"How Do You Sculpt Coin Piles?" Topic

I'm trying my hand at sculpting and was wondering how treasure piles of coins are done? Can anyone give me some pointers? Thanks for your help! :)

Years ago I made a set of rooms covered in piles of coins by using a small brass rod with a plastic rod that just fit down it as a plunger. I would just jab the rod into some putty and then use the plunger to ooze out a tiny bit and cut it off – instant coin.

An ersatz solution but I was able to cover quite a large area rather quickly.

If you have a six-tip rotating leather punch, you could use the smallest tip with thin plasticard to make dozens of small coins in short order. Make the body of the pile out of green stuff or Sculpy, then coat it with glue and dredge it through the plastic discs. Prime, paint, and Bob's your uncle.

Examples of the punch I'm thinking of:

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If you check the beads aisle at the local craft store, they might have plastic confetti in a size that works for your scale, too.

Get a bit of brass tubing from the model shop with a coin-sized internal hole.

With fine file or sandpaper reduce the width of the tube walls at the point.

Make a mound of putty, and with the tube (now a tool) push it into the putty to make a series of coin shapes. Work from the outside in toward the high point of the mound.

Make sure the tool is well lubricated at it can tend to clog, it may well clog anyway so have a pin or similar at hand to de-foul the tool.

Regards

David F Brown

I made a pile of gold for a dragon figure. I cheated and used train ballast painted gold. Looks close enough.

Round glitter is available in silver and gold. You can generally find it in craft stores and sometimes even big box stores (I found it in Walmart for example). With coin-sized glitter, you can make mounds of pretty much any material (even hot glue!) and just cover the piles.

There's an excellent article at Reaper where they use this technique. Check it out here: reapermini.com/TheCraft/33

Cheers!

Hole punch (as javelin98 said above)
Putty rolled into a tube of right diameter, cut coins to size
Plastic Rod of right diameter, cut coins to size

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here is the reaper article using glitter
reapermini.com/Thecraft/33

And another one use putty
reapermini.com/TheCraft/30

I made a pile of gold for a dragon figure. I cheated and used train ballast painted gold. Looks close enough.

I figured one could take a small cast pile of rubble, even figure base made to look like same. I should look at casters for something about right.

If you got one with recognizable bricks, painted gold, could be gold bars. Anything recognizably rock, ink-painted green to be emerald, red to be ruby, etc. ;->=

Not that I've ever tried it.

Thanks to Randall and haywire for the Craft 33 article; I shall immediately show it to those far more gifted than I!

Doug

JoAnn's fabric store, in the craft section, small metal discs.

I used the Reaper tutorial but I changed it up a bit. I used gold colored Sculpy, topped by gold glitter glue and then the gold round glitter. I also used some larger sized beads that looked like silver bowls and such. Turned out pretty well.

If you build plastic model kits, you will often have the left-over sprue from the cast model parts.

Find a nice round sprue, lay it flat on a cutting board, and carefully slice off individual disks (coins) with a sharp craft knife.

Little lump of clay covered with home made confetti using the leatherpunch technique above on cardstock.