Aaargh! THIS is what I'm looking for!

[MisterBeasley]

After weeks of agonizing about the right material to make my subway walls from, I ordered the engine camera and set it up. It was sitting on my office desk, plugged into a battery with the receiver on its power supply attached to the computer's video input, because the girls were upstairs watching teenage angst unfold on the real TV.

I looked at the monitor, and behold, there it was! The perfect texture! The right rigity! It was the packing material that the camera came in. That kind of squishy, recycled, pressed cardboard junk they make egg cartons out of. Now...

What is this stuff? How do you find it? What is it called in the packaging industry? I'm sure it costs no more than 14 cents per metric ton, but where can I get it? Do I need a chicken-breeding license? Oh, it's so close I can just feel it...

[davekelly]

Mister Beasely,

Sorry I don't have an answer for you. But I bet you are 100 percent correct. The stuff is probably not only meets all your modeling requirements but is also somewhat south of 14 cents per metric ton - but if you find it - it can only be bought from one place and you have to buy it in 5 metric tons lots. Shipping? About $1000.00 per ton,.

Seriously - if you find the stuff, please post your answer. I bet that stuff can be used for a lot of things. In particularly I'm thinking it would make great webbing for hardshell scenery.

[SpaceMouse]

MB,

How much do you need? I often get glass bottles of vitmins wrapped in it and I could send you some.

[Seamonster]

It's paper mache (mash-SHAY). I've never made any, but it's supposed to be very easy to make and is used a lot for children's crafts. I did a search on it and came up with a lot of sites. This one looked pretty good:
http://familycrafts.about.com/cs/papermache/a/051500pm.htm

[Anonymous]

try ordering a lab saftey catolog or there matieral handling catolog or try there web site lab safety. com ,monday when i return to work i will check the office for another catolog that deals in packing matierals and stuff .i think its call e line or something im not sure i will find out .and just remember its a jungle out there .......a hobo jungle that is.....tramptrac

[Anonymous]

i think its could be called Q line ............tramptrac

[Anonymous]

Underground packing............

[dtbowyer]

If you can use actual egg cartons, try checking at a Bob Evans, Denny's, or whatever. They go through a lot of eggs, and just throw the stuff out. It will likely NOT be in the dozen-sized retail packs, but rather trays that hold like 30 - 96 eggs. A good weekend of dumpster-diving could build a lot of tunnels! You are more likely to get the styrofoam-type instead of the cardboard-type, though.

David

[Anonymous]

I remember from Kindergarten (only 7 years ago [:D] )that we used torn up contstruction paper and water (maybe something else, too) in a blender, and then we pressed it into sheets. You could easily do the same, as it has a rough texture, and is (I think) flexible, or you can form it on a chicken-fence (the little metal mesh) form. Also, you can use wrinkled up aluminum foil (I saw it in a special MR issue from the Barnes & Noble bookstore. They don't have it anymore, unfortinatley [:(] ), depending on the scale. Hope this helps!

[MisterBeasley]

When I went to Kindergarten, I don't think blenders had been invented yet, and they certainly weren't going to let little kids fill them up with paste pulp. By coincidence, I was corresponding with an egg-carton manufacturer I found on Google, and he came up with the same solution. Of course, he gave me a recipe in metric units.

After playing a bit with the camera, I think I can be a little more relaxed about things like the texture on the subway walls. Thanks for the idea on aluminum foil. If I crumple it up and then re-flatten it, I can glue it on to cardboard or styrene and get a pretty good rough-texture wall that will be flexible, light and cheap.

[Jetrock]

Not sure if this will be helpful, but there is a commercial product called Sculptamold that is very similar to a very, very fine papier-mache'. It is easy to use, and can produce all sorts of results--I have found that the best way to work it is by hand, although normally I wear neoprene gloves when I'm working with it. The more it is manipulated, the smoother it gets, and it is a lightweight, strong material that can be sawn and drilled without cracking once dry.

It's not super cheap, but it is easy to use with Styrofoam so you don't need a whole lot.

[Anonymous]

Not to burst your bubble but aren't subway walls mostly concrete and smooth these days?

[MisterBeasley]

The walls are much smoother than I'd expect for a tunnel through a rock mountain, but it wouldn't do to model them with flat styrene, for example. After years of dripping water and accumulation of dirt, the walls wouldn't be either terribly smooth or even in texture and color. That's what makes the almost-but-not-quite flat texture of the egg boxes so attractive. With the limited lighting and imperfect optics of the engine cam I'll be using to view these tunnels, I think I'll need to exaggerate textures just to have it look like anything but completely featureless walls.

I was in the people-mover train at the Atlanta airport a couple of weeks ago. This is a new subway system, relative to the older urban transit look I'm aiming for. The walls were flat, smooth gray concrete. Somehow, though, they just didn't look right. Prototype, maybe, but not MY prototype.

[Anonymous]

hey i found the catolog of packing matierals its called uline they have a web site uline .com and the lab safety site is lss.com good luck