Sunday, April 20, 2014

Tutorial - Bolts and Washers


Whether one is detailing Imperial Guard... excuse me, Astra Militarum vehicles, building terrain pieces, or Orkifying some looted vehicles, details such as bolts and other fasteners are essential to bringing a finished look to your model.  Here I'll demonstrate a technique I've used to create bolts with washers.

To complete this project you will need the following:
  • hole punch (with multiple size dies)
  • hobby knife
  • sheet styrene
  • hex stock (hexagonal extruded styrene)
  • glue (plastic weld prefered over super glue)
Use your hole punch to make "washers".  Make sure that the size die you are using is larger than the hex stock.  For added detail make two sizes of "washer" for each fastener, one slightly larger than the other.

Using your hobby knife cut thin slices off of your hex stock.  These should be roughly the same thickness as the sheet styrene you used for the washers.

Here is an example of the two discs and one slice of hex.  These will become our bolt and washers.


Stack the pieces largest to smallest, using a dab of glue between each.  It is easier to place these if you apply the largest piece to the model first and then glue the remaining pieces one at a time on top of each other.  Below is an example of what the above process looks like when applied to a Grot Tank I'm working on.

Don't stop there with various sizes of extruded hexagonal styrene, styrene rod, and your hole punch, you can make all kids of different fasteners.  In the above picture, very small styrene rod was used to create rivets and a different sized hex stock was used to create additional bolt heads.



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