Uses for Sprue Frames

[ShinyRhino]

Years ago I used to mail all mine to a company in Massachusetts that recycled them while emptying the mentally handicapped. The business went under.

 

I then just tossed them in the comingled municipal recycling. But then we moved and the town we're in no longer takes anything but #2 plastics due to the cutoff of plastic scrap exports to China. So now they go in the trash.

 

It's not worth my time to chop up sprues for basing, since I can walk outside and have a lifetime supply of sand and rock right in my driveway. I bought an old meat grinder once to try making rubble for terrain, but all it did was jam up.

[klisof]

I cut lengths off to use for mixing pots of paint, this can do a better job than just shaking for some paints. Particularly if you are rehydrating a pot that's almost dried out.

Sometimes I use them to make frames to hold models or parts when I am spraying on basecoats.

 

But the main use is to hold spare bits. Its a bad habit but I'm kind of lazy about cutting spare parts off the sprue so have a few cupboards of spare bits still on mostly empty sprues. I really should clip them all off and organise them in pots, i would save a ton of space.

[leinglo]

I never throw my sprues away (and have predictably accumulated a rather sizable stockpile of them). The way I see it, you just never know when you might need a bit of scrap plastic for something.

 

Sprues for some of the more unusual plastics bits should be particularly treasured. For instance, the flamer and blast templates for the old Dark Vengeance boxed set were made of clear green plastic, and came on a sprue of the same material. I ended up having the idea to cut small lengths of the sprue off, carve and file them down and into shape, and made lightsaber blades for my librarian's force swords

 

I've been using them for practice painting and testing colors.

That right there is an especially practical use for sprue bits. I use them for paint testing as well.

[Arkhanist]

In addition to testing paint schemes, I've used some sprue melted with tamiya extra thin (my goto poly cement) to make a self levelling liquid plastic gap filler for crevices bigger than tamiya extra thin can handle on its own. Don't need much sprue, but it's something. Got the idea from here:

 

[Jukkiz]

U sometimes make "floor/basecovers" out of certain kind of sprues