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Old 10-16-2018, 03:29 PM
John Wagenseil John Wagenseil is offline
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Tasty rivets, canon balls or stones.

For a dollar or two, at Asian food stores, you can buy a life time supply of model rivets, which can also be used as canon balls for small scale sailing ships, or as river stones for dioramas.

And they are tasty.
A small bag of mustard seeds and of poppy seeds provides a supply of tiny spheroids that can be used as rivet heads, canon balls, stones or ground cover depending on the scale of the model.
After finishing the model, if you have left overs, the poppy seeds can be sprinkled on pastries, and the mustard seeds ground up and added to meat or vegetable dishes.
Dried lentils and other peas (dal) can be used as paving or cobble stones, or cooked with chopped carrots and onions to make a nice side dish.


Also take a look at the pasta at your regular food market. Pasta comes in a variety of interesting structural shapes and is good served with clam and pesto sauce, or butter sauce lightly seasoned with pepper and a little olive oil.
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Old 10-17-2018, 07:17 AM
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rockpaperscissor rockpaperscissor is offline
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Food for thought. When I was a boy, a friend of mine used spent coffee grounds for dirt on his train layout. Smelled delicious.
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Old 10-17-2018, 09:00 AM
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My friend Burt Goldstein would frequently use lengths of uncooked spaghetti when building his paper ship models. Fellow members of the Ship Modelers Association would semi-teasingly inquire which parts were paper or pasta when he brought his latest model to their meetings.

That said, when using food products or spices you should take steps to render them unpalatable to foraging insects. Paint, varnish or other similar coatings should suffice. Years ago, a local model train store had a layout with an orchard. One of the employees found the perfect HO scale oranges among cake decorating supplies and painstakingly glued each tiny orb onto the branches. When he arrived to open the shop the following morning, he saw a long line of miniature oranges marching down the aisle and under the rear door. The ants realized that these "fruit" were mostly sugar, and by the time the store opened they had industrially "harvested" every single one.

David T. Okamura
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Old 10-17-2018, 09:09 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by John Wagenseil View Post
For a dollar or two, at Asian food stores, you can buy a life time supply of model rivets, which can also be used as canon balls for small scale sailing ships, or as river stones for dioramas.

And they are tasty.
A small bag of mustard seeds and of poppy seeds provides a supply of tiny spheroids that can be used as rivet heads, canon balls, stones or ground cover depending on the scale of the model.
After finishing the model, if you have left overs, the poppy seeds can be sprinkled on pastries, and the mustard seeds ground up and added to meat or vegetable dishes.
Dried lentils and other peas (dal) can be used as paving or cobble stones, or cooked with chopped carrots and onions to make a nice side dish.


Also take a look at the pasta at your regular food market. Pasta comes in a variety of interesting structural shapes and is good served with clam and pesto sauce, or butter sauce lightly seasoned with pepper and a little olive oil.
Agreed. Works great!

In addition to seeds and pasta, I'm not above using cake decorating candies treated with a bit of Krylon. Non-faceted sequins make great portholes and dish antenna with a spot of paint and glue too!
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Old 10-17-2018, 10:58 AM
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CMDRTED CMDRTED is offline
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also sesame seeds make great 1/72-176 scale canteens for figures. also the small miniature Chiclets make great sandbags in the same scale. you soak the candy covering off and when still pliable impress your wifes nylon imprint to give it scale texture. I'm told the full size Chiclets work as well for larger scale sandbags also.
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Old 10-17-2018, 11:20 AM
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When I was a teenager, many years ago, I used the hard alphabet noodles to put a name on a model ship made of paper and cardboard.

The name soon disappeared having been eaten by some insect.
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Old 10-17-2018, 11:38 PM
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Kevin WS Kevin WS is offline
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The spent coffee grounds are a great idea. I have used tea for vegetation.
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Old 10-18-2018, 07:22 AM
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airdave airdave is offline
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Great.. I have Mice.
And in the past, I have found small hordes of food items hidden under and around my paper models.

So now...if I incorporate food into my model work,
they can just eat the models too!
Great.
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