The sponsons now look much better all clad in plasticard. I've added similar detail strips to those on the leman russ, further echoing the design. Hopefully they'll be recognisable. One side has a prototype gun mount attached, but I'll remove that and do a proper one as soon as my weapon sprues arrive from GW. Hopefully won't be the full 8 days they threaten you with..

I have literally just this minute glued together the two sides, using the 16mm pipe you can see in some of the shots. Not tested it yet, but I'm hoping when it's dried it will be incredibly sturdy. If not I'll look at reinforcing it somehow.

Aside from the weapons I've mentioned, I've got a list of details I need to add. Including, but not limited to, headlights, rivets (bloody thasands of em), tracks (that'd be nice), covers for the track wheels, ladders, and hatches. Hopefully once all that's sorted I'll be ready to start on my first modular unit.

The post Armouring the track units appeared first on BlokeCrafted.

So I thought I'd have a go at a modular version, inspired by Clouseau's modular rhino/variants. I know Armorcast did a sort of modular superheavy many years ago, but really it was just a weapon swap between Baneblade and Shadowsword, plus I wasn't overly impressed with the quality, certainly not compared to the stuff Forgeworld is kicking out these days. Plus age means rarity which means daft prices on ebay. So like I said, I thought I'd scratchbuild my own.

The post Project Overview appeared first on BlokeCrafted.

I redesigned the sponsons for this project. The old style was basically a trapezium stuck to the side of the tank, supported by a tiny little brace. I didn't like this, so decided to scale up the Leman Russ sponsons instead. I think they look much beefier, plus it will help tie my tank into the rest of the army and give it a more "real" feel.

For the gun mounts I just used two pieces of pipe, one inside the other. The inner one was marginally longer and glued top and bottom, allowing the outer one to rotate freely. Then a quick bit of card cuttings gave me a flat panel to attach the bolters.

What I didn't do at the start, since the connect them with pipes idea didn't come to me until later, was cut holes for the pipes on the inner walls of the tank units. This would have really helped, since I could have sat them on top of the wheels to give extra strength. As it is I had to sort of guess the place to cut the whole and missed slightly. Should be strong enough, just means I'll have to be a bit more careful when changing the modular unit.

The post Track Units appeared first on BlokeCrafted.

The premise for the modularity is quite simple. I'm going to do two track units, then link them together with two tubes. Then the centre unit will be changeable. This means, aside from the storm hammer, all existing variants will be easily possible, along with the new ones I'm going to create. The Storm Hammer only causes a problem because it has extra sponsons on each side. I'm toying with the idea of working this into the design, but who knows, by the time I've done the Shadowsword, Baneblade, Stormblade, and Stormsword I might be bored of stcs..

The post Design appeared first on BlokeCrafted.

The main tank superstructure will be made from some nice solid 2mm card stock. I think it came off the back of a photo print I bought a while ago. Then for a nice paint finish I'm going to cover the whole lot in some thin plasticard.

The post Materials appeared first on BlokeCrafted.