jamsessionein
New member
Lots of text and babble to follow, apologies in advance.
I was lucky enough to get a Baneblade around Christmas, and since my next two weeks or so are free before I have to get back to school it seemed only right that I start working on turning this imperial tank to the greenskin side. I\'ve been planning and thinking a little bit while working on my new Trukk kit, and now that it\'s over with I have a couple rough ideas of what I want to do.
My goals with this are:
After hashing this out a bit, I tried coming up with what I thought was a decent rough sketch.
Despite the fact that the plan looks like it was drawn up by a five-year-old with a sharpie, you get the general idea of what I was thinking. However, this has a number of problems, not least of which was that the deathroller blocked off a gun.
I started thinking about it a little bit and after a little searching \'round The-Waaagh.com\'s Mek\'s Garage, I found my holy grail for the project.
This is a baneblade made by \'Orchead The Red\'. You can see more pictures of it here. It is beautiful, and based off the Forgeworld Baneblade if I\'m not mistaken.
This immediately piqued my interest, as it not only had the deathroller on the front, but it lifted the entire chassis up in a way such as to fit it in a much more appropriate spot. Unfortunately, the parts used to make this model are absurdly expensive - I believe there\'s a forgeworld ork rhino in there, two deathrollers, a couple grot bombs, not to mention the actual baneblade itself. With all that said, though, it gave me a lot to think about.
I would have sketched a new design out after having seen this, but honestly it seemed like a waste of time since this thing is blueprints enough for me right now. I\'m going to be emulating Orchead\'s general design in lifting the chassis with a couple of my own kustom modifications - I won\'t be buying any forgeworld parts for this, except maybe one grot bomb if I can find one anywhere. I\'ll be using some of the newer ork parts from the trukk sprues that I have left over, and scratchbuilding the rest! Hopefully by the time I am done, I will have a worthy rival to this juicy warmachine.
So, with all that planning, I had to start somewhere. It took me a few hours to carefully cut and clean all of the parts from the Baneblade sprues. I\'ve left the tracks and the really tiny detail parts on them for the time being to better keep track of them. Here\'s my bin-o-tank-parts:
One of the first things I did was trim the \'frills\' from around the outer track guard edge - if I am going to anchor side track armor from them, those little detail bits around the tracks have to go. (See the picture back up at the top around the bottom near the tracks for an idea of what I\'m talking about).
Despite appearances, I managed to remove the plastic frills sticking out off the bottom of these plates fairly smoothly. There were one or two spots where the knife (or I) had a bit of a hiccup, but those are easily patched over later on.
However, I very quickly realized this conversion was not going to be as easy as I had hoped. You see, there\'s a problem with the wheels. The unfortunate fact of the Games Workshop baneblade is that the tank wheels are not separate pieces.
As you can see, the wheels on the inside of the tank are cast into the body, while the outer wheels are all stuck together like shown. This makes raising the chassis of the tank problematic, as the wheels all need to be lowered. What\'s a mek to do?
Well, there\'s something of a solution. It involves the ever-villified casting of parts.
The Baneblade kit comes with two \'free\' wheels on either side of the tracks for the ones that stick out significantly in the front and back from the tread guard - this means each baneblade essentially comes with the parts to make four separate, loose wheels that are not molded into the body of the tank. If you take a look, you\'ll see that these have teeth on the back to mesh with the treads:
I snipped those teeth clean off so that the tank wheels would sit flush on their backs.
Why?
Put simply, I\'m going to be casting these \'hubcaps\' so that they can be used to cap off my own custom-made tank wheels. I know people have a habit of getting up in arms about casting in general, and this might get me in a tiny bit of trouble, but I think I am justified in my need to do so with this project - there is no other way of aquiring the necessary parts short of scratchbuilding identically, intricately detailed tank wheels, and that is a feat I don\'t think I\'m up to. I\'d gladly buy them from GW or even BWBits if they were available, but they\'re not. I\'m not going to go into the process of casting them here simply because I don\'t want to cause too much trouble, but basically while I work on the top part of the tank I will be creating the 20-some wheels I need for the \'lifting\' process, as well.
So, these are my beginnings. I already have a (cunning?) plan for how I am going to be manufacturing the deathroller, but my priority in the next few days is to work on assembling the top of the tank up to par prior to mounting the body on a new, lifted tread assembly.
I was lucky enough to get a Baneblade around Christmas, and since my next two weeks or so are free before I have to get back to school it seemed only right that I start working on turning this imperial tank to the greenskin side. I\'ve been planning and thinking a little bit while working on my new Trukk kit, and now that it\'s over with I have a couple rough ideas of what I want to do.
My goals with this are:
- To have a superheavy tank that I can run as either a Skullhamma, a looted Baneblade, or a looted Hellhammer. I plan on using it primarily as a Skullhamma because it is a pretty great transport. For the last two, I would basically pay the points cost of the tanks out of the apocalypse book, make the entire tank BS2, and ditch the special rules like the commissariat entirely. It probably wouldn\'t be worth the points cost by then, but damnit it will be fun.
- To put a deathroller on the front of the baneblade. I can\'t help myself, I just really need to put one on here. I don\'t think any form of the baneblade can actually take a deathroller - even the skullhamma doesn\'t have one - but I feel a tugging need to do it.
- One big, beefy, souped-up engine similar to the one on the Forgeworld Battlewagon
- Lights!
After hashing this out a bit, I tried coming up with what I thought was a decent rough sketch.
Despite the fact that the plan looks like it was drawn up by a five-year-old with a sharpie, you get the general idea of what I was thinking. However, this has a number of problems, not least of which was that the deathroller blocked off a gun.
I started thinking about it a little bit and after a little searching \'round The-Waaagh.com\'s Mek\'s Garage, I found my holy grail for the project.
This is a baneblade made by \'Orchead The Red\'. You can see more pictures of it here. It is beautiful, and based off the Forgeworld Baneblade if I\'m not mistaken.
This immediately piqued my interest, as it not only had the deathroller on the front, but it lifted the entire chassis up in a way such as to fit it in a much more appropriate spot. Unfortunately, the parts used to make this model are absurdly expensive - I believe there\'s a forgeworld ork rhino in there, two deathrollers, a couple grot bombs, not to mention the actual baneblade itself. With all that said, though, it gave me a lot to think about.
I would have sketched a new design out after having seen this, but honestly it seemed like a waste of time since this thing is blueprints enough for me right now. I\'m going to be emulating Orchead\'s general design in lifting the chassis with a couple of my own kustom modifications - I won\'t be buying any forgeworld parts for this, except maybe one grot bomb if I can find one anywhere. I\'ll be using some of the newer ork parts from the trukk sprues that I have left over, and scratchbuilding the rest! Hopefully by the time I am done, I will have a worthy rival to this juicy warmachine.
So, with all that planning, I had to start somewhere. It took me a few hours to carefully cut and clean all of the parts from the Baneblade sprues. I\'ve left the tracks and the really tiny detail parts on them for the time being to better keep track of them. Here\'s my bin-o-tank-parts:
One of the first things I did was trim the \'frills\' from around the outer track guard edge - if I am going to anchor side track armor from them, those little detail bits around the tracks have to go. (See the picture back up at the top around the bottom near the tracks for an idea of what I\'m talking about).
Despite appearances, I managed to remove the plastic frills sticking out off the bottom of these plates fairly smoothly. There were one or two spots where the knife (or I) had a bit of a hiccup, but those are easily patched over later on.
However, I very quickly realized this conversion was not going to be as easy as I had hoped. You see, there\'s a problem with the wheels. The unfortunate fact of the Games Workshop baneblade is that the tank wheels are not separate pieces.
As you can see, the wheels on the inside of the tank are cast into the body, while the outer wheels are all stuck together like shown. This makes raising the chassis of the tank problematic, as the wheels all need to be lowered. What\'s a mek to do?
Well, there\'s something of a solution. It involves the ever-villified casting of parts.
The Baneblade kit comes with two \'free\' wheels on either side of the tracks for the ones that stick out significantly in the front and back from the tread guard - this means each baneblade essentially comes with the parts to make four separate, loose wheels that are not molded into the body of the tank. If you take a look, you\'ll see that these have teeth on the back to mesh with the treads:
I snipped those teeth clean off so that the tank wheels would sit flush on their backs.
Why?
Put simply, I\'m going to be casting these \'hubcaps\' so that they can be used to cap off my own custom-made tank wheels. I know people have a habit of getting up in arms about casting in general, and this might get me in a tiny bit of trouble, but I think I am justified in my need to do so with this project - there is no other way of aquiring the necessary parts short of scratchbuilding identically, intricately detailed tank wheels, and that is a feat I don\'t think I\'m up to. I\'d gladly buy them from GW or even BWBits if they were available, but they\'re not. I\'m not going to go into the process of casting them here simply because I don\'t want to cause too much trouble, but basically while I work on the top part of the tank I will be creating the 20-some wheels I need for the \'lifting\' process, as well.
So, these are my beginnings. I already have a (cunning?) plan for how I am going to be manufacturing the deathroller, but my priority in the next few days is to work on assembling the top of the tank up to par prior to mounting the body on a new, lifted tread assembly.
