As the concept of a battle at an oil refinery was percolating in the back of my mind, coincidentally quite a few videos came out from YouTube crafters I follow that dealt with sci-fi or post-apocalyptic builds with components which would lend themselves well to my plans.

In particular, the piping and miniature walkways from this video from Midwinter Minis would be perfect!

The last straw(s)

The pipes in the video above were made from “Build-a-straw” kits which it alleges are common and easy to find. Yet I scoured eight different dollar stores for them, finding exactly three left at one of the stores… and have yet to see them again in the two months since.

This was a simple build: I just figured out some configurations I wanted, then super glued them together. I used a can of Rustoleum metallic paint/primer spray (paid link) to coat them, and in some cases glued them down to small chipboard bases which were later covered with soil-and-grout and sprinkled with various grass flocking material. Finally, later near the end of the overall build, I applied my rust process (to be described in a later post).

There is a small issue with this setup – the curved pipe pieces are made of rubber rather than plastic, and the paint’s adhesion to them is less than perfect. Rough handling can expose the bright colored bits underneath, so I have to be a little careful with these parts.

Rise of Skywalkways

The video above also mentions using undergravel aquarium filters as industrial walkways. These are snap-together pieces that can be configured on-the-fly in infinite combinations, which makes them amazing for gaming terrain. I found a set of 20 for $16.80 on Amazon (paid link), which seemed to be the best deal at the time with price and quantity taken into account – though there are other bundles with fewer pieces for less money. The modularity and versatility of these is wonderful; I’ll probably eventually dabble in an SF game as well and these can serve as tiles for laying out the interior of a derelict starship. Likewise, with a different paint job they could easily serve as the floor for a better-kept starship, a computer room or other high-tech facility, etc.

The filter pieces themselves were simply scuffed with sandpaper and spray painted with the same paint/primer I used on the pipes above, then set aside for the rust treatment later.

I also wanted to build some simple supports to elevate these with. This was achieved with some wood strips glued together as shown below. Next washers were hot-glued to chipboard pieces as ballast to help keep the stands upright.

The “H”s are for “Holy crap, it’s a pain to keep these things straight long enough for the glue to dry!”

Hot glue was again used to attach the stands onto their bases, then melted all over the base surfaces to cover the washers.

A coat of the metallic spray, some rust-ification, and the usual ground flocking process finished them off. I also used a piece of one of those break-off plastic shims from a hardware store, painted in the same fashion, to make a simple stairway to go with the walkways. Now I can quickly throw together scenes like this:

A pole-arizing build

Utility/telephone poles can be used in any modern setting and I’ve been meaning to make some for a while. I Googled utility pole heights and found that 40 feet is common in the US, and based on the 1″ = 5′ scale on the ground in D&D I proceeded to totally screw up the very simple math and proceed with 4 inch (i.e. 20′ tall) poles instead of 8 inch ones. Apparently I was thinking at the time 1/2″ = 5′ for some reason.

But they looked good at the end, so I kept them anyway!

First I cut some too-short 4″ dowel pieces. From square balsa I cut 1.5″ strips, and then some 1/2″ bits with angled sides from thinner balsa.

Centers of the cross beams were marked and the angles were glued in place under them, making sure the angle pieces were against the parchment paper underneath rather than centered on the strips themselves. This was important so they could sit flush against the poles when glued on.

Wood discs were hot-glued to washers were hot-glued to the poles, and the bases were coated with glue as well.

I wanted to add some of whatever those big electrical gadgets are that are often attached to utility poles. For these I resorted to the beads-on-a-string method my wife devised a while back to prevent me from pulling my own hair out over my early potion-making efforts. A small pile resulted of tiny beads glued atop slightly larger beads.

Beads were glued to poles:

The assembled poles were spray painted brown, dry-brushed in tans, and washed with brown. The beads were painted grey and given a black wash. Flocking on the bases finished off my stubby little utility poles: