Do you have a better way? I have a hard time believing it get's any simpler than this technique but I'd be happy to be proven wrong! I forgot to mention the method of just crushing and moving them in your hands. That also works for small batches, but it rarely gives me as much of an effect as I'd like. PS: After some searching it was a TCG member named James Mikulski that posted this idea. Thanks James! PROXXON HOTWIRE CUTTER (As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases) (USA) amzn.to/2lVNvEM (Canada) amzn.to/2pWazXF GUIDER PRO FROM www.shiftinglands.com

James Mikulski. I was the one who posted in tabletop crafters guild

Managed to cut about a million bricks in one evening, such a cool technique and video!

Me: It's probably gonna need some specific equipment that I'm not gonna bu- Black Magic Craft: *R O C K S*

As a CNC Machinist, I can tell you that this is the same way that we deburr and round sharp corners off of small part like screws, bushings and other smaller sized pieces. All we do is put a bunch of the parts into a motorized tumbler with a grade of rocks (literally) and a little while later, presto.

My parents got me a rock polisher / tumbler when I was a kid. I hope to God that they still have it.

Your videos are helping new crafters years later. Great Channel. Thank you.

This is brilliant! I love the TGC, but sometimes it can be *so* easy to miss great ideas like this. So thank you James for initially sharing this idea, and thank you BMC for spreading the word!

Genius. love the ingenuity that your channel provides. Makes the grind of building maquettes less painful and more pleasurable. Styrofoam is so malleable.

I finished my first dungeon tile a few moments ago! Thank you for every technique and tutorial you have, even though ive only made one tile, because of your videos i feel like a master at it!

I just recently started watching your channel and picked up some XPS foam today. Bricks for modular dungeon walls will be my first familiarizing project. I was a little intimidated by foam terrain. Your builds have convinced me to try it out. Thanks for all of the videos!

I started to make dugeon tiles a few weeks ago and by now I have 2 9×9 4 4×4 9 3×3 and a couple small stokes and 3 dugeon stakers I used your video and it was easy tank you and keep doing what your doing

Awesome technique! Can't wait to try it! And looking forward to that advanced brick painting video!!

Its a year later & I finally tried the tumbling method of making foam bricks - You have probable tried this, but, I added some acrylic paint & a little water, to the tumble can - I now have aged colored bricks - thanks for sharing this method.

I made a million bricks, and I just put them in a box with a big textured rock. Shook it for about 5 minutes, and it rounded all the edges nicely! I approve of this technique.

This is so awesome! We’re just now making your dice tower and this technique will come in so handy. Brilliant as usual!

Really been enjoying your channel buddy. My brother and I just started building foam sets and your videos are Extremely helpful.

Another great video.And as i saw is James Mikulski's technique so well done to both of you ;)

Sweet. Thanks❤ Can't wait to see the paint next week

DUDE !! This is awesome. I love making things with individual bricks. This will be my go to for making bricks from now on.

Wow, that's ingenious! Thanks for sharing.

I have to say this made it a lot easier. When I went outside to get rocks I realized living in a concrete jungle made it a bit more difficult to find actual rocks, however there were tons of broken concrete and pieces of mortar around. This was actually a boon. I grabbed them up and used them. They textured the bricks wonderfully, I may have had to shake the can a bit more but there was an added bonus. All of the mortar "rocks" start breaking up as did the concrete. I realized this was actually a good thing. After dumping out the can and picking the "rocks" up and putting them back in the can and putting the bricks in the container I use to hold textured bricks I was left with a mess where I dumped the can. I grabbed another container and swept it off of my work surface. The consistency of the mess was ideal for flocking ground on mini bases and around the walls. Sort of a two for one texturing method. Thanks for sharing this trick so much time saved.

My daughter has a kids toy for polishing stones, basically a small toy mains power cement mixer, I'm totally stealing it for this!

A brilliant idea, genius in its simplicity. It is something I would never have thought of myself.

Oh this is huge for me! Possibly the best craft tip ever

Haha amazing. I didn't expect the edges of the bricks to be smoothed out as well as they are!

Dude! I was thinking of this technique a couple of weeks ago when I was making two Dice Towers for some kids at our local game store. My thoughts were that the foam wouldn't stand up to the rocks...and therefore never tied. LESSON LEARNED! Nothing ventured, nothing gained. Thanks for this and all the other videos you do. You make this Canadian proud.

Damn... I fell in love with your technic of making stones for walls and am building a castle because of that right now. Need a ton of stones of course and I'm halfway through... When the edges were to sharp (when I cut stones I needed for certain edges) I simply rolled them in my fingers, that softens the edges too. Now I will definetely try this out! Thanks for sharing. If you're interested I'll send you some pictures of the castle once its done :)

Yup! Used it. Nailed it. Love it!. I've seen some of your other episodes with these broke and I was thinking, nah! I made a bunch and built a multi purpose tower this am. Freakin awesome!

Genius! And perfect timing, because I'm about to need a ton.

Absolutely, 1000%, PURE GENIUS!!!

Love this creation. Keep it up!

Pretty cool idea, something to try out when I get going along with just about everything else you've posted....I think I'm hooked.

Yes, Thanks James Mikulski. Great idea.

Omg this is brilliant! I have a huge bag of bricks I've been filing down individually. Plastic container may keep down the noise. I do all my crafting after everyone is sleeping.

Fantastic! I’ll be using many of your techniques to make gingerbread houses with my students. 🤩

Omg I can't wait to try this... I've been putting off a big build because I couldn't work myself up to making all the stone bricks

I really like that it textures all sides of the bricks. I got about halfway through my tower before I realized I wasn't paying attention and had more than half of my bricks on backwards.

Using a similar idea I also paint groups of blocks before using them, put a bit of water in a jar with some paint, throw in a handful of the foam bricks after doing the rock texture of course and shake them up with the paint, put them on a screen to dry. Do this with several hand fulls using different colors and you can use them pre-painted. Then I Mod Pog them with the clear Mod Pog, then Black Wash, and finally a spray of MinWax Poly.

Thanks my friend i will be using this .

I just did a test batch. I gave the can to my toddler and let him go crazy shaking it. Worked out great!

Another option is to use a heat gun or lightly spray a solvent. Edges naturally get beveled because they have more surface area exposed and the flat surface gets pitted and uneven as it melts. Not as simple up front, but gets good, fast results with some practice and you can see the effect as you go. You can also adjust your technique with finer/courser sprays, concentrated/dissolved solvent, higher/lower heat, distance, more/less time, etc for more diverse results.

After filing down hundreds upon hundreds of brick edges I am over it. Definitely going to do this tomorrow!

You should build a library! I would love to see your interpretation on that in a medieval setting.

Oh, that's cool. Thanks for sharing!

can't wait to try this one!

That was awesome!Thanks mate!

AWESOME.

Nice work. Good idea. I will use this on my next build.

Bleeping Awesome! Thank you!

love the idea of advanced brick technique

Great simple to the point tutorial. Im a newbe to this craft. Im fascinated by it. Im in the, "watching tutorials" stage. If played around a little and im anxious to start a real project soon. I just need to gain a little more understanding of the craft. Im currently checking out this channel . loved this tutorial!. Good job!

Oh yeah I remember seeing this on the group page. Seems so obvious now that I see it work

That's amazing!

Cheap rock tumbler from Amazon.com would do the trick. Smooth (polished) rocks will give a beveled edge to the foam with little to no texture, sharp rocks will do both. Can do bigger bricks in it and leave it on for half an hour to get some amazing bricks for ruins. Keep em comin!!

Bloody brilliant mate ... nice one! Subscribed ...

Awesome!

Great idea, thanks!

Great tip, ty for the post. 😊

Men, I waching you from Russia, you make great videos. It's realy helpful. Waiting paint wall video!

Thanks for the easy tutorial!

Outstanding! Subbed.

I'm Brazilian and I love your videos, Brazil does not give much importance to the dnd, so searching the English content I found your channel, I watched 60% of all the videos and I'm wanting 100%, congratulations

Awesome!!! Greetings from México!

That is rather cunning and looks awesome

I sat here before the video thinking: how? Brilliant technique. It made me think of a timesaver on the bricklaying end: you could try making 3-brick registers but you're only scoring/hand-drawing 2 mortar lines on each 3-brick strip. Do the bucket technique as normal with these strips, and these half-n-half registers could be for quickly building walls from the ground up... save your individual bricks for ends and accents. Either way these look perfect.

Very nice!

Love your channel. I would probably try placing a motor on the outside of the coffee can and make it into a tumbler.

Ha! Now this is revealed, after I finished my ruined modular walls! Excellent idea!

Another use for my hobby powred rock tumblers lol. I picked up a couple of the jewelry kids hobby tumblers over 2 decades ago from charity shops (goodwill/thrift for you USA folks) nice 1970s hobby versions. Guess I can use those to make nice foam bricks too as well as polish stones and pebbles :-)

Just made a bunch of bricks with only a little texture. WIll definitely be finishing them off with this.

That is freaking awesome.

have you thought of using a hobby sized rock tumbler . . . I will try it out and get back to you . . . great show, learn lots from it, thanks

thats a brill idea.will defo use

great idea!

Awesome will have to give it a go sometime. I Do it the ancient way which stands as a rite of passage for all model makers lol but whynot try something new!? Thanks man.😎

you could probably use a rock tumbler to do this as well. One of the slow rotating ones better for foam than the vibrating kind.

No fucking way!!!! This IS a game changer! Thank you for sharing this and kudos to the person who came up with it! *still shaking head at how ridiculously simple this is*

This is BRILLIANT....

Looks great. That is actually same principle used for concrete blocks for the terrace. Let’s see son painting tips for that wall.

Thanks for another great video. Not thanks for doing a video i was JUST about to make myself!! Lol. LOVE your channel

Brilliant.

nice find!

weird i thought you already did this technique in one of your quick builds . cool stuff

Brilliant diorama technique really push the brain on common sense . Will be using this

Love your vids bud, hers to never selling out to

Get a brass tumbler for polishing brass for reloading shells/cartridges in gun reloading would work well for this . Run it while you go work on something else .

Hey BMC - you can make really cool rubble piles in the same manner. I've taken sawdust that I got for free from home depot and did a 1:1 mix with elmers glue in a paint bucket. This makes a quick "paper/sawdust" machete that is adhesive and dries hard. From there, you can toss a handful of these bricks into the mixture and shake it. The result looks like a pile of textured dirt and debris with bricks in it. It looks even better if you rip a few of the bricks apart. You can then take the coffee stirrers or even some thick gauged wire and poke it into the mixture at different angles. When everything dries, it looks like the perfect debris pile for a collapsed wall or roof. Is there any chance that you have a discord or place we can share videos and discuss stuff? I have a few cool techniques that' I've found on my own that I would love to share.

so simple, so genius

Yeah - excellent technique

Should sell little tiny skids of black magic brand bricks ^.^ little swag idea

Just subscribed today

I assume this works with larger bricks? Really cool technique!

Cut your foam bricks, place on a board which can withstand heat, spray the bricks with water and blowtorch gently over the bricks. The water stops the heat from scorching the entire brick and melts the dry foam leaving you with an amazing effect. You can do the tin can and stone technique before or after as well..... :)

That's literally how you polish a lot of materials (=take the edges off) like in dice production or finer materials like (for example) amber. The only difference is the size/grain of the added stuff beginning from smaller rocks and stones to sand to polishing paste with even finer grain. For example the huge cheap dice packs you can buy are the result of such a polishing process: a certain percentage is always overtumbled, which means the material got removed a bit more uneven, the edges are a bit more round than expected or the numbers aren't as visible as they should be anymore (that's just probability). This procedure however is the best possible solution to round the edges of materials in large scale (like foam bricks). You should also check the material to polish regularly to not overdo it.

Perhaps you could add a few sharper and harder objects like screws to the tumbler so that some bricks will be further damaged when taken out

Now that's fn slick!!!

Luke Towan brought me here. Love this video, cheers.

this is similar to tumbled dice, which are dice shook with rocks similar to this. Untumbled dice are more random, but dice users complain that they are less comfortable to hold having sharp edges and points

This is when I wish I had a proxon, just a bit too expensive. great vid by the way