The Darkenvault: Canned food industrial terrain

Do you have excess non-perishable food containers, or cat food tins? Then I've got the the tutorial for you. First we start with my studio, also known to some as a living room. This is what your home looks like when you are building terrain for a grand tournament, and don't have a a dedicated work space. You can also see some of the pieces in progress we will be looking at today.

So this piece will be made up of tin cans, you know the traditional ribbed metal soup can, and the cat food or tuna can. Below you see the template I designed to wrap around the can to add detail and proper suspension of disbelief. Remember, if you are ever going to be building model terrain in the future, to hoard anything which may be ever of use, forever. Such as the cereal boxes I'm making use out of below.

I left extra room on the right side so once I had cut out the interior openings, and then the whole piece it self if it was to long I could shave off the excess. The height was easy to measure, the circumference was harder as I still have not found my tailors measuring tape. I used the steel ruler, and also just rapped the card stock around it.

Note here, I took a screw driver, and put a puncture hole in the smaller tin for air flow when we go to glue them together. I was going to try and use expanding foam to fill the can, and join the cans together. Then thought it was just be more convenient for everyone if I waited. More on that a little down the way.

The cut out stencil. I have left measurements on it for possible future reference.

Here we have my finished collection of exterior detail, and a finished product. For ease I primed all of the cans first. This is to give a more receptive surface for the glue to adhere to, and help to get all areas shadow before instead of later. I used white glue, doing a light wiggly line along all of the surface area of the stencil. You want to glue the bare side and go from one edge to the next, with a lighter application so it doesn't glup all over when you wrap it around the can. A little will happen but is easy to wipe up.

As can be seen with the smaller cans, I taped the edges while it dried, and with the bigger cans wrapped a rubber band around the middle. The more rubber bands you have the better.

Here is where we get fancy. You can see the the other can filled with expanding foam. We have done that to give re-forcement for the straws. After the foam has set we drill a hole into the can, the bit you will want to use can be measured by finding the drill bit which fits the snuggest into the he straw opening. I then fitted all three holes with the straw and nuts to measure where the holes should be. I then made a template so I could measure out all of the boards without using the can for every spot.

Then we have a dry fitted can.

We're ready to start assembly. Here are the tools all layer out. The scissors are for trimming down the straws, the screw driver for making room in the drilled holes as some are going to have some blockage to push out of the way.