HOW TO MAKE YOUR OWN TERRAIN:
Oil Storage Tank

• butter-cookie tin
• posterboard
• various sizes and types of tubing
• balsa strips
• paint
• glue

1. Get a big butter-cookie tin (you know, the danish ones...).
2. Cut out a piece of poster-board roughly square to fit the tin, leaving enough extra around the sides for what you plan to build around it.
3. Some tins have lids that bulge out a little, these most resemble the real thing, but flat ones work also. When you glue the tin to the posterboard, you can either glue it on upside down and live with the narrowing at the bottom, or rightside up with the lid on... I tend to save the lids for other projectswhen they aren't the nice bulged ones, but that's just me.
4. Everything else from here is gravy. You could paint the thing grey now and be done with it... but that'd be a waste of time.... some ideas for detailing the model...

Tubes and Pipes: Tanks have pipes coming out the sides, tubes running up the side and entering the roof, and all sorts of places, and generally lots of tubes all over. You can even get away with an absurd number of tubes, especially little ones, they ventillate the heck out of some of those things. (something else to consider is painting pipes which enter the tank white to simulate a cold-storage product like liquid ammonia or nitrogen, which is moved cold and causes condensation to freeze on the pipes).

Ladders and Catwalks: Small tubes, balsa strips, and pieces of card can be used to build the various framework ladders and catwalks around the tanks. Most large oil drums will just have a single ladder up one side, but hey, that's dull old reality. The key here is to maintain a basic, skeletal scafold look. You could run a catwalk over the top, some actual tanks have a hand-rail and walkway from the side ladder to the center of the roof, where sampling is done. Another possibility is a walkway around the drum.

Lightning Rods: Don't forget the lightning rod! A nice length of heavy wire bolted to one side with another wire running into the ground.

Damage: Don't forget, this is battlefield decoration... a few stray bullets and you've got a leaking drum. Leaks are easy to simulate, just get your bottle of glue and squirt a drop onto the side, letting excess run down a bit. Paint it with enamel black (or hey, maybe it's just not a well-regulated plant.)

Sheets: The skin of a tank is welded plates of sheet metal, while good painting can simulate this, index cards glued onto the sides at intervals really get the point across.

Painting: When you paint this thing, don't make it look shiney new, it's just no fun. Grey and white are good base colors, but light blue and even greens are not wholly uncommon. Use several washes to build up a worn look. Multiple color layers can even be simulated with a varied base in a small section, followed by heavy washing of the overall base color. Rust is a must. Either use Citadel's chestnut ink, or a mixture of orange and brown paint. Either way, you'll want a good wash, not too thick, but enough to stand out well. This rust wash is not applied overall, but rather used for slight detailing. Using a liner brush, you can put on rust lines to create the illusion of sections in the sheet-metal skin. also, you can simulate rivets and cracks. At useful place like tube entrances or natural dents in the can, drop nice drip-lines down to the base. The rust is the most important detail step. other details can include things like logos and caution signs, both best put on about halfway through the washing steps. The base looks well painted up to simulate mud, sickly grass, and spilt product.

When making Storage Tanks for Space Marine scale (or similar) games, I find it best to use Tuna Fish or Cat Food cans, well washed. When adding details to these, the basic idea is the same, though the scale is much smaller. I tend to use toothpicks for much of the ladder and scaffold work, and coffee stirring straws for piping.

• plumbing end cap (PVC are much lighter)

Go to a large hardware store, Lowe's and the like, go to the plumbing section, and find the end caps. For Warhammer 40k, a 4-inch endcap is a huge oil tank. The smaller caps for the smaller scales, of course. Glue it down and paint. To paint, I just shot a good coat or two of automotive primer on it and painted away, then a matte (it's kinda peeling now). I glued it down to a piece of matt board and painted the matt board.

End caps may get expensive, but they work just great.