Plastic--the new wood

Avram is a modeller of some skill. In fact, Avram is a modellor with a hell of a lot more skill than I probably have, and certainly more years of experience. Were his eyesight not going, I'm fairly sure that you would be reading his blog about making your 40k things look good instead of mine. So, when Avram advises that you should try using plastic, or more precisely styrene, it's a good bet that you should listen.

However, Avram is absolutely right. I make 40k scenery on the cheap. Sturdy, good looking, but cheap. Case in point, the local Toys R Us is going out of sale and I just bought six sets of matchbox ramp building stuff, and this will, honestly, suffice for probably 20-30 scenes of techno-garbage. I bought each for about $3.00. That's cheap. The same effect is created, according to Games Workshop by buing a Land Raider and cannabalizing it for parts. That's expensive.

Now, I bought sheet styrene a while back and I still have it because the shit's precisous. $4.00 per 1/2 sq. foot is a little pricy for me to use it except on special projects, so instead, I use wood. Avram, per your instruction, I decided to try out plastic and so here's what I've found.

First of all, you can find places that will sell you serious sheets of plastic. I found one place that would sell an 8'x6' for about 66.50, which is a nice chunk for initial investment, but I'm fairly sure that 48 sq. feet of plastic would probably last me a while. $66.50 isn't too bad when you think about it.

I was fairly sure that there was a cheeper option. First of all, I thought that rigid plastic might not necessarilly be the best kind. I need to cut this stuff after all, and not into foot sized pieces. What I was looking for was sort of thickened mylar, but if you've ever shopped home depot you already know it doesn't work that way. The first question that someone is going to ask is, "what do you use it for," and then you're screwed because I can't think of anything that you use thickened mylar for, and I want something thcker than a plastic dropcloth (though now that I think about it, that might come in handy as well...).

In any case, here's what I came up with. A quick search through home depot yielded those plastic sheets that people put up to cover flurescent lights in offices and schools. They're light, they're about half a milimeter thick, they're textured on one side, and best of all, they're about $7 for a 3'x2' sheet. Guess what they're called, by the way...sheet styrene! Just like they recommend in all those GW guides.

How do they work? Well, you want to buy the knife that comes along with them. If you use that knife, it takes very little time to cut a straight piece, but it's not very precise. For precision, you want to get out a hot knife X-acto. The melt cut pretty much makes it through the stuff pretty easilly but you're going to get some chaff at the edge. Just use a file and it comes right off.

I suppose that I like the feel of the stuff better than wood, and let's face it, it's plastic so it has a better reputation than wood. Yes, broken pencils do look like cracked pipes or busted out support beams, but plastic looks good.

In other news, I finally got my WS_FTP working again, so I can show you all my new color scheme for my Tyranids. Enjoy.