May 11, 2011

Hobby Wednesday - How to make Sandbags

It's really simple to make sandbags just use some green stuff epoxy putty and follow these steps. For purposes of photos and easier to see I made the sandbag bigger than it should be. Use about half as much as I did.
Cut 2 equal portions of yellow and blue.
 Mix the 2 portions together until it become a solid green color
 Make it into a rectangular cube shape.
 On one side put the blunt end of the exacto blade into one side of the putty.
 Then pinch together.
 Then repeat until you have 4 sides done.
 When you're done it should look like this squeeze the edges to make them a little more disfigured. and the edges of the sack.
 Next take a grated textured surface and roll it on the sandbag shape.
 And you are done. You may need to redo the seem of the sandbag with the exacto knife again.
Tips
Use water to keep your blade and fingers from sticking to the putty.
You can also use a ziplock back and put the green stuff in it to sculpt it and then take it out when it is mostly hardened and apply the texture.
Sandpaper, files, and even your fingers can make the texture for the bags.

1 comment:

Rwwin said...

Nice Tutorial. I appreciate the work you put into your site.

I've been making sandbag terrain for yeasrs and have learned a few tricks along the way:

1. Green stuff is expensive if you plan to make a lot of sandbags. Apoxie Scuplt by AVES is cheaper and slightly easier to work for terrain projects.

2. To keep all of my sandbags uniform, I stole my son's playdough press with the smallest opening. It presses out a uniform tube that you can cut to the right size keeping all of your sandbags the same without too much guessing.