The Tool Bin

(note nearly everything I recommend on this page will take a finger off in less than a minute, cause your lungs to bleed, or give you third degree burns.  Tools are dangerous if you don't pay attention to them.  Trust a guy who used to work in a woodshop.  Wear goggles.  Wear gloves.  Work in ventilated areas.  Most of all, PAY ATTENTION)

In order to make scenery you may need any/all of the following:

Tin Snips:  If you've ever said to yourself, "man, I wish I had scissors that would cut through this," then what you've basically asked for are tin snips.  They're scissors....that will cut through metal.  You can buy them at any half way decent hardware store.  Two warnings:  chances are at some point, you're going to use these for their intended purpose:  cutting metal.  When you do this you will basically be creating razor sharp strips of sheet metal with little "teeth"  kind of like a flimsy knife.  BE CAREFUL.   Second, it's easy to forget that the reason tin snips can cut through metal is because of their strength.  If you accidentally catch yourselves in these, you'll lose a finger.

The Dremel:  yes, but what kind.  IT DOESN'T MATTER!  YOU NEED A DREMEL!  There is nothing more integral to the hobby of miniaturized wargaming than a dremel.  You know all those tips they give you about using a pin vise and blah blah blah?  What they're really saying is buy a Dremel.  For those of you who don't know, use google.  There's really too much for me to list it all here.  The four most common tools I use with my Dremel are the drills (obviously), the drum sander (which rocks), the cutting wheels (which will sand on the flat side), and the cutting bit (which on my Dremel has to be straight up and down or it slips its....sleeve (can't think of the word at the moment)).  In any case, still be careful.  Basically, it's a drill, so gloves and goggles.  Dremels are available at any hardware store, Walmart, or train model store (and the last has the best kinds of bits).

Hot Knife (hacksaw)-  There are two varieties of hot knife that you will need.  The first is the hot knife that looks like a hacksaw.  This one is kind of hard to find.  You need a pretty good train hobby store.  It comes with a guide that I've never got to work.  I would forego buying it if you can.  What these people really need is a way you can clamp the thing down and turn the tool into a table hot knife, but I'm dreaming and I know it.  The wire is flimsy, it bends, and there's no such thing as a straight cut.  If there were, you'd build everything out of styrafoam.  In any case, hot knives get hot when you press the on button so be aware of where that wire is, but more importantly, they vaporize styrafoam which is dangerous to your lungs.  Work in a place that has pretty good ventilation.  This is less true for the hacksaw version of the hot knife, but still true.

One important feature of this kind of hack knife:  if you shake the blade slightly while you cut, it will create an interesting texture.  This is a good way to make hillsides look rough.  I have an example of this here.

Hot Knife (wood burner).  The hot knife for wood burner is like an Xacto blade with a heated tip.  Strangely, the blade is about the least reliable tip you can screw into the thing.  The soldering iron, the little wedge, and well...anything other than the blade works much better. Where the hacksaw vaporizes styrafoam, this thing melts it.  This is really good if you're looking to supply textrue to styrafoam.  I do not recommend doing much work with this.  It's sloppy and downright toxic.  It sends up plumes of stryafoam smoke that are incredibly bad to breath.  Were that the blade was better, this would be my tool of choice, but generally it's the base (and not the tip) of the blade that heats up.  This means that the whole thing gets covered with slick melted styrafoam which dries to the consistency of hard plastic and only goes away when the blade gets hot again.  Plus, down by the base, the styrafoam gets dangerously close to the heating element that puts 1/2" wide trenches in the styrafoam from about an inch range....so, kind of not really useful for just cutting.  Anyway, experiment, and even more than usual...ventilate.

In reference to the wood burning version of the hot knife, I should probably add that there are all kinds of designs one can get to burn into the wood including letters and numbers.  I don't know.  I've never used them, but nonetheless, it bears some mention in case you want to experiment with using the hot knife for burning symbols into things.  If it works, let me know.