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I had originally posted this in the P&M forum, but it vanished to page 7,000 after about 12 hours, so I am reposting it here.


So, somebody mentioned that I should do a little tutorial on making craters. Careful what you wish for...


MATERIALS:
Sculpey Modeling Clay - White. This dries when baked in your oven.
Elmers Wood Glue.
MDF Board (masonite) or other suitable basing material.
CA glue.
Woodland Scenics - Medium Ballast, Fine Talus, Medium Talus, Extra Coarse Talus.
Random, nifty bits from your bits box or terrain items.



Sculpey Modeling Clay - White.
Don't get the Terracotta color. It is way to flakey and hard to moosh up.
Terracotta. Bad.
White. Good.




Elmers Wood Glue. This is a gallon jug. Cost about $15 US at Home Depot.
I use this for EVERY terrain piece I make. Get it. Use it. Love it.




Woodland Scenics - Medium Ballast.
As the price tag says, $3.99 at Hobby Lobby. This bag is enough to make literally 50+ craters of reasonable size. No lie.
Why would you do that, though? Use it on other terrain projects, too.




Woodland Scenics - Fine Talus.
Same as above.




Medium Ballast and Fine Talus side by side.




Medium Talus




Extra Coarse Talus






CONSTRUCTION:



Cut your masonite into pre-drawn circles of varying size.




I have this AMAZING Band Saw that I bought at Lowe's for only $100. Best money I've spent in a LONG time. If you have a reasonably permanent residence with a garage/basement/workspace and you don't have one of these...

Man up, adjust your testes, and go buy one.
You'll thank me later (maybe for the testes adjustment idea, maybe for the saw. Whichever...)




1) Pre-heat your oven to 275° F (not sure what that is in celcius, you international wierdos...)
You will bake your craters at 275° for 15 minutes per ¼" of thickness.




2) Roll out a sausage of Sculpey to fit the desired circumference of your base.




3) Press the sausage sides down flush on the base. This is going to be the rim of your crater, so when you do this, be sure to make it look... rimmy...




4) Press various items into the sculpey rim you've just made for debris. Dip into your terrain bits and your bitz box for this.
I used all manner of things including barrel halves, brick chunks from my mold, aluminium tubing, and many bitz from models.
*NOTE*
If you use any plastic bits (sprue rubble, guns, etc.) DO NOT permanently affix them to the Sculpey as they will melt in the oven and become disfigured.
What I do is press the plastic bit into the sculpey and then pull it out and set it aside until I bake the Sculpey. Then I glue it in place after baking.


Below are a few examples.


Aluminium rod, cut and bent.



Some large bricks made from plaster, cast in a mold I made. I broke them into bite-sized pieces.
These were primed already as I was going to use them in a different terrain piece some time ago.




A WHFB zombie that had been scavenged for parts. It was already painted.
In the bottom is a half of an Eldar skimmer cockpit. It was glued down after baking and priming.






5) Using watered down wood glue, cover the inside and outside of the crater.
Go up the sides and be careful not to get glue on any bits you have added.
I thin the glue to the consistency of tomato soup.




6) Sprinkle on the Medium Ballast. Don't completely cover it. You need to put the Talus down yet.
The point here is to provide adequate coverage but to still leave glue for the talus in the next step.



7) That said, sprinkle the Talus. The point here is to fill in the gaps in the Ballast.
You want it to be evenly spread with the bigger rocks as un-clumped together as you can.



***At this point, you want to walk away for a couple of hours to let the glue dry COMPLETELY.
Better to wait too long than not long enough. If the glue is not 110% dry, you will pull clumps of Talus
off in the next two steps. This is a pain in the butt, let me tell you.***






8) Once you've determined that the glue is totally dry, take pieces of the Extra Coarse Talus
and use superglue to stick them in strategic places. I was very sparing in this example.
A little too sparing. I may go back and add some more to these. It's all up to you, of course.




9) Once you've glued everything down, get your wood glue back out and thin a good batch to the
consistency of milk and apply it over ALL the flock you've added thus far. Saturate this bad boy.
It should look like you spilled milk inside your crater.
This will create an extra level of protection to your crater. With models in and on them, transporting them,
storing them, and unforseen accidents, this will be a terrain life-saving step.


10) Once again, walk away for a couple of hours to let this coat dry COMPLETELY. Same as before.



11) Once the craters are totally dry, prime them black and paint them in any flavor you wish.


Below are a few examples:




Done in a standard brown for use primarily on desert or grassy terrain. Also fits in fairly well in city terrain.




This one is for use in city terrain. I painted the outer edge in greys while the inside is the earth exposed from the blast.



You can also do more complex crater pieces to represent larger explosions or artillery barrages by cutting the basing material into
multiple, attached crater bases then following the above steps.



Double craters.




Triple craters





Well, that's that. Hope you find this helpful. If any of you make craters with this tutorial, PLEASE post them in a reply.
I would love to see how they work for you. Variations on this would be intersting to see, too.



Great terrain is as important as awesomely sculpted and nicely painted models.
Cast off your chains of paint pot and felt terrain! Make some craters!!!




Ghidorah

Nice looking craters, look better than those GW ones lol

I have an alternative method, if I may post it here?

I use a Keebler mini-pie crust tin (they come in packs of 6 or so), and make a pudding pie. After eating the pie, you have an aluminum form that is great for making craters with! Turned upside down, and with the center depressed, mix together some plaster and pour it in. Wait a few hours, preferably over night, and pop it out of your re-usable crater mold.

Cover it with ballast and talus as described in the original post, and paint it, you are done! I will post pictures later today, as I have one drying right now!

Your breakdown of talus and ballast types is top notch. I think your method will ultimately look better, but I am a poor person, so I have to make do with things I can justify as having a dual purpose to my wife (thus the pie tins and patching plaster. My 'ballast' consists of gluing potting soil to create texture!).

Great job all around. I will have to try this if my method doesnt pan out like I hope.

In soviet russia green stuff bewbs scult you!!!

@Scar: Best necro I've seen in a long time. Cudos.

hah, nicely done Scar.

Great tut, but can someone lock this? Also, I think Scar might have a necro fetish. Every necro I've seen this past week was his. I'm not trying to get him booted or anything, but a friendly heads-up PM might be in order, if not already sent.

Well i found it usefull.

Yeah so did I. Don't be so harsh on threadomancy, we don't all read these things when they first get posted.

I have a gravel driveway though, so terrain is far less complicated for me. They do look nice, especially the multiple barrage looking ones. I'll stick to my sticks and rocks though... less work, and the supplies are in front of my house. Here's one I tried once... take a clump of dirt... moosh the center of the pile with my neighbors dog ball, add pebbles at edges... after game, clear off dirt and rocks from board.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
the single base one kind of looks like an overcooked pizza too... hmmm... that gives me an idea...

HadoukenAvenger wrote:

Great tut, but can someone lock this? Also, I think Scar might have a necro fetish. Every necro I've seen this past week was his. I'm not trying to get him booted or anything, but a friendly heads-up PM might be in order, if not already sent.

you do realize the irony in this post right? you also necro`d the thread....

alright look guys... I found this helpful to see, as did another poster. I'm sorry we aren't so old school dakkaites or whatever that we hadn't saw it before but I'm glad it got brought up on my 'recent threads'. If you have such a problem with an old thread being brought to light as some sort of e-insult to your oh so valuable time to have to scroll past it, maybe you shouldn't be using the internet? (or bothering to respond?)

I liked it. I'm glad it came up. The end.

Woah, woah, guys. Slow down there! Who woke the troll?

Jesus, man. Yeah, it's an awesome tut, but sometimes threads just need to go to thread heaven.

You do realise that locking a thread doesn't delete it, just stops you from posting in it. It WILL still be here, and, yeah, threadromancy can be good, I agree, It's just against the forum rules.

Please, just don't stab me, man.

Necronisation can be okay if you add something useful.

Thread is being locked due to thread necromancy.

Well, the rules did say it was okay to do so if it was modeling, and this thread is actually quite useful to me as well. I think in the rules yakface should ask kindly that people don't have a panic attack when someone posts in an older thread... it's really not that big of a deal if it's something similar to this thread here. If it was news posted a year ago or something like that then I can understand, other than that keep your panties on.

Wow. I didn't actually care all that much.

You're all raving like I should be executed.
*Steps up to gallows*

Last words: Smart posters are posters who can move on. Please, If you have something to contribute, do so.
I'm sure the OP doesn't want anymore complaints about my statement littering his thread.


EDIT: Waaaitttt...I thought this thread DID get locked, anyways.

HadoukenAvenger wrote:Wow. I didn't actually care all that much.

You're all raving like I should be executed.
*Steps up to gallows*

Last words: Smart posters are posters who can move on. Please, If you have something to contribute, do so.
I'm sure the OP doesn't want anymore complaints about my statement littering his thread.


EDIT: Waaaitttt...I thought this thread DID get locked, anyways.

1. You care enough to post multiple times
2. No one is talking to you alone and nowhere near threatening (until maybe now )
3. You aren't moving on--why should anyone else
4. You never had anything to contribute

Alright, I know when I've failed. Especially when Master Yoda tells me.
I really didn't mean to outrage anyone, aight?

Let's leave it at that,
H.A.

There is an alternate method for making craters here that I have been using, and I really like how they come out, which is to say, exactly like the example pics, even with not a lot of sculpting skill. I'd recommend both the method, and the scatter bases that they sell.

PS when cutting down the Gatorade tops to make the craters not so tall, you're gonna want to be careful. This is one of those odd situations where a fresh, sharp blade is less likely to cut you then one that is less fresh, since you'll have better control. I'd recommend slowly sawing through it, taking your time. You can get a replacement gatorade top faster then you can regrow a finger.

Wow, that's really good.

Awesome tutorial! Thanks for the ideas!

Do you put the wooden base in the oven as well? I would imagine it would burn.

Exactly, this kind of threadomancy is perfectly fine.

I would never have seen this great tutorial, which im going to put to use, if it hadnt been necro'd, i dont spend hours digging through this section of the forums ...

Thats a pretty cool idea

Honestly, I'm glad I found this.

It's amusing how I bet you 182.57% that if you asked "how do you make nice craters"

People wound turn around and flame you for not reading this thread.

It's a lose lose really =/

Just a small thing about terrain, especially craters:
You will be putting models on them at some point!
So while a scraggly steep crater "looks" cool, at some point your buddy is going to be peaved when his metal Zoe (or any of the other million top-heavy models GW makes) falls over and breaks.

For playability I would put a bit of a flat on the crater rim AND make the inside floor of the crater at least big enough for a Dreadnought base to set in without wobbling. The flat rim should be enough to provide stability to a standard 25mm base.

Nothing worse than having to lay a model down on unstable terrain, then arguing over its exact baselocation when someone Assaults.

Hah, yeah It wasnt actually necro'ing The warning didnt come up so yeah... And ive never seen it before.

ok... i dont really see how we went from looking at craters and sharing ideas to talking about a stupid zombie in the picture... ridiculous much??

Where do you get the masonite board and what is the circumfrance of the board when you cut them into circles?

Lovely tutorial, thank you! I will make good use of it. For some reason it never occurred to me to use sands and gravels of varying sizes before. Huh.
One thing though...the triple crater looks a bit artificial. Three artillery shells would never detonate at exactly the same time. The last one to detonate , even by a fraction of a second, would form a round crater, erasing parts of the older ones.

Brilliant tutorial m8 i need to get some terrain built now i have space for a board too (ill get the board done first lol)