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Hi all, I see a lot of people making terrain with the support structures from things like construction crane toys. Can anyone tell me how to make these kind of supports? For that Mechanicum and industrial feel.

Thanks

In my experience a lot of it is by eye. Realistic structures look weird and overly slender at 28mm scale, and also plastic structures of the correct scale to match to steel and concrete are probably too flimsy anyway. So just try to find something that gives the girdery look you are after and then use foam card or foamed pvc for platforms.

You can do a lot with just foamed pvc sheets and random gubbins


And also construction toys





The plastic toy there is way too chunky for a real steel tube structure but with a bit of pai t and miked in on a table and I think it looks ok.

Azkallean wrote:
Hi all, I see a lot of people making terrain with the support structures from things like construction crane toys. Can anyone tell me how to make these kind of supports? For that Mechanicum and industrial feel.

Thanks

You can also buy packs of preshaped I-beams, H-column, L corner edging, pipes and so on in various scales and thicknesses. You use regular plastic modelling cement to join it all together.

+1 you can get the beams/ pipes and other gubbins from green stuff world,

But you'd have to wait till the epidemic is over because they're in Spain I think

If I recall correctly, the usual model railroader's suppliers of scale I-beams and such are Evergreen and Plastruct.

Yeah seconded on the plasticard i/h beams. You can cut them up to suit your needs, although they can get pricey if you're buying a good few packs.

Yep, in the UK I use EMA model supplies - they hold the full range of plastruct and various others. Definitely a friend to the modeler - but as queen-annes-revenge mentions, it's very easy to start filing your basket with goodies and realise they're not your wallet's friend