How to Scratch-Build Sector Mechanicus Walkways for Warhammer 40k, Kill Team

[Music] hello everyone why lock here thanks for joining me a lot of material to cover today so I'm not gonna sit here and bloviate much here is what we're gonna build it's a modular catwalk system for your industrial and sci-fi tabletop games all the components that you see here interlock in a standard system so they're very stable on the table if you're new to the channel here's the secret ingredient I use it all the time graphics medium chipboard it's 12 by 12 inch sheets you get 25 of these in a pack for like 20 bucks or less there's a link in the video description below to my Amazon affiliate link it's listed there in my storefront if you use that link same cost to you deliveries unaffected it's just I get a small kickback for having referred you if you want to support the channel free and easy way to do it anyway I love this stuff because it's like two millimeters thick it's very sturdy it takes paint and glue really well it's cheap and it can be cut with a utility knife very easily so graphics medium chipboard the miracle crafting material alright no further ado let's go so there's several modular components involved with this project but it all starts with what I'll call the towers that's these stackable sections here so save your soup cans and six to eight of them peel the paper off and then measure the height now the u.s. is but a small part of the world so I have no idea what other countries like canning standards or manufacturing might be but I can say most of the soup cans I've come across are a hundred and twelve millimeters long so measure yours get a real good measurement and write it down that number is gonna be important as we go along I'm going to assume 112 millimeters from here on out then take it outside get some spray primer on it this is because acrylic craft paint will not stick to bare metal very well at all and while you're at it get some cross stitching mesh sometimes referred to as granny grating this is available at literally any crafting or fabric store and it's really really cheap take it outside and spray one side of it black as well I like cry loans matte black good performance good price and now we go to chipboard here is a diagram of a shape we're gonna use a lot so for simplicity I'll just refer to this as the basic shape it's a 4-inch square with half-inch clipped corners on a 12 by 12 inch sheet of chipboard you can fit nine of them perfectly so here they are measured out and drawn the top in the bottom of a tower section will require a sandwich of three basic shapes each so you need to prepare six basic shapes per tower section first we'll address the top here's some more diagrams you'll need one basic shape one basic shape with these rectangles cut out of each side and a big square cut out of the middle and finally a basic shape with a smaller square cut out of the middle take note of these dimensions because they're really really important to ensure that our modular pieces work well together later on screen cap it if you have to use a metal ruler and multiple passes with a sharp blade in order to get nice clean cuts all by the way these tabs these half inch by two inch rectangles hold on to them it's gonna save time later here's the three pieces for a tower top we're gonna attach them with a thin layer of white PVA glue because it doesn't introduce extra thickness and because chipboard drinks up white glue I mean within 60 seconds it is dried and really strong so here we go gonna put this metal piece on and apply some pressure all around just work it for a few seconds check on all the edges make sure they aren't pulling away from each other in a minute it'll be good to go now this is gonna seem out of order but trust me it is worth doing this way take your black acrylic craft paint and fill in that square it'll be dry within 60 seconds then measure out a square of the cross-stitch mesh to fit apply a bead of hot glue around the edges and install the mesh if you hadn't based in black first it is an absolute nightmare trying to stab a paintbrush down into that mesh to get the surface underneath it trust me do it this way and lastly apply another thin layer of white glue and attach the third piece on top notice that the square in the top is smaller than the one that the meshes in the intent here is that it hides the ugly edges of the mesh and the hot glue so you get a really nice presentation of just this greeting that's in the floor also it secures the mesh in there forever if that hot glue ever fails it doesn't matter and so you can see now on each edge we have these two inch long slots these slots will be used to attach components later on and that's why it's really important to apply pressure and make sure that white glue really secured the layers together because these slots need to be exactly the thickness of a single layer of chipboard no more not even a micrometer for the bottom of the tower it's much easier you need two basic shapes and a third basic shape with those slots cut out here they are ready to go and we just build the sandwich using thin layers of white glue make sure you're using good old plain Elmer's not like school craft glue or repositionable Elmer's glue just Elmer's white glue now on each sandwich find the center point so just measure 2 inches inwards draw lines that cross and that gives you the dead center then what I did was take a compass and set it to be slightly larger than the radius of the soup can and draw a circle the intent here is that when you place the soup can on the slab you can see a circle just outside of it it's a visual aid to make sure that you glue the can directly in the center next we're gonna make those vertical structural members measure out a hundred and twelve millimeters or whatever your length is and cut three rectangles one of them 20 millimeters wide and the other two five millimeters wide take an office hole punch and punch some holes along the middle of the big one i spaced them out every three-quarters of an inch or so these thin ones are going to be attached to the big one using hot glue on the side but they're so small that it's really finicky to do that so here's a technique to help get something that's flat and straight and square I just used some scrap double corrugated cardboard here put it down place the thin strip up against it and then pin it there with the wide piece like this hold those in place with one hand as you apply a bead of hot glue blow on it to help it cool faster should be good to go in a minute apply a thin strip to the other side in the exact same manner so this is a vertical girder and you need to make four of these for a single Tower it's time to assemble now metal conducts heat really well and hot glue cools almost instantly meaning you have no working time and the open end of the can has a really thin rim so you'll probably end up with a messy like blob of hot glue if you're not perfect so here's what I do cut some spare scraps a foam board or something like that hot glue them on the inside of the rim about a millimeter down from the edge and then you apply blobs of hot glue to that foam then you place the can so this gives you a few seconds of working time because the foam is an absorbing heat and if you need to slide the can around and ensure it's right in the center of your circle it also makes sure that hot glue won't bulge out because it's offset from the rim to attach the other base is the trickiest part of this segment first of all lay down a nice thick bead of hot glue set inwards a few millimeters from your circle and now you need to make sure you attach such that the top and bottom slabs are aligned with each other this is really important to help with that I use some scrap and but it up to the base you can rock it back and forth and feel as well as visually see when it's flush with an edge then you bring over the tower and do the same thing with the other base in the air just feel and look to see when it's flush and keep it that way as you lower it down onto the hot glue afterwards you can check for squareness using the same technique and honestly I use a really thick bead of hot glue so you do have like three or four seconds to move it around if you need to because it does cool quite that instantly for the vertical girders I just uses a small bead of hot glue put one end of the girder in place I like to set them about five millimeters back from the clipped corner but do whatever you like as long as you're consistent and you flip the tower over and another bead of hot glue to pin the other one in place a to quick variance on the tower and then we'll talk about how to secure them together first up is easiest nothin just don't put anything in the middle enough said the other variant is just a box so cut four rectangles at two and a half inches wide and their height was again 112 millimeters but again make it identical to whatever your cans are and then I cut three squares of double corrugated cardboard single corrugated works too but these are two and a half inch squares hot glue the panels to the sides of these squares in order to create a square pillar without having any hot glue oozing out the corners hot glue this assembly to a top or a bottom making sure to Center it then attach the other base again making sure it's centered and aligned with the other base like we did before and then attach the girders just as before now you have a bit of a blank canvas to get creative with toys like Lego technics pieces or connects bottle caps leftover bits from your miniature sprues heck the sprues themselves the sky's the limit go crazy make it look as clean or as techno gothic as you like later on I'll show you all the stuff that I did on these so that's how we build the tower sections to make taller towers we're going to use clamps to attach them together so to make a clamp take those slots that you cut out earlier the two by half inch rectangles you're gonna need three of them first slice off about one to two millimeters with scissors again to make sure that they'll insert accounts for tiny manufacturing error then cut one of them in half lengthwise and white glue those two lengths together clip the corners of the remaining two rectangles and make a sandwich like you see here so we got two layers of chipboard in the middle here's two tower sections and for now I'm just going to use two of these clips so one goes in that side and one in the other and watch how strong this already is I'm holding this thing by the top of one of the towers with one hand and it's rock solid awesome it's gonna be very stable on the table so we'll come back and do some painting later on but for now let's move on to the walkways the walkways are gonna be three inches wide and although you can make them as long as you want I strongly recommend that you always do lengths in multiples of three in the interest of modularity so let's build a nine inch long walkway again it's a three piece sandwich the bottom is simply a three by nine rectangle easy the top layer is also pretty easy it's just a three by nine rectangle with some rectangles cut out of it notice that it's sort of a half-inch wide frame it's really important that you do that a half-inch or thicker wider is fine but it's basically a frame and grading is going to show through those those empty spaces I saved the middle layer for last because it's the tricky one here's a diagram we're gonna use the same concept that we use for the top of a tower piece a few minutes ago so this is a three by nine inch rectangle except that it's got two tabs on the short ends each of which is two inches wide and a quarter inch deep here it is all measured and cut out but here's a nuance that's really important in truth those tabs aren't actually two inches wide I leave them like a millimeter or two short that way it'll fit nicely into those slots accounting for any tiny manufacturing error that you might have had it's also a good idea to go ahead and clip the corners so that they don't get damaged after lots of use back to the diagram so you see we're going to remove most of the middle basically leaving a quarter-inch frame around the perimeter and then after that we're actually going to eliminate some 2-inch portions of that frame these are going to become the slots eventually but you'll notice this means we're going to end up with multiple pieces so what I like to do before that is take the bottom layer and Mark where those pieces are gonna end up so we cut out the middle layer and white glue those pieces onto the bottom notice that for every three inches of length we have a two inch gap that's centered in it this right here is why I recommend doing multiples of three inches for the overall length anyway with that done cut some mesh to fit insert it again you can do some hot glue but it really doesn't matter you could just let it float in there and then white glue on the top layer remember pressure and double check that the layers are all sticking together about 60 seconds it should be all set up and dry so that's a walkway the tabs can insert into towers to connect them together but the cool thing is with the slots along the sides you could attach more walkways like an intersection or other features which we're going to get into in just a little while now your facility might be kind of boring all boxy square right angles so let's make a 45 degree turn if you're not strong in math do not be turned off or intimidated by what we're about to do it is easier than it looks just follow me step by step from a fresh corner measure in three inches and Mark then with your protractor that you've had since second grade measure 45 degrees mark and draw a line measure out three inches along that line and Mark again use the protractor to find 90 degrees from there and Mark again draw another line connecting those last two marks once again measure three inches 90 degrees on the protractor mark and draw a line now go back to the original corner and measure three inches the other direction and Mark then move the ruler away from that edge slide it away some amount a few inches doesn't really matter how much measure in three inches and Mark connect the last two marks you made with a line and you've got your shape cut it out and instead of doing this process every time write a T on it for template and use it to trace copies going forward never trace copies of copies always trace this one the one with the T on it here it is with the middle layer attached and notice two things number one we have slots in the outer edges but not the inner edges because they're too small oh well and secondly and more important one end has a tab like we're used to but the other has a slot you'll see why in a moment and be sure that you're grading makes a turn as well use two pieces like this cool turned out good the idea is this 45 degree turn is really an adapter of sorts is meant to be connected to a straight walkway that's why one side has a tab and one side has a slot and I actually only made two of these ones a left turn and one is a right turn because I think that's all I'm ever gonna need to introduce offsets on the table and make the facility more interesting but I saved my template for future use all right again we're gonna cover painting at the ends that we have a consistent treatment of all these components but for now let's start making some clip-on features let's do railings first since they're pretty easy now I experimented with a couple ideas bendy straws hair curlers because I'm gonna be making like 50 of these so I need ease of construction and I was willing to sacrifice on the coolness of the overall finished look if it meant speed so I decided to keep it simple just keep rolling with chipboard cut a bunch of quarter-inch wide strips just make a stockpile of them chop a strip to be three inches long or slightly less than that again to account for it for manufacturing error then chop three one-inch pieces and glue them on perpendicular like you see here and then complete that sandwich with another three inch length then another sandwich with two three inch pieces to sandwich the loose ends so notice we have a nice channel here and the reason I did it this way so that the hot glue has somewhere to go and it won't lose out the sides it's also gonna be a lot stronger cut a final three inch length and hot glue the fence to it like this I also after it was dry nipped the upper corners so I just used the knife and sort of carved my way through it three layers is a lot to get through so don't try and use scissors now there's two ways to do this last step the first is easy just take one of those rectangles clip the corners and glue it on making sure that it's centered easy so this can go anywhere that you have a slot but as I was filming this bit I had a thought I don't recommend doing it this way instead use a clamp just like we made earlier white glue it on there centered now why do this I mean 99% of the time you're railing clip ons are always gonna be on a walkway that only has one slot anyway why bother with this well it's for those few use cases like this one here you have an empty Tower section on top and it's traversable my models so it might make sense to have railings there but if you have a clip on there it'd also be really nice to have a clamp there after all odds are you have at least two walkways occupying two other sides of this tower so have both at the same time of course that begs a question why not just make eight or ten of them that way well then they don't look the same plus that block of chipboard is incredibly strong and you can insert and remove your clip on features by grabbing it instead of the feature here it is on a walkway and look yeah that lower tab isn't doing anything doesn't need to be there but pull back just 12 inches and you can't even see it in fact I think that big block of chipboard there adds another little something to the overall look it'll be a parent later on when we paint everything I think the advantage of using the clamps will become more obvious with some of the other clip-on features we're about to explore and a final thought I'm asked reduce these by building a grid like this just gluing strips together so right here is 48 railings gave it a few hours to let it totally truly dry and then just chop them apart about an hour of work total to build and paint 48 railings stairs again I experimented with a couple of approaches trying to balance ease of construction overall look and playability I wanted a typical infantry model to be able to stand on the stairs for real I decided that the treads hanging slightly over the stringer was important for the overall look so here's what I did I measured the total height of a tower to be a hundred and twenty millimeters I took an educated guess that eight steps would look good and fit well it's also divisible into one hundred and twenty so I drew out an 8x8 grid of 15 millimeter squares then draw a diagonal across two extreme points like this and then offset by one vertex and draw another line like this so to cut out a stringer you first slice away that second line then start chopping away at the stair step again this is one of those things that's awkward to explain better to visualize so just watch what I've done here with two of those stringers cut it's time to cut out the treads which are very easy these are just rectangles about 20 millimeters wide and three inches long also before cutting them apart it is helpful to mark a line a half inch in from each short end like this because to assemble I simply use a thin bead of hot glue on the stringer then stick a tread on it same for the other stringer the positioning of the stringers should be 2 inches apart and that's what the lines on the treads were for you can easily make sure that they're centered and the correct distance just by looking at those lines as you attach the tread and finally a simple two inch tab glued to the underside of the topmost tread if your tower height is different than mine the thought process is the same use an even rise over run ratio to keep things simple for yourself and pick a number of treads that divides evenly into the height and if you need to fudge the overall height you can get away with up to a millimeter of cheating so like if my towers were a hundred and twenty-one millimeters I still would have just used eight treads so that stairs and finally these individual wall sections these are helpful for long stretches a walkway where they might be flexing and need some extra support they're also great for blocking line-of-sight so you can place them strategically to right next to each other and so on real easy corrugated cardboard cut out a rectangle you want the corrugation to be running in the long direction now this rectangle is 2 and 7/8 of an inch wide why not three inches because we need to leave space for chipboard slabs on the side you'll see in a minute as for the height it's a hundred and sixteen millimeters tall why 116 well it's the base 112 from the soup can plus four layers of chipboard to get us from the ground up to the slot which I measured to be a hundred and eighteen millimeters minus one layer of chipboard for the base of this wall feature bringing it down to 116 if that wasn't clear it will be in just a sec and cut two chipboard slabs exact same size and hot glue them onto each side then cut some thin strips of chipboard to cover the exposed long edges nice thick bead of hot glue in that channel these two side pieces bring the overall width up to our normal three inches then just a small rectangle like 20 millimeters wide to serve as the base just hot glue it on there and with the base attached the overall height is now up to 118 millimeters for the top another slab of chipboard but include a two-inch tab as part of it just like the walkways centered obviously and hot glue that on there and finally I strongly recommend you go ahead and put together a railing and attach it on top since 99% of the time that you're using this wall feature it's to support a walkway which means you probably want a railing above it our about to go paint these up and then see everything in context but a few quick reminders first if you like this video don't hesitate to hit the like button subscribe etc etc there is a link in the description below from my amazon storefront easy free way to support the channel if you want just buy your stuff through that link and for all you 3d printers out there while ochs crafting vids is sponsored by heroes horde which has an excellent range of high quality models including but not limited to all true tiles lines which are open lock compatible also check out my modules over on the DM z-- guild and remember $3 patrons get free copies of all my releases let us paint I wanted to keep it very simple just a few colors a solid black gunmetal or some kind of dark silver metallic a copper or a bronze metallic and then industrial color such as grey beige or olive green I went with slate gray because it has a very slight blue tint to it and I've used it on my other industrial terrain before so it'll match nicely start out easiest with just a single clamp base it in solid black and then do an over brush with gunmetal this is not a full coat you want like 80% coverage and the way to do it is dip the brush and then work a little bit of the paint right back off on the palette similar to a dry brush but using a lot more paint strike it to piece kind of quickly a few times till you get the coverage you like and the idea is to get this hard ancient metal look railings again bass in black over brush with gunmetal easy walkways take your industrial color and paint up the edges as well as the frame simple you might need two coats and with gunmetal hit all the grates and then Nick at the edges inside and out this is easier to show than describe just go along the edge flicking the brush backwards in a way some nice cheap and easy aging now mix up a black wash of about ten parts water to one part paint and wash all the surfaces that have your color don't forget the edges it goes on fairly dark it will dry much lighter look at this you can see how rich I've mixed it if yours goes on lighter than this wet you might want to add more paint to your mix I'm serious it really does dry a lot lighter so experiment on a single piece first kind of figure out how you want yours to look and mix up a large batch of wash like I edit so you can use it on future projects and have things look consistent towers the sequence I recommend is this base black the vertical girders the underside of the top and if there's a soup can in there do that as well I know we primed it black but I just like to unify everything with the same shade then take your chosen color and do all the other surfaces again don't forget the edges now over brush with gunmetal do the grading on top the soup can if there is one and the vertical girders for those I don't bother with the insides of them just leave them black you never see it then Nick at the edges as before and black wash on all the color and as one final touch we're going to take that other metallic copperish color and just randomly strike at a few spots where ever you have gunmetal quick and easy aging rusted kind of look that's really the recipe I don't need to go into it any heavier you apply the same technique to your stairs and your wall pieces and whatever else you make just a few colors one last thing before the big reveal I talked about attaching Griebel to the box towers and the wall sections just like we did back in episode 84 the void shield generator remember that base had all those pieces on it and then we use leftover miniature sprues painted them up and glue them on as miscellaneous detail same as in episode 110 for the industrial wreckage scatter or episode 77 with the Gothic buildings specifically the manufactory I bring those up because although you'll probably want to do something like that this time around I actually used these detail plates from a 3d model line called necro Plex I was a proud Kickstarter backer for this and I absolutely love necro Plex but I printed way too many of these detail plates and now I finally have an excuse to use them so I hot glue them on after all the painting was done okay as always what good is terrain without some models for context so here's ultramarines defending this facility against tyranids this has most of the stuff that I've made for this set so twelve towers five soup cans five boxes two empty four stairs four wall supports and 48 railings so that was that's basically my starter kit that made what you see here Oh in the walkways I've I've got some spare walkways actually but you actually need surprisingly few of those especially if you do 12 inch lengths like I did but look at this look at this scene staring down the big guy that is the kind of stuff that's possible with good terrain yeah I love it this is what I live I'm not a competitive 40k player I live for big scenes like this just the the showcase of it here's the case of hammer Nader's holding off some honestly support ear and it's them know idea what they're in for these tyranids were airbrushed mostly and then I did use a satin varnish shot and it looks a little glossy in this video but really it's a satin varnish and I know that's taboo but I think it works for tearing it's because of their bug like nature look at this swarm coming up the stairs all the way up to an honor guard defending a KITT bash chapter master a bunch of custody's bits thrown on everything I had leftover just throw it together and that that's mostly what my HQ czar I am definitely not a what-you-see-is-what-you-get kind of guy but 20 hours total work for all the pieces which again I listed just a moment ago so it's not hard it's easy but it takes a long time it is tedious so it will challenge your your carpal tunnel and your sanity fly around get a look at some of the other skirmishes going on here and come to the other side of the table let's look at this carnage from a different vantage point yeah and man that's like one of trillions of combinations you can put together with with just these components I'm so and I'm so excited to embellish it further with other types of clip-ons and stuff you know a lot of people say like the miniatures are the star of the show I disagree I think the terrain and the miniatures are the stars of the show I think they're equally as important a quick glamour shot of the terrain effects ooh I do apologize I haven't finished painting those dreadnaughts heresy almost everything you see on this table aside from miniatures we've built on the channel the bunkers are coming up soon but literally everything else you can find in another episode the crags the fuel depot that power station so if you're interested just check the back catalogue on that note I am one of many YouTube tabletop crafters and I would call myself probably in the upper end of the amateur going into journeyman and I'm just sharing my lessons as I go a via this channel but there's a whole collection of us find the tabletop crafters guild on Facebook we are 20,000 strong and growing Caban join us if you are interested in or are an expert terrain maker we want the whole gamut we want everybody their terrain crafting is a very rewarding experience it opens a whole new world so if you're only a miniature painter right now come on dive in and now I need your help I need ideas for a follow-up video to this I want to do like 15 or 20 little additional embellishments clip-on ideas shield walls banners look at the top of a railing for example what do you see there two more small slots so we could do a clip on to a clip on like a control panel or something like that the sky's the limit so leave a comment with an idea go get started on your infrastructure and by the time you're finished hopefully that next video will be out let's do this next one together if you liked this particular project here's two more that you should go check out right now also enjoy this month's community showcase and don't forget to subscribe and click that Bell reminder icon I am why lock thanks for joining me and I'll see you next time

Channel: Wyloch's Armory

Views: 223,937

Keywords: Wyloch, Black Magic Craft, DM scotty, luke's aps, diy terrain, scratch build, warhammer 40k, 40k, catwalks, scaffold, modular

Id: 5N99J7c5ifc

Length: 30min 53sec (1853 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 19 2018