Warhammer 40k: Scratch Built Space Marines Razorbacks Part 4

Finally, wrapping up this project.... well mostly. I still have one more tank to finish actually.
In Part 3 I had wrapped up all the building, casting, and assembling to complete 3 tanks. Without further ado, here is the finished product. As mentioned in previous posts all the weapons are magnetized so that they can be swapped out for assault cannons or heavy bolters.

I've mentioned before in most of my posts on 40k models that this is not my primary miniatures game. I've got plenty of other models to eat up way to much of my time to paint so I decided some time ago that my 40k stuff would be speed painted in a simple scheme. This is still the case for these. However, I think they look pretty good for some thrown together foam core and plastic for sale signs.

This mostly concludes this 4 year long project. Like I said before I do have one more tank all ready to put together as well as the original GW kit that I'll get to at some point later this year, probably after getting some other projects finished. Until then I guess I should try and get a game of 40k in soon.

Warhammer 40k: Scratch Built Space Marines Razorbacks Part 3

In Part 2 we covered casting the weapons loadouts for the tanks. In this part everything comes together and I now have 3 scratch built razorbacks ready for paint. I have one more tank that I'm still working on. 90% of the components are already made. I just have to put it all together. I'm also working on putting together the original kit as well so once I'm finished I'll have 5 in total. So, without further ado here's what I have.

As you can see I "stretched" some of the bits from the kit to add a few more finer details to each tank. All the weapon loadouts are magnetized and can be swapped out from tank to tank.

The next tank below is the first tank that I worked on in Part 1 and is a little different from the other two. Specifically, the side sponsons were scratch built instead of cast.

Next steps are to get some paint on these! Part 4 will wrap this project up with the tanks all finished up.

Warhammer 40k: Scratch Built Space Marines Razorbacks Part 2

Continuing on with part 2 of this post to address the weapon loadouts needed for the tanks. So, the basic shapes of the tanks are pretty boxy, angular, and consisting of mostly straight line; relatively, easy to recreate. However, the weapons loadouts like the twin lascannons are a little bit harder to build out of foamcore and plastic. When I started this project a I picked up an actual Games Workshop Razorback kit to use as reference for my scratch built tanks as well as providing some of the smaller bits to cast.

A few years back I picked up a product that I've used so many times to great effect called Instant Mold. This is a fantastic product that when heated in hot water becomes soft and malleable like clay but cools to a nice finish like hard rubber. This material is perfect for creating quick and relatively easy press molds for casting just about anything. Instant Mold makes up the mold and I use Milliput as the casting material.

Below you can see a freshly cast lascannon. It's not perfect, the process is very elementary, and the detail is somewhat diminished. However, once it's cleaned up and painted, it can be tough to tell the difference sometimes. Also, like all cast pieces there is flash to be removed.

For the assault cannons I cast the end of an assault cannon from a Space Marines Terminator model.

I ended up casting several pieces. I cast multiple lascannons, assault cannons, and heavy bolters as well as the side sponsons and top hatch pieces. This was somewhat time consuming as I only had a limited amount of Instant Mold to work with so I could only cast so many pieces at once.

Everything will be magnetized so that it can be freely swapped out for a different weapons loadout. The assault cannons will end up using the heavy bolters as a base which is why the front barrels have been cut off.

That wraps up this part 2. In part 3 you'll see what the tanks look like completed and ready for paint. I'll leave you with a shot of some of the scratch built components and the cast top hatches and a side sponson.

Warhammer 40k: Scratch Built Space Marines Razorbacks Part 1

Since 8th edition dropped recently I've played a fair few games of 40k with my modest space marines army. Space Marine Razorback tanks are a very good points value in 8th and it'd be nice to have a few to put in my lists.

Going back a few years ago I started scratch building a few tanks but never got around to finishing any of them. The pics below were taken 4 years ago when I first started the project. I used foamcore as the skeleton for the basic shapes needed and thin plastic sheet will cover the entire models to give it a nice finish.

To get started first the two sides for each tank were cut from foamcore and then covered in plastic sheet on both sides.

Then using a top, bottom, and the two sides everything is glued together to achieve the basic shape of the tank.

At this point I started in on trying to get one complete by getting the sides cut out of thick sheet plastic.

This is as far as I got on one tank when I stalled out on the project.

Now fast forward over 4 years later and after sitting around buried in a box in my closet,  I'm finally getting back around to them. Here's a little teaser for what's to come in part 2.

Here is the original link from 4 years ago. 

Warhammer 40K: Space Marines Bike Squad

Working on getting my modest Space Marines army painted. These are six bikes from two Dark Vengeance starter sets from last edition. Again, sticking to my process for speed painting that I've employed for my space marines. These are just base coated and washed in a heavy black of my own recipe.

Warhammer 40K: Space Marines Dreadnought

After doing the conversion to make this model have a dual autocannon weapons loadout, I took a little bit of time to get it painted up. It was a little bit of time too. This was one of the quickest and easiest models to paint. Only took me about an hour. For a speed painted model it looks pretty good on the table which is all I'm going for here.

Warhammer 40k: Space Marines Dreadnought Autocannon Conversion

With the drop of 8th edition the dual twin autocannon loadout for dreadnoughts has been very popular and for good reason. I've had two dreadnoughts for quite some time that came in the Assault on Black Reach set from a few editions ago. Decided to do a little cutting and scratch building to achieve the appearance of twin autocannons.

First I used a hotwire cutter to remove the previous weapon loadout on both arms. Using some round sprue from Malifuax models and a bit of brass tube and we're done.

Here you can see a side by side comparison of the original and the converted model.

All in all a very simple conversion and doesn't take all that long.

Space Marine Terminators: Speed Painted

Painting continues daily, slowly but surely making progress towards completing my entire collection of miniatures before year's end. This post is a nice boost. 14 Terminators finished in a pretty small window of time. I didn't keep exact time but if I had to guess I'd say about 30 min per model. For me that's as fast as it gets. I airbrush on the red armor color, brush in the rest of the base coats, and finally heavily coat the whole with a home made black wash. Nothing fancy by any means  but for the time spent I think they look pretty good.

Space Marines: Terminator Thunder Hammer/Storm Shield conversions and scratch built Cyclone Missile Launchers

I have 20 space marine terminators from the Assault on Black Reach and Dark Vengeance sets and NONE of them come modeled with the very common and popular thunder hammer/stormshield combo or cyclone missile launchers. It can be very pricey to bits shop around for thunder hammers, stormshields, and cyclone missile launchers to convert these to, so I decided to just build my own. The hammers are actually from my Mantic Games dwarfs army and while not quite as nice as the actual piece, they'll do just fine. Now the actual space marine storm shields I think just look too small so I made mine much bigger. I just used a bit of plasticard for them. I do plan on adding some decorative detail and iconography to the shields to spice them up a bit. Anyway, it's pretty unmistakable as to what they are modeled as and that's what matters.

The missile launchers I built mostly out of those red plastic rulers that come in the warhammer starter boxes and a few paper clips. I think it will look pretty good once they're painted.

Dark Angels: Belial Conversion

I've had my hands in a bit of everything these past weeks. Recently spent some time getting the remainder of my space marines models assembled and some conversion work done. For the Dark Angels special character, Belial I used the sergeant model from the Dark Vengeance Terminators which is an awesome model by itself and could easily stand in as Belial without any work at all. However, I decided that guys like Belial just don't wear helmets. I had a few space marine bits lying around including a few tac squad sergeant heads and thought one of them would do nicely as Belial. Unfortunately the helmet and entire front of the Dark Vengeance Terminator sergeant model is all one piece so a simple head swap was out of the question. I ground as much material away (not much) as I could with my dremel and took to the xacto to do the rest. Once I got the helmet material completely removed I filled in any gaps with a bit of putty and then put the new head in place. Here's the end result and a side by side comparison with the original model sans the decorative wings I cut off so Belial would stand out from the other sergeant model.