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Late last year I bought a realm of battle board for about $175.00 second hand. After playing a few games on it, and suffering from sliding model syndrome, I decided that although it looked great, I needed a flat surface more conducive to play, so I traded it for an Ork army, but now I had no place to play.

So I decided that I would like to make a very "Industrial" table. The idea that an invading army would be quite keen on controling the planetary resources, and one of the most important would be water. So I wanted to make a table that is a "Water Treatment-esq" facility.

Not knowing where to really begin I thought I would make a few of the "Accent pieces" and see where that took me.

Now understand that I am broke, I have very little money, so I have to go on the cheap, reeeeeaaaaaly cheap.

So I decided that I would use some stuff around the house that might work.

I found this.



An almost empty bottle of alcohol, infact I found 3 almost empty bottles, and consolidated them into one. (No landfill for you, I am going green... if green is the color of cheap.) I tought they would make nice large water towers, or holding tanks... something big, and that will be nice, the bigger the better. I want this table to have that IOM hugeness feel to it.

Didn't find much else other than my trusty glue gun and a box of kitty litter.... hmmm....





So I scraped together some change and some bills and went to home depot... TO THE PLUMBING SECTION!!!

I found 2 of these for $1.27 Each, I thought they would make excellent bases for the Water Towers.



Also picked these us for $0.27 each. Looked like good overflow spouts.



Ooooooo! Hello my pretty... whats that you say... free flooring sample?! 6"x6" Looks like a good base to me! Plus, free is well within my budget.



I need some loose pipe for cover, plus everythime I have ever seen an industrial complex they always have pipe stacked up and lying around, so lets look for... oh hello!

$0.22 each... hmm, I guess I will take 10.



So Total spent on materials I didn't already have was... $5.28 + Tax.

Lets go get started....



Hot glued the coupling to the floor sample.

Added the 1/2 inch, 90 degree PVC elbow with hot glue as well.



Let throw on some kitty litter to the still hot glue, to break up the lines, and give it a crusty/broken stone look.



Allrighty. Looks good, so I make another one.

***********************************************************

Alrighty lets see what we are gonna do with some "Pipe"



Looks good... and easy. very easy... lets take the rest and another done.... now we move to paint.

I am gonna use some left over "Hammered" darkmetalic Rustoleum spraypaint.

Here are the finished products.










All together now...




Gonna let dry overnight, and then drybrush boltgun metal and some "rusty" effects, with a little mold thrown in for good measure.

Stay tuned true believers!

For basic terrain that came together rather nicely. I'd still scatter around a little bit of Warhammer-style detritus, with a loose lasgun, skull, or what have you, but those are cool. The bottles with the overflow pipes look like giant hamster feeders though

LOL Hamster feeders... yer right. But I guess it is for the Hamster...I mean Hive Cities.

So yeah, classic

Bit of extra detailing will sort that out
and rivets of course

Good start

Very cool. And very cheap!

I stopped into another Home Depot and picked up more of the flooring samples, they are vinyl, but are made to look like stone, so I grabbed a bunch.

Hey, Free is Free.

In the Grim-Dark hamsters are the size of Trygons.

You should see the Gerbils.....(Shudders)

that is going to look awesome when finished besides i do have Gerbils ^^ 8 of them

Lookin good! Have any other ideas in the works?

epic! why don't you make for your next Idea like this a mining facility!

Working on the painting a bit today... here is the first set of pipe... Still got to add purity seal, but here it is.

GO FOR THE EYES BOO!!!

;-)

Anyone have any good techniques for a good rust effect?

1. lay down a basecoat of your choosing.

2. Stipple a random coat of gunmetal metal

3. Stipple a random lighter coat of dark red-brown

4. Stipple an even lighter random coat of a more light red-brown.

Cheers,


IK-Painter

Finished the accent discarded pipe pieces... give 'em a look and let me know what you think.














Automatically Appended Next Post:
Oops, see a little PVA glue thats not dry...

Wow, I am really surprised what you were able to pull off with just household stuff. Can't wait to see more!

Thanks, still kinda rough, working on a few of the bigger pieces...

I think I am going to grab some HO scale Train "Tankers" to round out some of the board. I really want to keep the whole project very cheap, so I am going to head out to a swap meet this weekend called Traders Village here in Houston and see what I can find. I hope to spend less than $10.00 and get 2 or 3 tankers and track...

So far the Project is as follows:

6 "Discarded Pipe" accent pieces: $6.59

2 Large Vertical Water Tower Pieces: $3.16

2 Large Horizonal Fuel Tanks: $5.37

1 Large (Fenced) Piece with Water tower, Distribution System and Control Station: $6.96

16 "Road" Pieces, they are the free 6x6 pieces I used for the pases of the pipe pieces, and they were free. This way I can assemble large road to complement the table.

So far I have spent about $22.00 - Which is alot more than I wanted to...

I want the whole thing to be less than 35 bucks, so I am going to get creative with the last table quarter.

Here's to hoping.

I like where this thread is going!

Here are some pics of the unfinished Pump Control Station, the Fuel Tanks, and the Vertical Water towers...

Enjoy, and any feedback is appreciated.

Control Pump Station



More Pump Station



The Fence w/ concertina wire



More...



Fuel Tanks

How dare you.
There are kids on here, told by parents and teachers that they can be anything they want, do anything.

And then you post stuff like this so that they can see that no matter how hard they try their imagination will never be as good as yours.

Appalling sir, simply appalling.


... Love it, love everything about it.

Thanks for the compliment dude, given your world renown scratchbuilding ability, I am honored.

Truly honored. I bow before your greatness.

Dude, the stuff you did in under $35 is pretty wicked.

You were looking for some rusting effects? Here's another by the 1 and only Les:

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/252361.page

Keep rockin' it. (*starts scrounging up old pvc*)

That looks awesome, and the fact that it was free (or almost...) makes it even more impressive. Nice work!


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Chibi Bodge-Battle wrote:Bit of extra detailing will sort that out
and rivets of course

Good start

How would you recommend doing rivets out of interest? Always wondered the best way to do them

Easiest way I have found is to get some pins with domed heads and clip off the pin leaving about 0.5 cm attached to the head.

Measure and drill holes to get an even and straight distribution

Superglue the cut down pin.


Other methods include cutting slices off styrene rod
Can be tedious.
Using tiny blobs of PVA glue, which can be built up when dry. Can be a bit hit and miss if not careful
HTH

Just thinking about it, for the more classical scifi look Connor has, rivets may not be the best option, but for 40K or Steampunk thay are a must!

Rivets: roll gs into a snake.
Thinner. We want this thing looking like a St. Patricks day holdout.
Go take a nap.
Fire ze missiles.
Cut the gs tube into rivets with a razor blade and glue them onto the surface. Wipe extra glue away.

Try salt weathering. Looks easy and fun, and I bet cat litter would work as well.

Last time I spent $35 bucks on my pipe it totally wasn't worth it at all. The man is a pipe savant ladies and gentlemen.

Oh hey, I picked up some two part happyjuice, so we can do that thing with the stuff that we will later say we didn't while we use 11 of those things to run a stompy death train.
Nudge nudge wink wink toodle pip.

Chibi Bodge-Battle wrote:Easiest way I have found is to get some pins with domed heads and clip off the pin leaving about 0.5 cm attached to the head.

Measure and drill holes to get an even and straight distribution

Superglue the cut down pin...

..Just thinking about it, for the more classical scifi look Connor has, rivets may not be the best option, but for 40K or Steampunk thay are a must!

+1. Perfect shape and size for such an application, and if you like the look of them without painting them, they're shiney (sometimes).

Oh hey, I picked up some two part happyjuice, so we can do that thing with the stuff that we will later say we didn't while we use 11 of those things to run a stompy death train.
Nudge nudge wink wink toodle pip.

Excellent.

That terrain looks great but my favorite thing in this thread is this

IK-Painter wrote:GO FOR THE EYES BOO!!! ;-)

Sir, I take off my +1 hat of recognition to you.

This looks great, I may take some of your idea to heart when I do my table in the next few months...finally think I'm might have found a space I can use consistently in the house without the wife killing me O.o

Hatticus wrote:How would you recommend doing rivets out of interest? Always wondered the best way to do them

IN another thread the builder recommended shrinky (?), which is a plastic you bake in the oven and it shrinks. So he used a hole punch (which takes care of the tedium part) to make the rivet-to-be, then spaces them on a metal tray and bakes them. When done there are now tiny perfectly circular rivets. He didn't write where one gets shrinky, though. (Maybe Michael's or another craft supplies store?)