Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Well, I made one. It took a while, and it may have taken a shorter amount of time if I hadn't decided to mash it with a predator like my other one, but it is done.



I'm quite proud of it.



The back uses the rear of a land raider which I won in a conversion competition, the sponsors and heavy bolter is removable, as is the gatling gun itself (to be later interchangeable with a vanquisher cannon), the commander can be removed and the hatch closed (the commander counts as Pask)





Also, I anticipated being asked how I did it, so I took pictures of each step. Here is a tutorial for both the making of the gatling gun and the mixing with the predator (which could have won me a lot of moonies if I had gotten paid a couple of days earlier).

First step first is attaching these indents for the sponsors.



Using a knife, repeatedly score down the seam between the rivets, until you cut through. Do the same along at the other bit pictured.



The do the top and bottom. It takes quite a while to finally get through, so just keep at it. If you cut at those bits, the hole should be large enough to fit the predator sponsor bit on, which will stick out a little.




Assemble the rest of the tracks as normal, although you may have to leave off a few of the wheels. (sorry, I forgot to take a picture before I glued the other side on)




The hull is assembled as normal, but seeing as I had the land raider bit lying around, I decided to glue it on. It required a little sanding to get the back flat and to get a snug fit.




The viewport is also reinforced with a bit of sprue.



To assemble the turret, first glue the autocannon predator turret together and then cut the auto cannon off.



The Battle cannon is cut here (do this even if you just want the gatling gun)



With a bit of filing of the predator turret, the battle cannon can be glued on.




Ignore the fact that the gatling gun is missing in this picture if you just want the battle cannon. Fill in the gaps with green stuff. Also, file down the bottom bit of the turret just a tad (the flat, riveted, rectangular bits) so that it fits onto the leman russ body)




Now, onto the Gatling gun itself. You need around 20cm of 3mm wide plastic tube (I got mine from some spare boat modelling kits in my school's DT department. I looked for ages, but I couldn't find any in any hardware or modelling shops, but apparently there are some which sell it). You also need a cotton ear bud (or Q-tip if you happen to live in the us)



When I first did this, I cut it into 5 individual 4cm lengths, but I eventually made the whole thing shorter. I also cut up the plastic tubing of the ear bud so that it was shorter than 4cm.



Then two lengths of plastic tube were glued together (superglue)



Then the ear bud tubing was glued down the middle.



Then, one by one, I added the rest of the plastic tube.





This was then sanded down so that the ends were flat, the dust was cleaned up with a scalpel, and a strip of cardboard was glued around the end to give it a bit of detail.



And now, back to the rest of the guide.

If you make want the gatling gun, then you cut here.



The barrel was then filled with green stuff, and a bit of the tubing from the ear bud, with a bit of brass wire inserted down the middle, was stuck in. The gatling gun can be placed on this, and it holds pretty tight.



As you can see, 4cm is a tad long.



So it got cut in half.



But anyhoos, here are some other ways to convert thine Leman Russ. Moving cupolas:

Place the cover on the cupola (without glueing), and drill through to the other side at around about here:



Then, put a paper clip through, and only glue the outside bits (i.e. where the paper clip goes in and comes out). You can now open and close it. If you cover the bottom of the cupola with a bit of plastic or card, you can make removable commanders.



Because I wanted to make the turret a bit more guard looking, I added the back bit from a normal leman russ turret, cut down to fit, and with the gaps filled in with a bit of card and green stuff.






Also, a chaos havoc missile laucher makes a good hunter killer missile upgrade, and in apocalypse, you can fire a missile each turn (because you can make a rule up for it). Drill a hole into both the havoc launcher and the turret and pin it.




Brace it with a bit of sprue. Some of the leman russ sprues have very thin plastic, so these are ideal.



Also, don't forget to assemble the side sponsors as well.

So, that is the completed leman russ. I did also make a different fron heavy bolter, but I'm not so sure if I want to highlight it as it's kinda messy. Also, the side sponsors are removable. No magnets, just a few pins.



The commander is one of my old (and favourite) tank commander conversion.



Anyhoos, comments, queries, criticisms and praise are all welcome. Thanks for reading.

Very nice step by step. The outcome is brilliant an I hope to see it painted shortly.

Nice use of space marine bitz on a guard tank.

I am not sure if its not "overpimped" with those missile launcher, but really looking forward to see it painted.

And thanks for your "step by step".

At first that looks like a very simple conversion. But looking at how exactly you made that, Im surprised at how much you put into that conversion. Nice work. Bring on the 20 attacks lol

I like it a lot, is the tank commander's head your own conversion or is it from something?

Glad to see that everyone liked it.

I find the missile launcher adds a nice sense of height to the turret, as otherwise it looks a little bare. I also like it a bit more that the current one (or the one on the sentinel).

The tank commander's head is a normal sergeant's head, with a sculpted mustache and hat.

Thanks for reading.

The commander looks like Jack Albertson from the show Chico and the Man.

I will defently be using loads of your steps in my own stuff. im thinking of making my own punisher. i no GW is soon to bring one out but but it will be basicly a russ with a diffrent turret. standard. nothing compared to yours.

iv got two conflicting views for my own. i have a pair of gattaling guns off a landraider. i either want to mound them on the turret as if they were one punisher gun moded from two gattling guns (yes this works both within my IG fantacy world and in my realish modeling world)

or with the new punisher coming out wait and buy that and mount the gattling guns one on each side and play them as standard. or is this to much gattling for one tank?

That tank commander is the shiznit.

I like the pred turret so this is great. Same goes for the sponsons.

Good stuff!

imperialist dog wrote:I will defently be using loads of your steps in my own stuff. im thinking of making my own punisher. i no GW is soon to bring one out but but it will be basicly a russ with a diffrent turret. standard. nothing compared to yours.

iv got two conflicting views for my own. i have a pair of gattaling guns off a landraider. i either want to mound them on the turret as if they were one punisher gun moded from two gattling guns (yes this works both within my IG fantacy world and in my realish modeling world)

or with the new punisher coming out wait and buy that and mount the gattling guns one on each side and play them as standard. or is this to much gattling for one tank?

Well, the two assault cannons on the turret does look pretty good if you can integrate it properly. I've seen it done and it does look good. Having gatlings as sponsors... it seems like a good idea, even if it would look a little weird. I'm not so sure on it, though. I'd go first option, as it's a little more personal, but in the end it's you choice.


Also, I'm glad that people like the tank commander. I just looked up Jack Albertson... and wow, he really does look similar. A renaming may be in order.

Wow, I love the gatling gun . Great work and thanks for the detailed step-by-step guide of the process!

I only just noticed that I put the track guards on backwards.

I've painted it. It's nothing to write home about, just a bit of drybrushing and some coloured glass effects but I have painted it.




The back of the land raider fit on quite a bit better than I originally thought it would, and it lets me pretend that it's slightly faster than normal leman russes. And also it actually shows that it has rear av 11, rather than 10:




I'm very, very pleased at how the turret did turn out (construction wise). In all honesty, I would much rather spend an aditional 20 or so dollars for this rather than the punisher that is going to be released. But it should be self evident that I would spend quite a bit of money on different models by the fact that I went and bought a predator and leman russ just for this one tank.







Hope you like it. I'm probably going to put at least the gatling gun up on the tutorials section seeing how many people have started threads asking how to make a punisher.

Looks much better painted. And I see I was right thinking that the punisher cannon would look better off-centre. Excellent work!

I made a leman russ with a gataling gun barrel. mine needs the 9 yes 9 barrels to be drilled out.For the middle tube thing i use one of the cap things you get with gw paintbrushes

very nice everything looks like it was made to be there A+ overall!