May The Fourth Be With You

Yes, it's time again for the Con Geek:

Commission: Storm Talon Conversion

I was contacted by very pleasant gentleman who asked if I could convert a Storm Talon for him, along the lines of one he'd seen on Dakka Dakka

Absolutely!  Actually it's a  pretty simple conversion  which should look pretty good when completed.

After assembling the cockpit area, I started in on the conversion work; the first step was to flip the tail which requires cutting the fins off of the fuselage halves.  Before re-attaching, I cut the now lower fins to match the line of the trailing edge of the fuselage.

In order to ensure a strong joint and maintain alignment, I created a sort of spar from plasticard.

The fuselage halves with flipped tail:

Next, the wings for this conversion use the tail-plane of the model cut in half, and used in lieu of the little stub wings.

And the stub wings end up on the fuselage at the tail

Overall look:

I offered to magnetize the weapons pods; he sent some magnets, but I opted to use some from my own stock since I want to ensure a secure fit.  The smaller magnets may work but I'm a bit paranoid about magnetized parts falling off.  The magnets inside the pod are 6mm disks, while the magnets on the options are 3mm x 3mm disks.  The magnets are slightly counter-sunk into the options and end up going into the body of the pod -- they end up interlocking as well as pulling the parts together.

Really the last thing to do is to mount the Ravenwing assault cannons on the wing-tips.  One bit that original poster on Dakka failed to mention was that he did a cut and flip on the assault cannon, not hard to do as long as you're careful with the razor saw.

And the finished model with various weapon options:

Old Stuff Day 2016 -- Space Hulk Diorama Completed

Here's my blast from the past  for this year!  Originally from 2012.

Here's the completed Diorama;  Brother Omnio reports mutliple contacts on his auspex, Brother Zael stands ready to purge the adjacent compartment with cleansing flames as Brother Noctis prepares to activate the door.   Sergeant Gideon and Brother Deino stand ready to deal with anything that comes through the door.

A few more shots after the break

The construction article can be found here

Field Artillery, Vostroyan Style.

Knocked these together Friday night,to use as Thudd Guns, though I guess since they're rockets, they should be called something else?

I plan on redoing these however, since I just went with materials that I had on hand; the tubes are only 5/32" which feels a tad small for 40K's typically over-sized scaling; I think that 3/16" or 7/32" would be a bit more 40K scale.  some of the parts on the frame are a bit over-scale for my tastes. 

Anyway here's the final product all painted up, with my Master of Ordnance overseeing operations:

I'll do more of a construction article when I do the rebuild and build some proper great-coat crew.

Your punishment will be more severe

I missed out on buying a punisher cannon when they could be easily obtained through the various
bits-sellers, now of course the damn things are as rare as hen's teeth.  Since I want to try out Pask in a Punisher, I decided to build my own to go on my Ragnarok/Russ.

The mantlet was a spare demolisher mantlet that I had lying around, I attached a piece of  3/8" ID tube to serve as a mount for the gatling gun.  The gatling gun itself is 6 pieces of 3/32" tubing around a 1/8" hexagonal rod.  I added a couple of slices of the hex rod on to the mantlet to add detail to the spots where I cut off the demolisher cannon shock absorbers.  I added a piece of round rod to the hex pieces to give the look of a bolt.

I plan to leave the gatling gun removable so that the mantlet can be used to mount a battle cannon or  a vanquisher cannon as well.

And all painted up:

And I'm back (Update)

Last year after setting a bunch of lofty hobby goals for 2015, I promptly dropped them all.  I really just stopped being all that into 40K, and focused most of my free time on playing RPG's (DnD, Dark Heresy, Only War and Rogue Trader) and building/refinishing guitars, both of which kept me pretty busy.  This was my big guitar project last year:

 

Magnetizing the weapons of course was a given.  Also, since there's so much room in the carapace, lighting immediately came to mind;  So 'old blue eyes' here will also have  a machine spirit;  an Arduino Nano, that I'll write the software for, to make things interesting.

I'll  be playing in the Hammer in the New Year tournament so of course I want to have this beast ready. Deadlines are good; they keep you focused (or panicked)

Not content with that, I also want to add a Forge World unit, a Quad Mortar Battery, a la Vostroya, which of course means rockets; like this:

RPU-14

And just to be cheesy, a couple of White Scars librarians for a Conclave.

How much time do I have?

------ Edit ----

Finished the Knight  in time and got the Quad Mortars done, but ended up using a couple of SW models as stunt-doubles for the White Scars Libbies.  Anyway, here are some pics of the Knight:

 

Hobby Goals for 2015

It's a new year so it's a good time to set some goals for 2015:

Imperial Guard:

1.  Build 2 truck chassis for my Wyverns;  I currently use  a half-track for my Manticore based on Dave Taylor's awesome truck templates.  I have a pair of Katyushka-style missile packs that I mount on a pair of generic chassis that have been used for everything from a Hydra to a Death Strike.  Time to get with the WW II Russian theme and mount them on a 6x6 Truck.  I plan to use the Blood and Skulls industries large truck tires and a scratch built chassis.

2.  Build a couple of BA-10 inspired armored cars based on the same truck chassis to use as Tauroxes;  Kinda the same deal as above but putting a troop compartment and turret on the chassis to use as a Taurox.  I've built kind of the prototype here, it just needs to be a 6x6 and have a turret added.

3.  Build two more of the Ragnarok pattern Leman Russes to run around with Pask, because one of these isn't enough.

4.  Besides the above I might look at building a Russ that is not stock but not quite a Ragnarok, something that still says WW II Russian but will fit the 40K universe, like the Ragnarok.  Also looking at building some basilisks.

5.  Build a badass display board.

White Scars:

1. Repaint my Storm Raven for the scars.

2. Finish up a bike command squad with everything people love to hate:  Storm Shields, Apothecary, and two more Grav Guns.

Space Wolves:

Finish up two Iron Priests on Thunder Wolves.