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Hello Dakka! To any experienced scratch builders... I'm working on some Warmachine terrain and I need some gears. I found a bag of them at a local craft store, but they look like toy gears instead of real gears and do not look realistic enough even when painted (they look like the kind you'd find in a Lego kit). Does anyone have any recommendations for buying any for our purposes? I need them in various sizes. I would prefer plastic, but light weight metal wouldn't be bad either. Thanks in advance!

Purchase some cheep RC servos. The gears inside are quite nice.

I found some at Micheal's that I thought look pretty convincing... I found them in the jewelry aisle with all the charms and stuff. I think they were labeled "steampunk jewelry" or something like that. Are those the ones you are talking about?

You might be able to find some better small gears on Etsy too. If you still don't like those you can buy small machined gears, but they aren't going to be cheap.

What sort of sizes do you need, exactly? Most "large" (in 28mm terms, at least) gears that can be scrounged (generally from electronics - VCRs were a great source, but you're likely to be limited to fried disk drives, nowadays) aren't going to look the part - whether plastic or metal, functional gears in the 1-2" range tend to be solid disks (minus a central hole for a thin shaft) with very fine teeth. They'd serve better as flywheels, after a quick file, than scaled-down representations of big industrial gears.

Watch parts are the most attractive option for smaller gears (<1/2" ), but it's hard to find a source that prices them reasonably. Ebay and Etsy sellers know that their market is primarily the steampunk/vintage/upcycled/whatever-stupid-new-name-for-the-current-fad-is-trending crowd and price accordingly (read "high" ). You aren't unlikely to spend $5-10 for an amount that could scarcely fill a GW paint pot, only a fraction of which are actually gears (watch lots often include springs, pins, and various other assemblies, not just the gears we're usually after). Purpose-cast/stamped jewelry parts often actually work out being cheaper than the repurposed parts used by the original DIY crafters.

[edit:] formatting

Thanks for the ideas! I'm not sure where to find RC motor bits around where I live. And I'd like to look at the bits before buying them to estimate their worth to my project. I'll have to locate a place.

Scooty - I didn't think to check in the Jewelry section at Michaels. I was going there later today anyway for some supplies, so I will double check that area. Nor did I think about checking Etsy. Thanks for the input!

Find yourself a local watch repair shop...

Ask them for their box of broken bits...

Use Google...

Buy a big bag of watch internals (they sell them)...

http://www.ebay.com/itm/like/190847932569?lpid=82

Hit the crafty stores and look for steampunk related jewelry and charms. Snip off the loop portion off...

https://www.etsy.com/listing/123728875/90-steampunk-gears-gear-charms-cogs?ref=related-0

Other than watch and small clock parts - most of the gears used in modern equipment will look a bit more like toys and less like big industrial equipment. Bags of watch parts though are pretty easy to come by, and cheap enough. You can also order specific parts if you know what you are after (specific enough to make working things...).

You can also sort of fake it using star lock washers. They come in dozens of sizes, internal teeth, external teeth... About the only thing cheaper would be free.

Hasslefree sells such things specifically for steampunking up models

http://www.hfminis.co.uk/shop?category=accessories~steampunk-stuff