Sandbags - How to make your own.

by Myrmidon

To make or to buy.

First there's just flat out buying a bunch of them. Tamiya (the model making company) makes a load of 1/35 scale World War II military items including tank traps and sand bags. It's item # 35025*300 (last I knew) and their sand bags are 25mm x 12mm and about 5mm thick.

The sandbags are hollowed out underneath making them light weight, and are made of standard modeling plastic so they can be glued together and painted easily using standard methods. These should be available any place that carries the Tamiya line of military or car models and come with about 40 sandbags to the box.

The second and alternative method is making your own out of clay or epoxy resin as others have suggested, but I've got a few extra tips that will help you out...

What you'll need.

Clay, putty, or other mouldable material that can be moulded by hand Piece of old T-shirt cloth material (or other expendable cloth material with a surface texture you'd like on your sandbags. Scissors. Pencil, or other item with a small narrow tip or edge - the narrow edge of a screwdriver would work too. A flat surface to work on, and a cookie sheets or other item to bake your clay on as needed.

Rolling and sizing

Roll out your clay or putty in long tubes by rolling it between the palms of your hands. Try to keep the tube roughly the same diameter along all of it's length so that your sandbags are all approximately the same size.

Getting your tubes consistently sized and rolled out so that the sandbags come out the size you want takes a bit of practice - don't hesitate to practice first with PlayDoh or children's oil based (non- drying clay) until you get a bit of practice at controlling the size. 

Flatten it out most of the way (again - I make my sand bags about 20mm - 25mm long by 12mm - 15mm wide, and about 5mm - 7mm thick.) Don't flatten it out completely - yet.

Applying Texture

Once you have the tube mostly flattened - wrap it in a piece of old fabric with a surface texture that you'd like for your sand bags - I find most old T-shirt fabric is perfect for this and usually easy to come up with on short notice. With the fabric wrapped around your clay - finish pressing the clay into the final thickness desired for your sand bags and then CAREFULLY remove the clay from within the folds of cloth.

This should give you a nice even surface texture on the top and bottom of your clay, and leave you with a fairly long rectangular strip of clay the width and thickness you desire for your sand bags.

Cutting

Once you have your clay flattened and textured, here's where the scissors and pencil/pointed object come in. Starting at one of the short ends, measure in 4 or 5 mm and snip off a piece of clay with your scissors. This should leave you with a < sort of shape to the end of the clay.

Move down the clay roughly 20mm - 25mm (the desired length of your individual sandbags) and snip with the scissors again. This should leave you with a single sandbag with < and > shaped ends when viewed from the side. Repeat this by moving down your clay 20mm - 25mm and carefully snipping off pieces until you run out of clay. You should now have a bunch of individual sand bags.

Scoring

The next step is to take your pointed object and scribe a thin line in the clay down the length of each of your long sides (not the top and bottom) of your sand bag. This line represents the seams in the sides of the cloth sandbag. Once you done that for all your bags, you then want to model the effects of gravity.

To do this, use your fingers to carefully bend downwards the < and > ends downwards to simulate the effects of gravity. (Unless of course you're Games Workshop and have the 'anti-gravity' sand bags that hover in mid-air when used to form rooftops without any supports underneath them). If the clay you're using tends to pick up your finger prints - then simply wrap the cloth you used to texture your sandbags over your fingers when you bend down the ends. You should now have a pile of fully textured, seamed, and sort of floppy looking sandbags ready to be assembled into their final shape.

Finishing up.

You now have a couple of final choices to make. You'll need to decide if you want to put your sandbags together into low walls before they dry/harden, or leave them as individual bags and glue them together afterwards. (Note: If you are using clay that has to be baked - place aluminum foil or other expendable material on the cookie sheets before you bake your clay on them. That way any noxious materials in the clay won't end up on the cookie sheets - thus incurring the wrath of your Mom/Wife/significant other.)

Personally I like to make low walls, bunkers, etc, before they dry, because I can bend downwards any of the end pieces that stick out (again - remember sandbags don't normally defy gravity.) I tend to like making a few larger straight wall sections and some C shaped bunkers, along with some smaller straight wall sections and some L shaped sections for the sides / corners.

These small parts give me some flexibility when it comes to setting up my terrain on the table top, and allow me to add them to the larger parts so I can create large bunker setups, etc. Since I want my sandbags to stay together once I model them into walls etc, I take my small pointed object and make criss-cross patterns in the sandbag surfaces to be joined. Make them small areas in the middle of the tops and bottoms so they can't be seen when the bags are stacked, and simply gently press them together, and stack a final row on top, bending downwards any sandbags sticking out the ends as needed. Then bake or allow to air dry as needed. To date, I haven't had to glue or repair any of my sandbag walls made this day. Once the sandbags are dry, you can paint as needed.

Make your own casualty figures

by Myrmidon

A while back I asked some folks for some suggestions with a project I was wanting to do - namely making casualty figures without bases (like the old metal casualty marine figures from the RT era). I got a couple badly mangled gaunts, and a gaunt model from a box set I ordered a while back (apparently hand sorted with a bucket loader) and I thought it would be cool to use them as casualties when playing.

However, I wanted to make them lying in pools of their own epoxy 'blood' rather than sticking them on bases and then doing the epoxy for blood. The main 'sticking point' as it were was that I had to find a surface I could pour the epoxy blood pools on, and let it harden with the figure in it, and still be able to remove the figure and epoxy from the surface once the epoxy had hardened. So, I experimented a bit, and I thought I'd share the results in case anyone else wanted to do their own.

I tried pouring tinted epoxy on the following surfaces, with the following results...

Plain wax paper - the epoxy set up as normal, but stuck to the paper when I tried to remove it after it dried. The epoxy peeled off the paper, but had fuzzy wax paper stuck to the underside - which is not what I wanted.

Wax paper with non-stick cooking spray on it - the epoxy set up, but the combination of the wax paper and (perhaps to much) cooking spray seemed to increase the drying time and drastically change the tint of the colour I was using - but it did come off the wax paper easily, once the epoxy finally cured and hardened. (Was using Scorpion green for this batch, and it came out like a deep olive drab - not what I wanted.)

Plain Aluminium foil - epoxy hardened just fine, but would not come off the foil - you could cut it off, but then your 'blood' had a mirror surface on the underside. (Which again, wasn't what I wanted to do.)

Aluminium foil with non-stick cooking spray on it - this worked fine allowing the epoxy to harden and then carefully peel away from the foil once it had finished curing. This was exactly what I wanted! Woot!

 

Here's my basic "How to" steps.

1. Decide which minis you want to use as casualties, and decide on their basic placement.
   
2. Do any any modification work required for the mini. In my case, I used a Dremal tool to flatten one side of the gaunts so they'd lay flat on the surface of my gaming table later, and I used a soldering iron to make wounds and bullet holes in various parts of their bodies. I also bent (any of their previously) unbroken limbs and tails down so that they had that 'collapsed in a heap' look one would expect.
   
3. Primer and paint the mini as you normally would - making sure to pick out or highlight their wounds. I typically primer, paint, and then assemble.
   
4. Get a fairly good sized piece of aluminium foil, and fold it over on itself several times (shiny side out) to form a sort of thick, flat (try not to wrinkle the foil) plate for pouring your epoxy and placing your mini on. Better still is to take a small but sturdy piece of cardboard and wrap your foil over that.
   
5. Take get some non-stick cooking spray (I used 'Pam' spray in my experiments) and spray it on your finger. Then take your finger and smear a light layer of it all over the area where you want to pour the epoxy. If you don't think you have enough, spray your finger and repeat. Don't spray it right on the foil as you will almost certainly get to much spray, which can cause your epoxy not to cure properly. The idea is to get a very thin layer so as to effect the epoxy as little as possible.
   
6. Making your blood - I recommend a good 2 part epoxy. A 5 or 10 minute epoxy works best for this. Pour equal amounts of epoxy on an expendable cardboard surface and use a toothpick (cocktail stick) to completely mix your epoxy BEFORE you tint it with your blood colour.
   
   As another poster pointed out (thank you!), if you don't completely mix your epoxy before adding your tint or coloration, it may not mix properly and never cure which will leave you with a gooey mess instead of a cool casualty figure.
   Mix more epoxy than you think you'll need - it's better to have some left over, than to not have enough and have to try and match the tint of your first batch with a second batch.
   
   Tinting your epoxy. I've found you can use almost any typical acrylic paint such as GW's line, as well as Apple Barrel, Plaid, Armory, etc, can be used as a tint. However, there are some things to keep in mind.
   
   First is, if you want a semi-transparent look to your epoxy blood, use an epoxy that is of the clear & yellow variety, rather the blue & opaque white variety. If you want a more 'thick slim' look, use the latter variety of epoxy.
   
   Second - it takes very little (VERY LITTLE) of your colour to tint the epoxy. A little goes a long way. If you want a transparent look to your blood - then try using inks like GW's magenta for blood, as they are transparent by nature. If you aren't sure about how much colour to use to achieve the desired effect, then it's well worth the extra effort to spend a little time and experiment by making some test batches of epoxy on your greased aluminium foil and seeing which result you like the best, before you do your good minis and end up unhappy with the results.
   
7. Once you have your epoxy completely mixed and tinted you'll only have a small window of time in which to work before your epoxy gets to hard to manipulate. After it's mixed and tinted, take your toothpick, and pour some of (not all of) the epoxy onto your prepared aluminium foil.
   
   I pour a main pool, with several long snaking streams coming out of the main pool to look like it was running along the ground. I then placed the casualty mini in the main pool of epoxy, and used the remaining epoxy to make little streams of 'blood' from the wounds running down into the main pool.
   
   If your epoxy starts to harden before you get all of the wounds done - make a second batch rather than try to force the hardening epoxy into the places you want it. The results of smooth flowing epoxy once it's hardened will look much better.
   
8. After you're finished pouring the epoxy, wait half an hour to an hour and carefully remove the aluminium foil from the epoxy under your mini. (You can use low heat {not high} from a hair dryer to help cure the epoxy if you really think it needs it.) If all went well, you should have a casualty figure with a smooth bottomed, transparent epoxy pool of blood that serves as the base and can be placed on about any gaming surface and not look out of place.

Well, I hope this is helpful to folks out there, and thanks again to all the folks who offered suggestions and advice on my initial epoxy questions thread.

Extra notes of interest.

Having tried tinting a couple different types (brands of epoxy) here's what I found. Epoxy comes in a variety of brands, but basically in two general types, and two application systems.

The two types are the clear two part epoxies (yellowish & clear parts) which dry pretty much transparent - and the opaque epoxies (whitish & light blue parts) which dry with an bluish white opaque colouring.

The two application systems are your standard pair of individual tubes and the plastic 2 in 1 applicators which are supposed to deliver equal amounts of resin and hardener by pushing a single plunger. Unfortunately - I've found that a week or two after opening the plunger type epoxy it almost always becomes impossible to get equal amounts out of the tubes without being a complete pain in the butt. And rarely do I need to use that much epoxy in such a short time.

If you want thick opaque slime you will have to resort to the plunger blue/white epoxy, but it's great for making toxic waste that leaks from barrels and pipes. Better still, you can achieve some sweet multi- layered effects with toxic sludge pools by making your bottom layers of the opaque epoxy of various colours, and then using one or more layers of the transparent epoxy (in different colours) on top of the opaque stuff.

Now for the transparent blood - having tried both the transparent plunger variety and the 2 tube variety of epoxy, I have to say I like the 2 tube variety better for making blood. Here's why....

While both varieties mixed, tinted, and set up ok, the plunger variety tended to more liquid and spread thinly on the foil. The problem with this is it results in thin brittle edges on your epoxy pools of blood that break off easily and leave jagged edges. (Which are not very convincing on a supposed pool of liquid.) You can use small surgical scissors to trim off the brittle parts and then use a small D remal sanding bit to round out the edges again, but it's better if you can completely avoid all of this extra work - and you can.

I'm most satisfied with a 5 minute epoxy called "Devcon". This stuff mixes easily without getting a lot of air bubbles in the mix while stirring (I use a toothpick for about a minute to minute and a half) and tints well too. It's also thicker than the plunger type epoxy which lets me make my initial pool of blood without having to worry that it'll get to thin around the edges of the pool, and then if I let the remainder sit for 30 sec to a minute, I can use the toothpick to dribble / pour the reminder onto the various wounds on the mini so that it will set up before it completely runs off the mini looking like congealed viscous fluids from the wounds.

If I can borrow a good digital camera and get some good shots, I'll put up some pictures of the one gaunt I've done so far. (I'm still painting the other two gaunts.) Though I do think it looks really cool along with the old RT era metal marine casualties minis I have when laid out on the table top with some of the other battlefield terrain I have. :)

One more thing - either due to the tinting material, the non-stick cook spray on the foil, or a combination of both, - your epoxy will take a fair bit longer than normal to set up to the point where you can safely remove it from the foil. Be patient. Wait at least 30 minutes and more likely an hour before you have a go at removing it from the foil. If it still seems to be to soft, wait longer and try using low heat from a hair dryer or lamp to help the epoxy cure and harden.