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I owe one of my good friends a favor that I've been putting off, and he bugged me enough about it that I thought I'd give painting a quick break (emphasis on the word break) and see if I couldn't get it done. I had a spare Chimera (actually, a Basilisk) chassis laying around in my bitz bins that was mostly-complete, and I thought I'd make him a Hydra out of it. I started by framing off the general chassis of the chimera and building a rough shape of the turret. Then, I grabbed my styrene tubing and set about making a basic Hydra autocannon. I figured making 4 of the same gun for this would be a monumental pain in the ass, so I'm going to make a single cannon without much detail on the sides so that I can cast it and use it on both sides of the turret; three extras should be enough to finish the turret off.





Both the turret mount and, more obviously, the cannon itself are loose and sitll being worked on. I didn't have enough tracks to actually go all the way around the Chimera chassis, so I'm going to be adding a full track guard to the top of the track well to cover up that little fact.

The greenstuff is going to get sanded down and smoothed out once it's dry. I was using it to help make up for some of the gaps in the construction - I'm not used to imperial vehicles, and I can get away with all sorts of sloppy work on ork ones that won't fly here!

Looks good so far. I think the trick will be adding rivets etc to match the look of the kit bits (not that GW is very consistent about what is rivetted) so that the whole vehicle looks unified. The guns are fine, so long as you can mount them so they look like they can rotate upwards.

Is the top section large enough to hold a IG circular hatch? That could look good, unless your fluff is that the whole turret (and perhaps the whole rear compartment?)is filled with ammo and mechy bits.

Either way, some sort of radar dish and sensors would be a good addition to the turret. And some sort of hatches/doors on the hull back, either for crew access or ammo loading.

a new style searchlight with a magnet in the front where the lens would be, would work for the sensor dish.I have one sitting here unpainted in case you need close in pics.

I finished up the gun and designed it so that it would be reversible. I'm going to cast the gun and the ammo feed will be cast separately, so that I can put it on either side to make it fit the left or right half of the quad-cannon.





I also toyed a bit with the top of the turret, adding a hatch, a guardsman, and some simple armor plating. The 'sensor array', or radar dish, or whatever the hell that is on the normal Forgeworld model, will have an equivalent added on this thing soon, though I may change the design a bit.



Going to throw the cannon into the casting process, and in a day or two I should have all the copies I'll ever need of this gun.

Gun looks good. I am looking forward to seeing this completed.

I got off my ass this morning and made all the casts of the cannon that I'd need.



Please note that I haven't cleaned them up yet, as I couldn't find my good knife. There's a few things that need to be touched up here or there, but overall I think it came out pretty decently. The ammo feed/drum thing that goes on the side is being stubborn; apparently, the one I made was airtight, and imploded when I threw it into the pressure pot. The gun nearly did, as well! It probably would have if I hadn't filled it with a two-part plumbing epoxy while I was building it for strength. As-is, a little rubber managed to leak into my original gun's housing, but nobody'll ever know...

Wait, drat!

Anyway, here's my rough mockup:



I think it's looking pretty sharp. Now to go clean off the guns.

Looks great so far. I wanna see this bad boy painted and shooting down some eldar

Those guns look great! I am liking this a lot!

Sweeeeeet!


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Have you made any progress with your own marines? Salamanders I think....?

Ahh the wonders of casting. Looking like a hydra, good work as always

I don't know about that ein you could cast 4 for me.
or make a flakkadakka gun for your orks.

Fantastic work, really though.

Your guns are extremely convincing, I even thought you directly cast it when I skipped to the most recent images.

Now THATS a hydra! Love it, especially as a Guard player myself! If only I could find a use of it in my list, I'd reference yours
while building mine. Cant wait to see it painted!

Love it!

So over the past few days, I've had an absolutely ridiculous amount of interest in the hydra autocannons I made, which I find quite surprising and gratifying.

The amount of requests I've gotten shows there's obviously a market for it, but I have no interest in spending the next week making a few hundred copies of the thing.

With that said, I've talked to a buddy of mine in Texas, and he has generously offered to cast them en masse for sale, giving me a small percentage of the profit. We don't know what the overall costs will be yet, but an early estimate suggests it'll be something like $5 per individual gun assembly with ammo feed, or maybe $17 for a set of four. (Plus the cost of shipping, obviously).

I'm sending him the stuff for it tomorrow, so if any of you guys are interested in this, it may come about soon.

Wow that's really effective, well done man !

5 stars all round.

Wolf

Well done.

Your use of the 'forbidden arts' is impressive, most impressive.

jamsessionein wrote:So over the past few days, I've had an absolutely ridiculous amount of interest in the hydra autocannons I made, which I find quite surprising and gratifying.

The amount of requests I've gotten shows there's obviously a market for it, but I have no interest in spending the next week making a few hundred copies of the thing.

With that said, I've talked to a buddy of mine in Texas, and he has generously offered to cast them en masse for sale, giving me a small percentage of the profit. We don't know what the overall costs will be yet, but an early estimate suggests it'll be something like $5 per individual gun assembly with ammo feed, or maybe $17 for a set of four. (Plus the cost of shipping, obviously).

I'm sending him the stuff for it tomorrow, so if any of you guys are interested in this, it may come about soon.

Er...at the risk of bursting your bubble, you may have to make it without the eagle on it, due GW's favourite of IP infringement.....

if you do get the turrets cast, let me know, ill definatly pick up a set or 3.

InyokaMadoda wrote:Er...at the risk of bursting your bubble, you may have to make it without the eagle on it, due GW's favourite of IP infringement.....

I'm already aware.

jamsessionein wrote:

InyokaMadoda wrote:Er...at the risk of bursting your bubble, you may have to make it without the eagle on it, due GW's favourite of IP infringement.....

I'm already aware.

That wont be enough if you are selling the turret mount they are added to, that also has GW parts.

Also with the new quad guns from the fortress walls set for Planetstrike there will be plenty of Hydra bits about in just a few weeks. I intend to just as a quad turret to an armoured car for my Hysdra, and this looks like a simple enough job to replicate for a squadron.

Flakk guns on the other hand need some representation.

Nice gun rack... heh. They do look like proper bits imho. I am sure you and your friend will figure out the bitter legal details.

Awesome avatar Orlanth

Despite all the legal hassle, very nice work on the model. Props.

Shoot me a pm when you get the details figured out

I too am interested in the guns, so keep us up to date with what's going on.

I want one, the blood pact need more autocannons

Nice

Orlanth makes a good point, the quad guns from Planetstrike do appear to be autocannonish (from the few small photos I've personally seen), in which case they could make a pretty easy Htdra conversion.

Not to take anything away from yours though, Jam! But it could make a difference re your idea of casting quantities of yours

They (the turret from planetstrike) autocannons are about the same sized as regular autocannons (had a store rep do a demo for my club last weekend) - but in PS, they count as Hydra autocannons (so longer ranged).

yes the planetstrike building has a quad auto cannon mount and you get the awsome building to go with it for only $19.75 . Yours look awsome but to mass produce them if there not like 10 dollers a set people might just go for the planetstrike set .