Monday, May 12, 2014

Pipe Fittings From Wire

So I had this idea, that one could make piping for terrain objects to give them more life.

I picked up some 14 gage solid wire in white, you can use other colors but I just thought white would work for this project. You can also buy this kind of wire by the foot at most hardware stores.


I wanted my PVC pipe caps to look more like storage tanks then just plain old painted lumps on the table. using the two caps I want to use, on uncut Plexiglas to determine the size of the base then marked it out plus the placement of the caps so I have a starting point to work from


I then hand drilled the holes to receive the wire in the first cap and drilled matching holes in the base.

  
I then used a wire striping tool to strip the wire first (DO NOT TOSS THIS  AWAY), only doing this to a section of wire that I need going about this a little at a time.

I then bend the wire making an elbow as to where the wire will be inserted in to the cap, and then dry fit it to the base trimming of any extra wire to fit.

 
Now I take the wire covering that I striped away and cut it into little sections with an X-acto knife



 
I then slide these tiny sections back on to the wire to the locations that I feel to look right.

 
 
I repeat this process working from one end to the other everything is dry fitted until I have everything in place then I will glue it all down.

 
So here's how it looks so far with a figure.
I will glue other little bits and pieces to add more life to this, small squares for electrical boxes and smaller gage wire as electrical conduit, using a hole punch and some plastic stock sheeting I'll make a couple of access covers, then with a  very small hole punch, I'll punch out a few smaller disks, and they will go around the edges of the covers to give it more of a bolts or rivets look.

6 comments:

  1. Great piece of scratchbuilt scenery!

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  2. Now this is a tip I can REALLY use- great idea!

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  3. Very clever idea. I like the look you're getting with the pipes.

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  4. Thank you, I will post more when I can, I am getting ready to move to a new house so it might be a short while before I can get back to this.

    The plus side of the move is I will have a gaming room for all my stuff and I will not have to set up and take down every time I want to do something

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  5. I like your article about PIPE Fittings. This is really nice.

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