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I'm making Viking Shields for my Space Wolves, and I want their storm shields to look viking-y. Should I use Plasticard or coffee stirrers?

You want them to look wooden? Real wood looks out of scale on 40k models, so I wouldn't use that. If you can find some pre-moulded plastic or plasticard I'd use that. Otherwise I'd sculpt it out of greenstuff and plasticard and then make pressmoulds so you can do more of them.

That's assuming you want them to look wooden... I may have inferred that incorrectly from your consideration of using coffee stirrers.

Coffee stirrers have a very fine grain to them and pass well for planks and shields. You'd need to find a putty to rim the edges, but it looks good when done that way.

Get thee to a cafe!

Why not some Fantasy shields.

seems quicker and easier.

But otherwise for longevity id go with the plasticcard and ether paint or carve the wood grain into it.

Coffee stirrers "wood" work fine.

But Plasticard...

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/870/549077.page#8048822

...And sprue...

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/545398.page#5935106

...are also viable.

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/1050/549077.page#8174696

And "wood" be easier to glue together (using poly cement), rather than having to use super glue or PVA (or epoxy ) for the wooden stirrers.

I picture Dr H spends his Sunday mornings going door to door, "Greetings neighbour! Do you have half an hour to talk about the undervalued resource of sprue?"

That's damn impressive work.

lol

It's free with most models, and is fully compatible with those models and the glue that you will use with them. Why throw it away? ... etc...

Thanks.

Not something I encounter very much with an all metal 90s IG army. The way of the sprue is sadly lost on me. :,)

DR H, you've tried to make me use sprue more than once, but I can feel myself cutting through my thumb doing that...

Buttery Commissar wrote:Not something I encounter very much with an all metal 90s IG army. The way of the sprue is sadly lost on me. :,)

Ah well, there's sometimes spare pieces of metal on those (unless you've got hold of it second hand), save that up and then you can melt it down and cast a whole new miniature (or bit of one).

As I say, the technique also works on plasticard.

Matthew wrote:DR H, you've tried to make me use sprue more than once, but I can feel myself cutting through my thumb doing that...

I've tried to get anyone and everyone that'll listen to use sprue.

Other than cleaning up the edges of the sprue, there's very little cutting towards yourself with that technique (and if you use plasticard that's not a problem).
You don't really need to use your knife to add the texture, any hard point will work.
And be gentle, it's not a "maximum pressure" job, build up the texture with multiple gentle passes.

The trick to minimising the number of times you cut yourself with a hobby knife is to not try and remove too much material at once; shave off a little at a time.
Use a sharp blade, not an old (relatively) dull blade that will make you press harder (and therefore risk a serious cut).
And combined with both of those, don't use excessive force; if you find that you have to press/pull hard on your knife you are either trying to remove too much or you need a new blade.

I have some marine-scale viking kits:

 Dr H wrote:
Coffee stirrers "wood" work fine.

But Plasticard...

Spoiler:

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/870/549077.page#8048822

...And sprue...

Spoiler:

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/545398.page#5935106

...are also viable.

Spoiler:

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/1050/549077.page#8174696

And "wood" be easier to glue together (using poly cement), rather than having to use super glue or PVA (or epoxy ) for the wooden stirrers.

That is quite impressive. I've always really struggled to carve a good wood grain in to plastic which is why I went down the greenstuff sculpting path when I made my custom goblin chariots.

Thanks AllSeeingSkink. Just multiple gentle passes, letting the tip of the blade find it's own route (I now use the old blades of my scalpel that are no longer any good for cutting, and don't have them attached to a handle), and build up the texture you want: It can be deep, almost cartoon-y, wood texture representation. Or can be quite realistic if you keep it fine and light (as you see on the plasticard examples).

Also, I should mention the plasticard examples are made in one piece. I used a ruler to score straight lines for between the boards, then added the grain texture, then cut out some of the boards and swapped them around to give the uneven, loose board, look.

Did you sculpt and cast those Winterdyne? Very nice.

Just for reference, this is what I did using greenstuff, it's pretty easy. These are supposed to be Goblin Chariot wheels, hence why they look a bit bulkier than a shield. I did these a while back but from memory I did them all the wood grain in a single sitting (so it only took an hour or two). I was going to press mould them to make more, but they were easy enough to do that I decided just to make more from scratch if I ever needed them.



Certainly not up to the standard of Dr.H's or Winter's work, but I am an absolute amateur with greenstuff so I was pretty happy with how they came out! I did them after trying and failing to carve wood grain in to plasticard I was going for the slightly cartoony look that GW style wood grain usually has.

Certainly does the job, and looks much neater and controlled than my method.

Nice.