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Other materials:

It occurs to me that since some of you will think of this anyway, I want to be sure to get some words of warning in.

Aluminum: If you're prepared to be VERY careful, cut disks out of an aluminum soda or beer can. You might even get lucky with just taking the center out of the bottom of the can and get a rounded recessed rim that way - especially if the model you're making can be sized up enough that you can use the whole bottom of the can or most of it - look at the bottoms of such cans - some have bodacious shapes for this purpose. I had to hesitate before recommending that - because there's no way I can tell you how careful you need to be. If you have no sheet metal experience, you need to become aware that it can be more dangerous than you can believe. Sooner or later that cut edge WILL get you. How badly you injure yourself will depend on how careful you are at EVERY motion or action around cutting sheet metal or working with the resulting pieces.

It should also be mentioned that an aluminum to paper joint should have an added paper piece that will join between tabs paper to paper. To join aluminum to aluminum, solder it or get the specialized glue for metals. You may have luck if you make the glue tabs on the disks - lots of them - rather than on the other piece to be made, the recess surface - and when they are bent up the cylinder is put inside them and a band of paper is put on around the tabs, pulled tight and joined to itself. All of which tells you how much I trust Elmer's on aluminum.

Plastic, especially in this case the bottoms of plastic bottles: Some fantastic shapes there. Plastic is better for paint than either paper or aluminum. I don't recommend aluminum foil - it will look like aluminum foil - but aluminized Mylar can be good - look at the inside surface of your potato chip bag. This can just be laminated on, probably after the paper part is made and formed. You might have luck with socalled "rubber cement". Shiny side may not glue well.

The whole topic of the use of other materials than paper in the craft of paper modeling is perhaps a bit controversial. I'm not concerned about that. But I am concerned with "doing justice" to any topic. For the moment let's just say that I very seldom use any other material than paper, then probably only wood. But I am well aware that there are many others who will use any material that comes to hand. (I will as well, on a different level of modeling. If I would be building a plastic kit model, I would use literally anything and everything. Papercraft is a specialty form of modeling, and although I would expect considerable overlap, I think there are many who think paper crafters should stick mostly to paper.)

So there will be an article just on this non-paper topic. But I don't have time right now. Hit your "Back" button, or one of these:

Contact Paper Model Zero: papermodel0@lycos.com

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