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Howdy folks,

So I've got a number of empty sprues gathering dust in my hobby space.

What on earth does one do with them besides throw them out?

Can you re melt them into slabs for streets or toss them in a blender to make rubble?

Just curious before I ruin the Forge Mistress's food processor and my favorite cast iron pan.

Thoughts and ideas are greatly appreciated.

FM Argos

I like to cut them up with my snippers to make rubble. Big piles of them work well for collapsed walls and such.

Or, ya know. Just make a Necron army out of them:
http://www.40kforums.com/vb/showthread.php/28282-Necron-Sprue-Army!

Moooovement trays!!!!!

I have no idea if you play fantasy or not but I just take the spare sprues and use them as edges of movement trays. For the bottoms I just use MDF board

I throw most of my sprues away but I keep one or two around just in case I need some pieces for conversions....although I'm not sure how many pieces I've actually used for that purpose??

I've been toying with the idea of making humanoid shapes (kind of like the necron idea above) and dipping them in straight PVA to make Mud Men

I make buildings. You should make buildings.

I use T-shaped pieces of sprue to allow turrets to freely rotate. Also planning to use small bits of sprue to make 'bone blades' for a detachment of Black Dragons.

I mostly throw them out. I do keep a small pile on hand though as you can blutack or superglue bits to them while you paint the bits to make life easier. I often blutack models to sprues in order to prime them, so that I can spray up from under the models.

Using them to actually make stuff is hard, because it's quite time consuming to make the trapezoidal GW sprues look like anything other than trapezoidal GW sprues. I usually just go the easier route and buy square and circular section plastic to make terrain and conversions rather than using sprues.

It's totally usable. Some imagination can go a long way. I found sections of sprue to be a critical component in a recent jetbike conversion I did.

You can so some absurdly cool stuff with sprue. I belive Dr. H is the man you need to see about it, here is his sprue hut thread - http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/545398.page#5935106

Don't put sprue in a blender, unless it's a really old crappy blender you don't mind blunting and eventually wrecking. But some people have had good results literally mincing sprue through one of those old hand-cranked metal meat mincers. Using snippers has a similar result, of course, but takes a lot longer.

Most of my sprue ends up as terrain for barricades etc, or framing/bracing for plasticard buildings and vehicles.

I use them as rusty girders on my bases. You can also shave the ends into points for like big icicles or crystals

Loving what I've seen so far folks. Thank you all for your input.

Any thoughts on re melting and casting into sheets?

FM Argos

Im not sure if its totally recyclable but i know if gw gets a bad sprue they just throw it in the grinder and melt it down to reuse it

I use old sprues primarily as hidden supports in scratchbuilding. Solvent cement means I can make seamless (and thereby strong) braces, gussets, and ribs inside of closed parts, greatly increasing the strength thereof. You can also make "plastic putty" filler by melting a bunch of sprue in solvent cement (keep it in a sealed, solvent-resistant container, i.e. a glass jar, otherwise you'll just end up with a lump of plastic and fewer functioning brain cells). Plastic wires and antennae can be made by carefully heating and stretching sprue. And, of course, there's always rubble.

On the re-casting of sprue into sheet... Don't even try. It's possible, but not at all practical for the home hobbyist. The casting machines they use in the injection molding process are tuned, pressurized, temperature controlled industrial machines, not a pan on a stove. The temperature window that makes styrene fluid rests uncomfortably between "just a bit soft" and "on fire." I'd wager you'd just end up with a stinky kitchen and a headache. Solvents would be a more reliable method, but still not likely worth the cost and trouble over binning the sprues and buying fresh sheet stock,

Now, very crude molding of small, shallow parts is perfectly doable using a technique called "squash casting." For this, you need a moderately heat-resistant mold (baked polymer clay or cured epoxy putty works) and a heat source - a lighter, a candle, a soldering iron, etc. Just heat the end of the sprue until it starts melting (but before it starts smoking) and quickly mash it down into the mold. The aren't terribly crisp and you're rather limited, as mentioned, in terms of both size and depth, but it works well enough for simple add-on parts like Ork glyph plates, large rivets, and the like.

I heard someone mention "sprue"...

I would link my Hut thread, but that's been taken care of already. Thanks Cambonimachine.

As well as carving pieces of sprue into anything you can imagine, there are many uses for sprue.

You can glue pieces together with poly' cement to make larger shapes.

It's great for structural support, as mentioned already.

Related to those last points, you can use pieces stuck together to quickly bulk out a shape before covering in GS (or equivalent).
I did this for the nose on my Wave Serpent:


You can use wedges on sprue for re-posing models. Glue in with cement and then cut/sand down. Saves on putty and creates a stronger join:


Two pieces, stuck back to back and a third round piece of sprue were used for the mines on this model's base:


And the support structure for the dozer blade on this tank is largely sprue:


The electrical boxes on the Tryanid's back, the back of the Ork's chair, The computer monitor the 'nid is looking at, the details on the ceiling and front, and many other small parts etc, are all sprue here...


I've carved, swords, hands, plants, and many small bits for my models... Yes, I use a lot of sprue.