tusks - how to make

[madd0ct0r]

eyup,

I'm needing to put together some mammoth type tusks for a demon engine I'm working on.

they're going to need to be roughly 3cm long. Anybody have any good ideas for how to make them?

(i'm considering greenstuff, but i'm worried they'll be too fragile, and i'm not sure I could get a smooth taper if there's a prebent core of wire.)

[Clang]

You could try putting some thick sprue in boiling for a few minutes then gently bending it, then (once cold) carving it down to a tusk shape.

Or beg/buy some spare tusks from an ogre player?

[madd0ct0r]

maybe i'l have better luck lathing down the sprue to get the taper, then boiling it for the bends?

[chromedog]

Procreate or Miliput for the tusks would work better than GS.
They set harder.

Rolling out a tapering cone shape isn't hard to do, and as it starts to firm up, you could roll it into the curve you want.

[Verm1s]

In my experience procreate doesn't cure a whole lot harder than green stuff, but, I think the slight flexibility makes them less fragile than Maddoctor might think.

For rigidity, stuff like magic sculp, apoxie sculpt and cold clay are some of the ones to go for. The extra hardness comes with extra brittleness, though. Depends on how long and thin you roll the stuff. Milliput is stronger, especially the premium, finer-grade types. (I once made a 1cm-thick disc of milliput superfine white to break up for rubble, and could only dent it after whacking it hard with a pin hammer)

You can also affect it by adding in more or less green stuff or procreate (see the link below). Besides reducing the brittleness a little bit, it'll also keep the crumbly/grainy/clay texture of the uncured 'rigid' putties together, making them less messy and easier to roll.

If you want to go with the prebent wire method, rigid putties - even with a bit of GS mixed in - are much easier to carve and sand smooth after curing.

Rolling out a tapering cone shape isn't hard to do, and as it starts to firm up, you could roll it into the curve you want.

Ayup. I once wrote up a very basic Epic Trygon conversion tutorial, here. It involves rolling out and curling a crude tail, but the principle's exactly the same.