This may be a funny question but would (play doe) work for making sandbags my kids left some play doe out it dried and got hard I know milliput works but this would be a really cheap way to make alot of sanbags. Or what about modeling clay. Just a thought.

The stuff my kids have left out has dried out - bad news was it cracked. I would stay away (personally).
If milli. is expensive, try sculpy - its a baking clay you can get at Michaels or ACMore. Its about 60 cents for a small block. Its very nice to work with.

Good point now that I think of it it might have been cracked Ill try sculpy.

Threw this togther real quick, hope the detail comes out.. These sand bags were made with sculpey.. I wasnt real concerned with uniformity of size since i use them more for detail pieces, than alone in a diorama.. I pressed the unbaked sculpey to shape by hand, pinched the end to make the end of the tied bag and then twisted a toothpick into the pinched end to make it rough..The sculpey will pick up your fingerprints but the pattern rather adds to the texture of the bag.. Some of the bags i went ahead and stacked before baking.. Sometimes hard to get the single bags to stack realistically after they are baked.... You can get quite a few bags out of a single small cube of scupley.. and if you make one that doesnt look right before baking, just squish it and start over

I use a self-hardening clay made by "Marblex" and is available anywhere arts and crafts are sold. A brick (for lack of a better term) in a box will last you quite sometime. It hardens like a rock, will take a cloth 'imprint' for texture, glues up with white glue and takes acrylic paints perfectly. I've seen it available in gray and red. Non-Toxic.

I first make the bag, press in the texture, position it and then I'll glue a little flattened out 'nub' (creased up with a scribbing tool) for the opening and then use sewing thread to 'tie it' closed. Conforms nicely to uneven surfaces.

For 1/35th scale, I roll a length out to about 3/16" (8.7mm) in diameter and cut the lengths to about 5/8" (16mm) long increments. (You might want to experiment with those dimensions, but it's close enough for me.) It gets kind of messy and flakey when it dries on your hands/fingers/shirt/pants, just keep a damp paper towel handy.

I just finished making approximately 300 for my current project, altho a few years ago I put an M110 8" SPH in a firing position (similiar to Verlinden's pre-formed) and that required 1,286 (but who's counting) pressed out sand bags. Repititious but what the hey. You do a couple hundred a night when you absolutely don't feel like doing anything else. #:-) Well worth it IMHO.

try using filler (I don't know if in english is corect, is that regulary used to seal windows), is cheap easy to use, easy to paintdry in 48 hours and don't crack after

Thanks for tutoring guys this will help.

hi pfc, thanks for the tip, it's a lot cheaper than modeling putty or miliput.

Laurie

The self-hardening (or air hardening) clays all shrink when dry. Do not use them over any type of armature like screen, etc. or they will crack and break, and break your heart, too, if you tried it as many times as I did for a thatched roof. I did get lots of rubble though. Ha, ha. It costed a great deal of time and money, but isn't that how we learn?

Sealhead

…another option is A&B Putty or like on this Sherman

I made the sandbags by folding clear tissue paper to the correct scale width, then cutting the bags to the appropriate length ( plus some extra for the folded end) glue one end losed with white glue, filled with real fine dirt andthen tied offthe other end with fine thread. Time consuming, but very cheap. You can decide if the time was worth it or not.

John
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