Waaaay back in an early NJC project, Chief used greenstuff to make the scaly texture on Killer Croc. This looked painstaking and tedious to me. I got the idea that maybe a person could use leather stamping tools to create a repeated pattern easily. I went hunting for such tools out on eBay and discovered that they are NOT cheap.

Today I ran across this instructable on 3D Printing your own leather stamping tools:

I believe this is now in the realm of possibility!

thoughts?

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This would be easily well within reason to do. A 3D printer would print whatever texture you laid out and then you could do as the indestructible shows. There are people even printing stencils to ink stamp logos and all sorts of things. If you can think it up, there's a way to make it happen with a 3D printer. Resolution is still a factor, and you might need to sand and clean up the prints. That's not a big deal though.

http://www.shapeways.com/blog/archives/ ... Sugru.html

You don't even really need to go through Shapeways if you have your own printer. If you don't, it shouldn't cost much through them, or someone with a printer.

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Might check your local libraries and see if they might have one to use... Denver Public Library has two where people send in a design and the library prints the object for FREE and then emails you when its ready to be picked up... Aurora Public Library (suburb of Denver) has a few in their libraries as well..

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Step away from leather stamping and look into CERAMICS tools. They are not as expensive and there are quite a few out there for scale designs.

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That's why I use a craft woodburner. There are various styled tips, and I can achieve everything from fur to woodgrain to stippled to eventually scaled (I am in the process of cutting the tip of a dovetail tipped tip, hard to do with brass, but not impossible).

My cat gal is totally covered in textured fur thanks to the fine needle tip of my woodburner. I have a Dryad I hope to get done today or tomorrow much the same way.

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