# Sprue reuse



## dragonkingofthestars (May 3, 2010)

I'm currently doing a report on the Great Pacific Garbage patch and it got me thinking, as I'm sure you guys do, after doing any model building I have left over sprue's left over.

do any of you guys have ways of reuseing them rather then just throwing them away?

For me, I'm using small pieces of them to hold the slat armor away from my rhino's side (and help hide the fact that I glued the doors on back ward, headbutt I also Have a couple chunk of rhino sprue to use to hold a mine plow in place and I might make a mobile radar station, or a A.D.S,

so how bout you? any one else have a good ways to reuse there left over chunks of plastic?


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## JAMOB (Dec 30, 2010)

Well there's this...

http://www.40kforums.com/vb/showthread.php/28282-Necron-Sprue-Army!


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## Jacobite (Jan 26, 2007)

I've used them as supports for a scratch build, to make a dozar blade, as bricks, as cobblestones, as general basing clutter, as beams, as painting aids. Heaps of things to use them as really.


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## Galahad (Dec 21, 2006)

Hold on, let me blow the dust off some of my oldest conversions...
From...at least 2006, if not earlier.




You'll note that I did this exactly twice, and that the second time is a bit sloppier than the fist...because it was extremely labor intensive and a pain in the ass trying to get the angles right when cutting the ends. Of course at the time I only had nippers and a file. A razor saw might've helped...but I wouldn't know because since then they multiplied the cost of extra armor by a factor of five and made it way less useful.


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## dragonkingofthestars (May 3, 2010)

wow, OK, the Sprue crons win, but that rhino is a incredible close second i'm am in awe sir.

If i did not know wire mesh would look as good as it does I'd do that for my rhinos slat armor.


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## Galahad (Dec 21, 2006)

It's actually a Baal Predator (old kit) and a home-made Vindicator (because the plastic mk3 one didn't exist yet)
but thanks! Those were actually amongst my very first conversions. I;ve done a lot better looking stuff since, but it works well for what it is.

The ingot shape of the basic sprue bar would make for good fortification walls too


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## ChaosRedCorsairLord (Apr 17, 2009)

I use cut up sprue as rubble for basing. I have enough of the stuff to last me 2000 years.


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## shaantitus (Aug 3, 2009)

I have used it for rubble, terrain pieces, parts for the trims on one of my titans, but after amassing over 20000points of 40k models, i have to admit that the greater proportion of it has been thrown away.


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## bitsandkits (Mar 18, 2008)

if you have too many left over chuck the sprues and boxes into your recycle bins, its good quality styrene im sure they can do something with it.

scenery is the most obvious choice, an hour and a pair of clippers can turn a sprue into rubble no problem, just mix with glue and sand and make piles of it for instant cheap as you like scenery.

or cut the longer lenths and sharpen the ends and glue them together to make tank traps.

fence poles

building frames

bridge iron work

trench wall supports


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## Ddraig Cymry (Dec 30, 2012)

When I start using them I'm going to recycle them, not throw them in the garbage.


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## Galahad (Dec 21, 2006)

They're also the perfect width to reinforce floor seams in the Cities of Death terrain. Any time I had two floor plates butt together I stuck a piece of sprue in the little divide created by the borders around the textured bits of the tiles. Not only added a lot of stability (and therefore allowed me to build some odd-shaped floor configurations and extend the floors of some sections out), but it looked like it could have been just another piece of structural metal in the building. I've also styled them into girders to prop up particularly precarious buildings, figuring combat engineers shored up a crumbling facade to make it stable enough to fight from.

Now that I think of it though, it would make some pretty decent fortification walls...Take at least two pieces as long as you want the wall to be high, lay them out parallel the width of the wall segment (narrow side down, wide side up), then glue strips of sprue down horizontally across them, wide side down, narrow side up...run some glue along the edges too so they all fuse together. You'll end up with a an angular, slatted looking slab that'll look like the top plate on my vindicator. It'll look bulletproof and mean. Upend it keeping the slats hroizontal and bingo! Bunker walls.

And since it's all horizontal slats, you can add fire points by simply cutting one of the horizontal slats into a couple pieces and leaving a gap...shore it up with more vertical reinforcements if you want...poor man's aegis!

Man, I gotta work up a tutorial for that. It;ll go well with my 'detailed bases with just a broken knife' thing...


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## mattjgilbert (Feb 28, 2007)

Sprues are great for scenery like rubble and bits of metal (steel bars/girders etc.) as others have said. If you play fantasy games or anything that benefits from a movement tray, I've seen a few people using sprues for the edges of home-made trays.


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## Gettinggreener (Aug 26, 2010)

Cut and glue to make Czech Hedgehog defences, warm over a candle and stretch to make whip ariels (well, use to work on old sprues but dont know about moden ones).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Czech_hedgehog


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## ntaw (Jul 20, 2012)

Galahad said:


> poor man's aegis!


Or Ork Aegis. Good idea!


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## Galahad (Dec 21, 2006)

Looking at the way the aegis juts out, you could probably stick the vertical support sprue segments on the sides, flat side out, slanted side against the horizontal bits. This gives you an angled edge allowing you to build a smaller wall segment off both ends of it, then cap those with a vertical sprue segment with the flat side facing in, giving you an opposite angle to build a straight wall segment with...if the angles in my brain line up with reality, that should give you the outward-jutting firing station and wall effect of a standard aegis.

It should look bricky and uniform enough to pass for imperial, but you could easily rough it up and add spikes to make it orky


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