Firstly, thats very much for everyone who’s visited my new blog, like my FB page and left words of encouragement and support. Very much appreciated. I get a real kick out of publishing my work because it pushes me to get better, and I hope it inspires you to try new things and think about your hobby differently then you did before.
Ok, welcome to my 1st post. Its going to be a bit of a long one (I think) covering what might seem like some pretty small aspects of detail, but to me its many small things on a model that in the end will add up to a result greater than the sum of its parts. So this model for those that haven’t seen it before is a Pre-Heresy Landraider kit produced by Forge World. Its going to be the ride for the Carcharadons army Commander Tyberous and his retinue of Lightening Claw equipped Terminators, and maybe a Chaplain in Terminator armour.
Although I already have two Landraider Redeemers in my army, I originally wanted to have two Pre-Heresy LR’s that were going to be converted into Redeemers. However when I was making this army, FW had removed the kit for sale telling me that there was something wrong with the mould and it’d be back sometime in the future.
So I brought one a week or two ago, with the intention of painting it up to be Tyberous personal Landraider. So I’m going to bling it up a bit to reflect that. I’ve got some pretty cool ideas floating around in my head about what I’m going to do with this kit, so I’m really looking forward to seeing it evolve.
So the 1st area to get attention is the weapon systems. The kit comes with the standard Landraider fit out, twin las cannons and twin linked heavy bolters. As I want to make this either a Redeemer or Crusader, I need to give it Hurricane Bolters in the sponsons, or Flamestorm cannons, and a twin linked Assault cannon.
As I wanted to keep with the theme of Tyberous and his retinue (they are heavily converted) I want to make the Landraider look like its firstly a very old relic of the chapter, and secondly that its fits the character or the Tyberous and his retinue.
To do this, I’ve used the Flamestorm cannons from the Grey Knight Redeemer, as they look more characterful and baroque than the stand kit ones, and I wanted the Assault Cannon to look older, and sort of an earlier model of the current kit one.
We’ll start with the Flamestorm Cannons.
I wanted to magnetise them, so I could use either weapon system. To do this I had to fill in where the Las cannons would have gone with yellow miliput.
From there, I cut the back off the Flamestorms and inserted rare earth magnets into the back of them
I have a very simple method for getting the “poles” of the magnets always right. I simple have two small styrene sticks made up with a magnet glued to each end with opposite poles attached. I have then marked on of the sticks. This marked stick is the one I use to insert magnets that will be on either the body or hull of the particular model. The other stick is the one I use to insert the magnet into what ever it is that attaches to the body or hull of the particular model. I have lots of different sized magnets from 2mm to 4mm to 8mm depending on the application.
After I had done both cannons, I then marked up the sponsons and did a small pilot hole. This is important because if you dont, the miliput can crack out.
Then it was just a matter of putting the other magnets in and its done.
Ok, next up was the Assault cannon… this was a bit of a leap for me, as its very technical and I had to be extremely precise. I did some research 1st and looked at modern day mini guns. Then I went to my local hobby store and got some 1.5mm brass tube and a few other bits and pieces.
I then cut the barrels to what I thought would be a nice size and did a quick mock up of what I wanted it to look like
Pleased with its proportions, I then went and started creating the disks that hold the barrels in place. This was by far the most difficult aspect of the job.
I basically got a whole bunch of styrene sheet, glued some of it together into a sort of sandwich, drilled a hole through the middle, stuck a piece of the 1.5mm tube through it, roughly cut off the edges to make it sort of round, then put it on my cordless drill and made that into a lathe of sorts… and used that to make it round.
Then using my mock up as a guide, drilled 6 x 1.5mm holes in each disk and started inserting the brass tube
As you can see, they are not perfectly round nor did they get away undamaged. However once all the barrels are in, they have turned out quite nicely.
Ok, thats it for now. Thanks for looking
Comments welcome
John
So this is the edging that I mentioned in my last post. I’ve got to gap fill it, then put the rivets in after that. I’m really happy with how its coming along. The actual kit though is seriously crap. It’ll need a lot of work to get it looking ok, which is a bit disappointing, especially considering they took down for sale because they were having problems with the mould
The Painting Bunkerc y 