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Recycle! Making easy crystals from sprues
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Rating: 9.78 Votes: 9
Views: 6993
By: DaN
Category: Painting Subcategory: TerrainDate: 2008-03-20 11:02:51

EASY-CRYSTALS

Do you ever just throw away your old sprues...?

if so; SHAME ON YOU!


Sprue can be a very handy in making all sorts of bits and pieces.

The majority of mine is chopped into thousands of small pieces to use as rubble in scenery, but if you find an interesting shape, or, an interesting colour, then keep it!

In this tutorial I will be dealing with the transparent green sprue included with GW Necrons.


At this point I should give credit to "Snapple" who had already submitted a near-identical

(but better lol) tutorial, which can be found here: http://www.coolminiornot.com/article/aid/461


I decided to try using some of the sprue to create some simple crystal shapes, which could be ANYTHING in Sci-fi (Kryptonite etc) or perhaps Warp stone in fantasy.

I First snipped off a few lengths at random, giving me three short pieces.

I angled the snips so that the bases of the "cystals" would glue to their base at that angle although you could have them standing vertically if you wanted. (I also filed the areas where I can cut them flat)
I then got a sharp knife with a and angled each of the lengths downwards, and gradually shaved off slivers at different angles to produce a point.

Once all three crystals had been shaved in this manner I gave them each a quick file and then simply glued them to a base.

My example is shown below, although with enough sprues you could create an entire crystalline field of "Difficult terrain" or something!

And, of course, although the necron sprues are transparent, not all crystals are, so you could also use normal opaque sprue and paint it however you wanted.




 

Mosch
08 May 08
Rating: 10
Sprues are the plastic frames that hold minis or mini pieces.
Very nice tutorial, simple and a great effect.

Mi³ek
07 May 08
Rating: 10
Looks nice but what the hell are sprues?
Translate it to Polish - dictionaries doesn`t translate it

DaN
06 May 08
Noted
Paintman Spiff
03 May 08
Rating: 10
An excellent idea, yes; however, I'd suggest a pic of sprues in raw form, to help beginners. Took me a few minutes to figure it out (I get it). A vote of 9.5 from me.

DaN
12 April 08
BARBARIAN! lol
Yeah, Things don't necessarily always have an OBVIOUS use, but it helps just to keep an eye out for interesting shapes, designs, or in this case, colour/transparency
Rojaws
12 April 08
Rating: 10
I find that I have more sprues than I ever will need. So I just chuck em. I know some sad souls who just hoard em. Goodness knows for what.

highpaladn
22 March 08
Rating: 10
Nice idea!

DaN
22 March 08
Hehe - yeah!
Shawn R L also made a point that you could use SMT LED's to light transparent ones, or you could paint them with UV reflective paint and use a UV light
rosac
21 March 08
Rating: 10
simple, effective and a damn cool result, maybe i should break out the 80+ sprues i have down the shed...

A solid 9.5 from me DaN!

rosac

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