Hi guys ,,need some help here .. I'm building a diorama based in afghanistan and these going to be alot of battle damage to the buildings in this small town ,now doing large damage i can do but i have never had to make bullet holes in walls before ... any of you fokes know a good technique for making great looking bullet holes in buildings ? any help here would be great .

cheers

Phill

Go on the Internet and look for photos.
We are fortunate ot have this source nowadays, so use it!

The question is not easy to answer without better knowledge of the circumstances.

What kind of building is it?? Rural buildings tend to be made of mud bricks, while more modern city buildings are often concrete blocks.

Is the building covered in some sort of plaster, or are the bricks/blocks bare?

Did the bullets hit the wall at 90 degrees angle or did they glance off....and so forth!!

What calibre are we talking about?

On the other side, what material is your model building made of??

My buildings are either foam, balsa or plaster of Paris, and each material requires a slightly different technique.

For small arms impacts I usually drill/punch small holes with a needle file and "open the cone to the outside" (for direct hits) or scratch the surface in one direction for a glancing shot.

Hope that helps so far.

Cheers

Romain

Thanks a heap for that info Roman ..fact i have looked on the net and found alot of pics of battle damage ,,for the life of me i dont know why i didnt think of it before ,,ok now for that info ,,the buildings are solid plaster ,,the weapons that would have been used are 5.56mm ,7.62, .50cal and 25mm ..the pics i got showed many differant types of bullet holes but its hard to figure out which did what ,i know a 25mm round will do some pretty serious damage to a brick and plaster building ..oh thats what these buildings are ..i have some good pics of that damage to a brick and plaster building which has proved very helpful ,,already had a play on a piece of old plaster to see how it went ,,not bad so far ,i am going to try the angles idea you talked about ..sounds like it will give me some excellent results which is what i am looking for

Cheers

Phill

Running a dental burr in a dremel/rotary tool randomly over the surface (kind of bouncing it ofonand off the surface at a mid speed) might give you some decent effects. Definetly do a practice run before you attempt it on the real thing.

5.56 had minimal effect on the mud buildings in Afghanistan. Even the green tip. Best way to replicate it in scale is with a needle - poke tiny holes in the plaster.
7.62 x 39 is another story altogether. Same technique for replicating the holes, but we used to actually collapse walls with it by shooting corners over windows (dozens of times of course) until the whole psrt over the window collapsed.
Soviet and Chinese 107mm rockets made a nice neat 107mm hole in most cases . .Whether the fuse actually worked or not, just the mass and speed would carry it through the average house wall. They had minimal effect on thicker compound walls. I have a nice video of tests we did with the ones we dug up.

Hi Phill.
Just remember when you weather the walls, that any fresh bullet impacts would show up as bright, fresh new brick colour. Knock a chunk off a dirty old house brick with a hammer and see how clean it is inside.
Hope that helps.
Richard.

Hi Richard ,,many thanks for that ,, now i'll remember to remember that lol ,, I'll will have to use a lighter shade of tan for the exposed brick as these places are all in afghanistan so everything pretty looks the same .the weathering will do all the changes needed to get the colours right

Cheers
Phill

Thanks for that Robert ...I've put quite a few 7.62 x 51 in quite a few buildings in my time in the army ( L7A1 gunner ) ok never had the time to look at the results but i do remember the large amount of dust made from the rounds impacting the walls ,,its time like this i wish i had takin some pics of the damage but nope ,,no chance of that lol