Once you’ve taken up scratch building for your games you find your eyes are always open for materials you can hack into a model. One common material is the humble wooden coffee stirrer from one of those fashionable coffee chains you find in just about every corner of the land. These stirrers are perfect for planking in the larger scales, and can even be split for smaller scales. For those who like variety in the width of their planking, like you might find in a rough fence, if you visit different chains you’ll find they have different lengths and widths.
Of course it won’t be long before you’re on the rocky road of criminality – it all starts with you taking a dozen or so extra stirrers with your skinny latte expenso and ends up with you grabbing handfuls of the things and furtively stuffing them into your pockets, because you’ve choosen to make a few metres of trench tiles. This may lead to being caught, banned from premises or even sent to prison.
Worry not! I’ve found that wholesalers or cash ‘n’ carry depots such as Booker sell these in boxes of one thousand for around £2. Deffo worth considering, especially if you’re spending more than that in visiting a coffee shop to pick up a few sticks for “free”.