Cheap Plastic Card

Referred to in all articles by White Dwarf which refer to the building of scenery and the modification of vehicles, plastic card is a legendary material with which it would seem possible to build your own land raiders, and not just 28 mm scale.  Big honkin Land Raiders which you sit in your yard to intimidate noisy neighbors and their unruly children.  But what the hell is plastic card anyway?

Well, if you're like me, you figured that the answer to that was rather simple:  card made of plastic.  Like cardboard, only made out of plastic rather than...board.  But now go on that quest.  Go looking.  Seriously, stop reading and go looking for these mythical sheets of plastic that you can use to build every thing in the miniaturized universe.  I'll wait.

What?  They don't exist.  No.  That's not exactly true.  If you find a good model railroad shop, you can find little bits of plastic.  They cost about five dollars for a piece that's a foot long and four inches wide.  You're better off buying the land raider kit.

The truth is that plasticard, or plastic card, or whatever, is a rip off, but what are you going to do.  Balsa wood is cheaper, sure, but balsa wood has the undeniable problem that no matter what you do with it, it still looks like wood.

What you need is a sheet of plastic that's relatively thin and comes cheap in sheets of about four feet by four feet.  Hmmmm.....

Wait for it...You know those sheets of plastic that they use to cover florescent lights in buildings.  Yeah, they sell those for about $3 at Home Depot.  You can even buy them with textures.  Most are textured on one side, smooth on the other.  There about double the thickness of plastic card, but honestly, I haven't really seen a problem with the stuff so far.

How do you cut it?  Well, there's generally a really handy (and amazingly sharp) knife that they make just for the purpose hanging right next to the sheets of stuff.  If you have a dremel you can use that instead. The rotary wheel pretty much makes burs, but they're melted thin by the whirring and are easy to break off without a problem.  You can, with many of the sheets, cut them with tin snips the way you'd cut paper with scissors.

So....that's one major secret for you.