people

[cheese3]

How could I build HO scale people instead of spending $30 to fill my city?

[Anonymous]

I have heard of using wire and beeswax, but I do not know the exact method.

[tatans]

Never heard of anyone making ho people, I think this might be an ominous task, very much harder than it seems, just think how hard it would be to make ONE guy(or gal) and paint,etc. now, see how many hours this one took and figure out how long 500 will take. I think JUST painting ready-made plastic figures would be a daunting task on it's own, Keep this forum posted on your progress, good luck.

[Anonymous]

I, too, cringe at the thought of purchasing figures.

I'm more of an armchair modeler than modeler frankly, but with my mechanical engineering background (causing and being around manufacturing all the time...) I'm envisioning this...

Some sort of sculpted figure - takes a lot of time, but cheap - maybe from wire & clay or something. I recently saw this clay-type stuff that you bake and it becomes hard - called super sculpy or something like that - ask people at a craft store.

You make 15-20 different kinds, then you create rubber molds and cast your own.

Yes, my approach is very vague - haven't done it yet, but this is the road I will probably go down if I ever actually get started on a layout!

I remember MR had some figure building article once - I think they were made from wire with clay-type stuff applied to the wire structure.

[CBQ_Guy]

QUOTE: Originally posted by cheese3

How could I build HO scale people instead of spending $30 to fill my city?

Only $30?!

[philnrunt]

Cheese3- there was an article in MR a few years back about making your own people, but I'm not sure when or what scale it was. Go into the archives and see what you come up with.
I think the guy used the stuff CARRfan mentioned, and I think thats the right name of it, so you might try that in the search field.
I'm guessing that you already have seen the 100 person sets that come unpainted for a substantial savings over the pre-painted sets. These are in the Walthers catalogue. I went that way, but I like painting all of the wee folk.
Hope this helped and Good Luck!

[Jetrock]

The best bet is to buy bulk packs of unpainted figures, as mentioned above...and yeah, $30 is pretty modest to fill a city!

Sculpey is interesting stuff, but, quite frankly, you'd be better off buying unpainted figures. $1.60-$2.00 for a two-ounce block!

[Anonymous]

There's a cheaper way than Walthers.

Preiser puts out an all scale people catalog. The HO section alone is 98 pages .
Figure 30% + off from http://www.rocousa.com/preiser.asp and scroll down to Preiser data base.

This firm carries 14,000 items for different scales/hobbies.