Rivet Maker

Thought to try out a FISKERS hole punch with a 1/16th inch puncher to make rivets for my vehicles and other craft.

To the left is the hole puncher and punched card stock. To the right is the rivets mounted on a tank, Kaptain Kneemo is providing scale comparison. While not the smallest rivets they are big and clunky looking for my VSF kit bashings. Just select the thickness of the rivets to be and punch away till you have more than enough.

Grass Material

More of the Woodland Scenics materials. This time their grass and field flock. Have had excellent results with them over the years. Price is reasonable and I do go through quiet a bit of it when doing a new mat or terrain piece. I keep quiet a variety of colors on hand for any sudden terrain ideas I come up with.

Flock and Turf Ground Cover

Really useful material to fill in open woods or even simulate lots of dead wood brush areas. Also a Woodlands Scenics product. Apply liberal amount of pva glue to the base and shake it on from the bottle, let it dry and tap off the rest. The wood chips and chopped twigs give lots of character to my woodland pieces.

Woodland Scenics Clump Foilage

Here is what I use for Bushes and  most all of my Trees foliage.  It is easily torn into shapes that I push down on metal nails to form Trees with or bits can be shaped to brush etc. Woodland Scenics product.

Kel Seal

Kel Seal Elastomeric Custom Patch. This is similar to caulking from a tube but in a tube that you can used a spoon or putty knife to dig out and spread. It comes in Textured with plastic sand mixed in or smooth. It also comes in brushable and trowable. I use the Trowable as it is a bit stiffer to work with and does not penetrate surfaces as fast as the brushable, giving me a bit more time to move it around. The textured gives a nice arid ground base for fast painting and dry brushing.

It comes in quarts and gallon containers, this brand I purchase from Kelly Moore Paint Stores. Other stores have their own brand name items that do the same thing, just tell them your looking for caulking in a tub to brush or trowel on and they will take you to their version I am sure.

Tools I use

Thought I might post some of the tools that I use after some other terrain builders asked me some questions last night. First, my most usefull tool is Old Cookie Sheet with raised Edge around it. I can flock anything, when done, raise the cookie sheet and tap all excess material down to a corner for easy recovery. The edge stops roll away items from getting far. I can work with it in my lap while having the TV on. Make a mess with bits of stuff I am carving or reworking? No problem, clear tools and items, lift, tap and all the trash collects in the corner for easy disposal.

Next is the small green clips, they cost around 50cents each. I have 40 of them to hold glued items while they dry, such as the coffee stir sticks. Just peeking into the picture in the upper right corner is a plastic vice grip clamp. Nice to have a clamp that I can adjust the grip strength with. Next is the cordless dremel drill, comes with a recharge holding stand. It has made life much easier without a cord dragging through or over things. The glue gun has one of my colored glue sticks, I melt glue sticks, add a bit of color in the form of water base paint and cast the result back into a mold I made of a glue stick. I have to trim them a wee bit, but when the glue for my pine trees cools, the glue is not as noticeable. Long tweezers, I prefer them over short tweezers as once you get used to the length, you can reach deeper into a scenic bit to add deeper detail with. Take practice to not waver the points, which I adjust with needle nose pliers should they become unaligned.




A better view of the plastic vice gripper. The pads move to conform to the flat angle of the item its gripping. The fisker shear, orange grips, can cut any type of wire, I received them as a present from my wife when she tried to use some of my other wire cutters that had all at one time or another tried to cut some wire to tough and left dents in the cutting blades. These shears will cut and have cut every type of wire I have put in them without ruining the blades, they are close enough that they can cut paper on up also. Lastly are my pliers, open stuck paint bottles, bend wires etc. I have 2 different size pliers to help convince heavy wire to conform to the shape I want. I use various cutting tools to numerous and typical to show, safe to say I buy standard narrow Xacto blades in the hundred pack as a chipped tip can ruin a project step in a heartbeat.

And there you have it.