubble.


Also back when I was a redshirt and CoD was comming out, I made all the kids cut sprue for me, 5 muinets of cutting a day to use the paint table. They where pretty good about it too. I also used it as a punishment. 10 muinets of sprue cutting for various bad behaivor.

All great examples of sprue rubble. Especially that wall, clever use if I do say so

Like Gidorah said, some people may say it does look just like sprue and nothing like rubble. I slap those people in the face. Enough cutting and roughing them up and you have enough . . . would definatly beat buying that basing kit with the slate tubs

i heard about using a meat grinder to grind up your sprues but who can buy a meat grinder

oh and you cant use the grinder once you use it on sprue

Rubble made entirely from sprues looks like.....well, rubble made from sprues.
Mixing it with some rounded stones of the same size and adding a sprinkle of ballast (from model trains), on the other hand...

I use an old blender - just cut the sprues enough to fit into the jug and then blend away!

Saves you hours of clipping and chews up the spues into rubble sized bits. It also leaves fine sprue grit in the botton that you can sprinkle on your rubble for a more convincing look.

I did all my CoD terrain this way - I can post pics if anyone wants examples

I'd like to see some pictures of that terrain, Gordy.

MrToxichazard wrote:
Start clipping and stop when the bleeding starts

Listen to this man! I once clipped about 4 box-sets worth of sprues for scenery for a whole tables worth of ruined buildings - the blisters were not fun at all!

I did this whole base with bits of cut sprue and spare strips of plasticard...

http://pitoftheoni.blogspot.com/2009/06/manufactorum.html

My ruined CoD buildings were all done this way - after gluing the walls to a wooden base, balls of papier mache provided the rough height/shape for the piles of collapsed rubble, then a mix of sand, sprue rubble and spare broken terrain was glued over the top, with additional sand as a second pass to fill any gaps where the paper showed through.

Works a treat when its painted up!!

Gordy2000 wrote:I use an old blender - just cut the sprues enough to fit into the jug and then blend away!

Saves you hours of clipping and chews up the spues into rubble sized bits. It also leaves fine sprue grit in the botton that you can sprinkle on your rubble for a more convincing look.

I did all my CoD terrain this way - I can post pics if anyone wants examples

Hell yea we want examples! I too have access to an old ass blender, so I want to see whats what before the smashin starts

KingCracker wrote:

Gordy2000 wrote:I use an old blender - just cut the sprues enough to fit into the jug and then blend away!

Saves you hours of clipping and chews up the spues into rubble sized bits. It also leaves fine sprue grit in the botton that you can sprinkle on your rubble for a more convincing look.

I did all my CoD terrain this way - I can post pics if anyone wants examples

Hell yea we want examples! I too have access to an old ass blender, so I want to see whats what before the smashin starts

That sounds like a plan!!!

Bring out tha Dakka!!! PPPhhhheeeeerrrrrtttt BANG

I need to find an old blender for my sprue rubble, cause I really hate it when the bleeding starts.

When doing a lot I generally have it cut in advance, put it all in a jug or something, mix it up with my PVA Glue so its almost Sprue rubble gunk, and then spoon it onto the area I want it and sprinkle a bit of sand and some random balsa wood cut offs. This mixes it up a little, but make sure its not too much sand, just a sprinkle

oni wrote:I did this whole base with bits of cut sprue and spare strips of plasticard...

http://pitoftheoni.blogspot.com/2009/06/manufactorum.html

That's a very pretty piece, Oni. Love that ground texture.



Ghidorah

Meat grinder ftw maybe a bit unclear but thats loads of sprues run through a meat grinder on top of styrofoam..

some close ups of the meat grinder rubble would be great. to see how effective it is i have never seen the results from a meat grinder i just thought it was a great idea

O my god that's some really awesome stuff I am really not good when it comes to terrain but those bricks with the Terminator are very good. Something I might be able to make that would go very nice with my Heavy weapons teams. thank you for inspiring me.

Example pics as promised - they are also in my Dakka gallery if you want to zoom in for a better look at the rubble effects.

One note of caution - if you use a blender to cut the sprue, make sure the top is on and you are wearing ear and eye defenders - the noise is horrendous and any bits that fly out of the blender are a serious eye hazard.

KingCracker wrote:

Gordy2000 wrote:I use an old blender - just cut the sprues enough to fit into the jug and then blend away!

Saves you hours of clipping and chews up the spues into rubble sized bits. It also leaves fine sprue grit in the botton that you can sprinkle on your rubble for a more convincing look.

I did all my CoD terrain this way - I can post pics if anyone wants examples

Hell yea we want examples! I too have access to an old ass blender, so I want to see whats what before the smashin starts

OK, I have no access to an old blender and I would find it hard to explain all the little gray stuff all over the blender if I used da Mrs' blender for this. So I am just have a strange need to see this in action. Give us some video of this is action.

Gordy, the blenderized sprue bits look pretty convincing. Great idea!

@Ghidorah: Thanks for the additional pics. Mixing them in sparingly with other basig material would probably be the sensible way to go about it to avoid loss of scale issues.

Yea no crap. Those pulverized sprue bitz really look convincing. Im going to have to try it out. When I do, Ill make a video lol