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So I'm going to build some ruined buildings, what's a good material to build this from? I want the walls to be like 5 mm thick and it should be easy to cut out and have a little texture.

How skilled are you, and how much time do you have?
Material choice depends greatly on those. These days I lean toward plasticard for a lot of jobs.

winterdyne wrote:
How skilled are you, and how much time do you have?
Material choice depends greatly on those. These days I lean toward plasticard for a lot of jobs.

Well I think I got quite some time but I dont think it would look that giood with plasticard. I think I might cut it out from those cork matts you use for hot pots but they are slightly too thick. The ultimate material would be extruded polystyrene(the pink/blue stuff) but the only ones I can buy are 5 cm thick, so that won't work.

Cardboard is the perfect material for making ruined buildings. It's cheap, plentiful and very easy to work with. Best part is that most think cardboard is 5 or 6mm wide.

I've been building a ruined city out of cardboard. There is a link in my sig if you're interested in checking it out.

Bricks, mortar and a missile launcher...?

What I use
Cardboard
Foam
Plasticard
Plastic sheet
Balsa wood (depending on stability)
GW Plastic buildings (depending on cost)
Other scenery manufacturers (depending on cost, scale and feel(

Hope these are of some help

Foam board is good to use. Comes in several different thicknesses. It's also not to expensive.

Call me lazy, but I like GW's City of Death buildings, Pegasus Hobbies, Ziterdes and Armorcast terrain.

Foamboard from the dollar store. It's about 5-6mm thick, easy to cut and, if you peel off the paper that it's covered in, you can etch brick/stonework into it quite easily.

Just use a sharp knife (dull knives will end up tearing the foam instead of cutting) and regular white glue (although I use Aleens Tacky glue (or any other "tacky glue") as it seems to hold faster and easier) and you're set.

I am in the process of making an entire Carentan WW2 board out of this stuff (http://iwngu.com/wordpress/forums/?mingleforumaction=viewtopic&t=135) and half of that is ruins.

Add to that rubble (bits of foam, gravel, sand, pieces of sprue, etc), prime and paint and it looks great!

For texture on the walls themselves, like I said you can either etch them or you could glue sand to it (as I have done with many of the carentan buildings) and it looks lightly textured. Get a big bag of play sand at the building store for cheap and you can do hundreds of pieces with it.

Wht did you use on the corners to hide the foambaord edges?

There are a number of way to hide seams in foamcore. If texturing the surface heavily, they will likely disappear on their own. If adding surface details that will cover its edges, you can simply run a strip of masking tape over the seam. Adding brackets to the corners made from angle styrene strip is another option that adds a bit of that "reinforced military structure" look. You could also just use putty/spackle to hide the seam.

The last option, and the one that I'll be using from now on, is to cut a rabbet at your corners, leaving 5mm of paper to cover the otherwise exposed foam edge of the abutting piece. X-Acto sells a (foam)Board Cutter that works perfectly for this (~$10 at Michaels, with a coupon), having two depth-adjustable blades spaced 5mm apart (calibrated for standard foamcore thickness) to allow it to cut channels mid-board, as well. It can also cut 45 degree bevels with the included snap-on angle guide. One could make a similar tool/jig without too much trouble.

How about

1. Ruins

+

2. Shrink gun

?

 Debbin wrote:
Wht did you use on the corners to hide the foambaord edges?

If leaving the paper on, you cut out a piece of the foam leaving one side of the paper to allow it to overlap the other wall section.

If NOT leaving the paper on, using a texture on the wall surface will cover it. Alternatively you can add architectural elements, such as stone blocks or framing.