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Hinged Land Raider doors! Arent they a sight? Especially if you left a gap between the interior compartment of the Land Raider and the door during assembly, but are now saddened that you have to glue the door shut? Wait! This tutorial will help you achieve the same result as in the picture above, making disembarkation that much more awesome and cinematic!

There is already an article about a similar method here on dakka: link but to me it looks more complicated and advanced.


So I have created an easy to follow tutorial than even someone who is absolutely inexperienced when it comes to modeling can accomplish - really, the only tool you need to buy that you will probably not have at home as a hobby newbie is the Citadel hobby drill, which can be usually found in your FLGS.

What you will need:




Step 1:

Now the first thing you want to do is take the paper clip and start stretching it out with your fingers:



Then, before you do anything else, you want to make sure is that the thickness of the paper clip is the same as the diameter of your citadel hobby drill's drill bit.




The stock one comes with a diameter of 1mm, which coincidentally happens to be the same size as most paper clips.



If they dont end up being the same size, see if you have thinner or thicker paper clips until you find the right size of 1mm diameter


Step 2: Start the project by taking one of your Land Raider side doors. Carefully shave off the inner parts of the outermost door hinges (circled in red) with your hobby knife.




When you are done it should look like this (I've used another door with the process completed in the pic below):




Now place the door into its casing onto the Land Raider's outer hull just to get a feel of what you have done so far. Notice the space created?




This is needed because the tips of the rods that we will be crafting from the paper clip will bend like hooks and will occupy this space before they go onto the Land Raider door's shaved plastic hinges (to hold it in place) through which you will also be drilling holes.


Step 3:

Now take your Land Raider door and drill holes through each of the shaved hinges, from one side to the other. Leave the central hinge untouched.




Step 4:

Now take your Land Raider and get a feel for where you will be drilling into the hull - after all, the lengths of those hooks made out of the paper clip will obviously be going into the Land Raider's hull: it will be at the bottom section of the doorframe's crevices, toward the center.



Drill two holes here with the hobby drill - keep drilling into the plastic until the drill bit reaches the other side of the plastic hull, which should be easy to "feel" as the bit will suddenly push through. Remove the drill bit and clean out any plastic residue.





You should be left with two holes in the following positions:




Step 5:

Next, fit the straightened paper clip through one of the holes until it hits the inner hull. This is needed to guess the length of the paper clip (which will become the door hinge) you will be cutting off from the rest of the paper clip. Once you have hit the inner hull, mark the length with a legible marker and then pull the paper clip out




Step 6:

Now position the paper clip with the side you are intending to snip toward the pliers and slide in the paper clip all the way to the marking so you'll snip off the exact length needed.






You will end up with a small portion of the desired size. This is going to be one of your door's hinges. Repeat this process using the trimmed paper clip as size guidance to get a second one from the rest of the long paper clip. Because you cut the metal by squeezing the pliers, part of the tip will be flattened and protruding slightly over the diameter of the rest of its length. This will make insertion into the drilled hole of matching diameter difficult. Thus, you need to smoothen the trimmed edge until you get rid of the sharp edges, using your file tool.






Step 7:

The next thing you'll want to do is bend each trimmed paper clip so that part of it will slide inside the bottom of the door and hold it in place like a hook, while the rest of its length will be inserted into the hole drilled through the outer hull. Because metal can't easily be bent using your fingers (especially at such short lengths), insert a tiny (roughly the length of one of the Land Raider door's original hinge width) portion of the shortened paper clip into the top part of your pliers (the one not used for cutting). Use a knife or your thumb to then apply pressure to the rest of the paper clip's length and bend it 90° away from you to create a right angle.






You should end up with each paper clip looking like this. The hook will be holding the door in place while the length of the paper clip slides into the hole drilled through the hull:




Step 8:

So once you have two of these hook-shaped paper clips, you can now insert them through the holes you previously drilled into the bottom bits of the Land Raider door and it will look like this:




Step 9:


Now try seeing if your project is working so far. Carefully (making sure the paper clips don't fall out of the door hinges as this is easy) slide the paper clips into the holes you have drilled into the Land Raiders's outer hull








Step 10:

If they fit snugly into place, shut the door, and then carefully open it again just to make sure. Once you are sure everything is in working order (i.e. the door fits snugly into its crevice without jutting out, and none of the paper clips is too long and juts out making the door slanted, in which case you'd have to trim it some more), repeat the same process as in this step, except using your superglue to apply a thin coat of glue over the paper clip before sliding it back in. Don't apply the glue too close to the hinges or you'll risk sticking it as well and ruin your project. Once the superglue-coated paper clips have slid all the way in (bearing the doors), make sure to keep the door open until the glue has dried, but quickly check if the door closes properly before opening it once more and leaving it to dry. After a while, you can come back and your project will be finished.





Congratulations! Now you can open and close your Land Raider's side doors!

Chances are however, that they will be lose and keep falling open. In this case, either make use of small neodymium magnets (e.g. 2mm diameter, 1 mm thickness) by simply gluing them into the surfaces or, if this is aesthetically disturbing, drilling an appropriately sized hole into the inner door frame and then gluing it (check polarity before gluing) into the door frame and for the other, drilling a hole into the appropriate portion of the inner side of the door and then gluing it in place there as well. I have borrowed one of the pics from the other thread to show how he did this (ignore the white rings as they are not part of this tutorial):




Alternately, you can use some blu-tac or a tiny bit of green stuff to hold the door in place, but still allowing it to easily be pried open during battle and closed again.


Cheers,
-Sir Arun

Magnetize the top so it stays shut! Nice concept and execution.

Great tutorial Arun!
Too bad my LR are already built and doors glued. I'll have to try this method out on some rhinos though.

Thanks Yes it works on Rhinos and Razorbacks too; I believe it may even work on Devilfish, Skyrays and Hammerheads too!

This is pretty sweet, mate! I've wanted to do these kinds of things for a number of other tanks, and now you've given me the means! Thanks!

I was always wondering how to make them open ....
Great solution