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.

Thanks DBM, gonna check that link out in a lil bit.

You said you used the templates...did you know that the designer of the templates has said they are too small and need to be 40% larger to be "to-scale"? Just a heads up before you get too far ahead. For those of us that haven't built one yet, could you take a pic with a space marine or something or equal size for scale?

Amazing work so far. With everybody and their mother going titan crazy with Spendpocalypse lately, it's nice too see some different scratch builds bubbling to the surface.

The hoses add a good deal of detail to the front cowl, although I'm torn between picturing them painted up, or left in various neon drinking straw shades

The only visual cue that stands out to me as differentiating the two cardstocks is the wing thickness. The corrugated card gave the wings a nice amount of heft, as in "reality" they'd have tall, thin airfoil shaped ribs underneath the plating. If you can find a way to thicken the wings a bit I'd venture to say you wouldn't tell the difference between the two after filling edges and primer, assuming they both take primer similarly well.

Looking great though, keep it up!

@Lormax - Yep, I already biggerized the templates by 40% in the .pdf, although that's proved a pain when making my own templates for the body plates. I'll see if I can get a pic with a model for scale in the next couple days.

@Teek - Thanks for the kind words. The neon drinking straws are kind of fun, huh? It's all part of my secret plan to make Hello Kitty Thunderbolts. I also appreciate the comment about the cardboard. That's one of the nice things about a scratchbuild project like this - as opposed to a Titan where you make one or maybe two, these are easy enough to pump out a few of them, so I feel like I can experiment a little with materials and learn with every build to make the next one better.

I think what I may do with the next one is make it out of cardboard again, but instead of taping all the exposed edges at the end, I may tape all the edges immediately after I cut out the pieces and before I fold and assemble it - that should make for a cleaner finish and give me the heavier weight that I like on Serial 99.

So I sat here staring at your cardboard t-bolt for awhile, trying to think of some better way to seal up the exposed edges of the cardboard without ghettofying it with tape. Green stuff would kinda be a pain. What about hot glue? spackle? I forget what terrain builders use to fill in the edges...

As a brief update, while I feel like I did a bunch of work on this project today, I don't have much to show for it. I went to Home Depot and bought some more lawn plumbing hardware for the jets and went to the hobby shop to buy some 0.5 mm plasticard and metal tubing.

I also printed off my templates, glued them to some cardboard and spent my lunchbreak cutting out the pieces. After doing the last model in thin card and being able to cut out the pieces using scissors, going back to cardboard and having to use an exacto for all the pieces was a bit of an arduous process again. But those are ready to go. Next step will be to cover the exposed edges in tape prior to folding and assembling.

I spent a little time grinding off the logos on the plumbing pieces with my new grinding bits and attached the pieces to Serial 02. I also tried my hand at scratchbuilding a lascannon using the new aluminum tubes I purchased. I've got two more plastic lascannons I can use, and I'm not too worried about scratchbuilding the autocannons as they're pretty simple. But the lascannons are a bit fiddlier to scratchbuild and I wasn't completely happy with my initial fitting. I'll work on that more later.

My big accomplishment for the day was reconfiguring my body plate template so that I could have everything printed on one plasticard sheet instead of inefficiently needing to use multiple sheets. I'm quite pleased with the results. I printed off a sheet of the body plates on the 0.5 mm plasticard and started skinning Serial 02 with it. I still don't think it will ultimately have the weight that Serial 99 has, but using the 0.5 mm plasticard for the body plates instead of the 0.25 mm will give it more heft. And even though I’ve only got a wing and the secondary fuselage done, I’m already preferring how it looks over the 0.25 mm plasticard.

So here’s where we’re at:

- Serial 99 - ready to be primed
- Serial 02 - need to finish adding body plates, weapons, and tubing from engines to body, then it will be ready to prime
- New, unnamed cardboard Thunderbolt - pieces are cut out, need to tape edges, then start folding and assembling

I’m thinking that the new cardboard Thunderbolt with be Serial 44. I’m re-reading Double Eagle as I’m building these which is fun motivation. I’m pretty sure as I was flipping through the book that I saw a mention of Serial 44 as one of the planes, but other than a brief mention of Serial 02 as Jagdea Bree’s plane and a running plotline involving Serial 99, there hasn’t been too many other mentions of the tail numbers or names of other Phantine Thunderbolts.

Argh. I was working on Serial 02 last night on the couch, watching some TV, just cutting and adding body plates (which are looking really good), and somehow I lost one of the engine assemblies. Can't find it anywhere. Moved the couch, pulled all the cushions off. Everything. Granted, it's only a couple bucks worth of PVC plumbing, but still it's the principle of losing it!

Edit: Found the engine assembly on my desk under a box of gobstoppers....weird.

Lormax wrote:So I sat here staring at your cardboard t-bolt for awhile, trying to think of some better way to seal up the exposed edges of the cardboard without ghettofying it with tape. Green stuff would kinda be a pain. What about hot glue? spackle? I forget what terrain builders use to fill in the edges...

How about wood filler?

P.S. Can you send me the template? Or tell me where I can get it?

For the templates for both this as well as a variety of Titans, tanks and other great stuff, check out the BWC Archives, here:

http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/bwc-archive/?yguid=291073826

You'll need to get a membership to the group, but if you sign up for it, it takes about a day to get it. Then you've got access to a huge selection of templates.

Deathwish, pm your email address...I'll send em. I also have the Warhound templates, a drop-pod template and an eldar flyer template as well

Got to work on Serial 02 today and was able to finish adding the body plates. The rubber band and paperclip you see are there to help hold some of the more stubborn plates in place while the glue dries. I'm really happy with how cleanly this model has come out compared to Serial 99, although it feels positively flimsy by comparison. In fact, I'm looking for a way that I can post-facto add some strength to the body and wings, but I don't know how realistic this is. So, unless I can find a way to do that, all I have left to do on Serial 02 before priming is adding the weapons and the tubes from the engines to the fuselage.

Damn, that looks good. Brilliant work. The skinning really makes it convincing.

Once you've got it down to a science, may I suggest that you submit a step-by-step how-to on Bell of Lost Souls? Posted with the templates, that would be the coolest modeling article that anyone has done... um, anywhere. For a long time, at least.

Go go go DBM!

On Saturday, I had the opportunity to pop by two of my FLGS to look for bitz for my planes. While I didn't pick anything up at one, at the other, I spent about 20 minutes pawing through the store's bitz box and surfacing with 12 vehicle lascannons and an unpainted Baslisk crewman. When I brought 'em up to the counter, the owner charged me $3.50 for all of them. Well, $3.78 with tax. !!!! It makes me anxious to get on with other portions of my army for the chance to rifle through the bitz boxes for more cheap goodies!

Yesterday, I mounted the lascannons and scratchbuilt my autocannons out of aluminum tubing. I'm very happy with the results. Rather than the piddly, heavy stubber looking lascannons that came with the IG heavy sprues that I mounted on Serial 99, these suckers look like they're ready to tear up some vehicles. I also officially have a least favorite part of assembling these models - attaching the engine tubing. ARGH! Friggin' frustrating to get these to stretch and stick appropriately. I added the aquila to the nose and Serial 02 is now ready for priming.

Oh yeah, and that Bassie crewman? He's the perfect ground crew for my Thunderbolts. Check him out as an example of scale in these pics.



Here's a view of the front left with the nice, new scratchbuilt autocannons.



Shot of the front right with the new autocannons and ground crewman for scale (also shows the current bane of my modeling existence - engine tubing).



Finally, a shot of the crewman on the wing, so you get a scale comparison against the cockpit.

Next up for Serial 02 and Serial 99 - priming! I've also got the main body of the next Thunderbolt constructed. I went back to cardboard and I'm much happier working with it than the thin card. It's got a much more solid feel to it and allows for better gluing surfaces. And the heft of the model feels just right. Oh, I did find a solution for the floppy wing problem on Serial 02 - I took a couple lengths of sprue, cleaned them up and attached them under the wings for some additional structure. It feels better now, but still not as good as the cardboard.

I've got a little bit of a dilemma, though, as the hobby shop I've been buying all my plasticard from hasn't re-stocked any of their plasticard sheets. So, I've kinda bought out all of their sheets of 0.5 mm card and I still need at least 2 more sheets (if not more). I need to do a little research and see where else in town I can get some.

So, not only did I get Serial 02 and Serial 99 primed, I also finished off the next Thunderbolt and primed it, too. While I had hoped that pre-taping all of the pieces before assembly would solve the problems of how the tape on the edges looks, it did not. In fact, it resulted in some unexpected problems when it came to skinning the body with the armor plates. In trying to get a neat, tight seal with the tape in pre-assembly, I would compress the edge. At the time I thought, "It gives it more of a wing shape that way." Unfortunately, the 0.5 mm plasticard body plates didn't easily conform to the bends in the cardboard. Consequently, I had to break out the superglue to glue down some of the body plates on wing edges (and also resulting in me leaving some chunks of skin from my thumbs on said body plates).

I did, however, figure out a better way to do the tubing from the engines to the fuselage. Previously, I would punch holes in a plate of plasticard and glue that to where the tubes would leave the engine. Then I would glue the tubes in place in the holes in that plate, let them dry, then try to glue them to the fuselage. This often led to the tubes being pulled from the engines as I tried to glue them to the fuselage. I would then take another plasticard plate, punch holes in it, then cut it in half lengthwise and place one of these half sections over the top of where the tubes would enter the fuselage. What I did this time, was to glue the tubes in place first, then place half sections both on the fuselage as well as on the engine cowling. This simplified the process quite a bit for an acceptable loss in detail.

So, without further ado, here are the three assembled and primed Thunderbolts.



View from the top down.



View from the front.

I've used up all my plasticard sheets as well as all the plasticard from my nearby hobby shop. I know it's a simple matter to find another shop that carries it or ask this shop to restock, but I've been putting a lot of work into these guys lately and I need to wait for the skin on my fingers to heal from superglue accidents before I start building more. I feel like I've really got the process down pat enough that making more isn't a problem - I just need a little rest from these guys for a bit. I really want to start looking at building the other portions of my army now that I've got these built (220 points fully loaded - with 3 of them, that's 660 points of vehicle-stopping power for any Imperial list). I'd like to start buying the pieces to do the Tanith conversions I talked about back in this thread: http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/207562.page. I'm not sure how quickly I'll be able to progress on that front, though.

Thanks for everyone's interest and input in this process so far! I'll post more pics as I get them painted (although that's a much longer process for me than modeling is, so don't expect as frequent updates on that front).

When it comes to shading the edges of the panels, since you have actual gaps between plates, why not use a black ink wash to shade them? You could be fairly liberal with it since it would not pool in the middles very easily, and in a pinch you could just dab it off with a papertowel where you got a little nuts.
Otherwise, you could always just build up layers of thinner, lighter paint towards the center, but I am a fan of easy washes on vehicles etc.

oh man... i tought 1 was cool - this is 3 times cooler!!
i love the original plane from forge, and you sir, are doing it great honor!

gotta love that bulky ww2 Brewster F2Aish look...

Yeah, now my only problem is figuring out how to build an army around them...I mean, I'd initially built them for use in Apocalypse games, but now that I've got them, how can I not use them in regular games? Points-wise they're not that much more than a plasma-loaded Demolisher...Anyway, that's a divergence from the modeling nature of this thread - any comments on that can be directed here, to my thread on this in the Tactics forum: http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/0/208549.page#255083

Okay, I've been giving more thought to how I can keep the structural integrity of cardboard with the cleanliness of thin card. I was lying in bed last night when it struck me - double the thickness of the thin card. I'll print the templates on one sheet, then use spray adhesive to stick it to a second sheet of thin card. I'll cut them out and assemble them as if I'm using a single sheet.

Has anyone tried anything like this with their scratchbuilds?

That isn't a bad idea. I don't know if I would use spray adhesive though, it might not hold well enough. Something with a little more thickness might be a good idea, both to seal the little gap at the edge from the join, and just to hold better. I don't know, maybe having a gap at the front is a realistic thing? I don't know if thunderbolts have leading edge slats, but it seems possible.

I really like the way that they are looking. Personally, I prefer the way lightnings look, but these came out terrific for thunderbolts, which are probably more useful in 40k anyway. Are you going to model bombs or hellstrikes on the pylons?

How did you get the engine tubing in? It looks like a bendy straw, I'm guessing you cut off a little section of card, cut three holes in it, poked the rigid part of the straw through, then glued around the top and cut the rigid part off from the bottom. Was it a lot harder than it seems? I haven't tried it yet.

Have you given any thought to their backstory yet? I don't know what kind of decoration Imperial Navy craft usually have, but it would be cool to see the side numbers and the identification of owning squadron, ship, plane captain, and pilot. Plus, I doubt noseart 40,000 years in the future will be much different than nose art from sixty years ago. Cleavage....

I'm planning on modeling both bombs and hellstrikes and mount them on magnetic pylons so I can trade them depending on the loadout. I actually talked to a guy yesterday with a FW Thunderbolt and he was talking about magnetizing each bomb and hellstrike so that as they get used, he can just remove them from the model.

Bendy straws are exactly what I used for the engine tubing and it was a pain in the butt to do. I tried doing it in a variety of ways and the easiest was to glue the straw to the engine and the fuselage and then glue the plates with the holes cut around the straws.

As for the backstory, it's just a ripoff of Guns of Tanith and Double Eagle. I've been planning on painting these up as Phantine XX with their distinctive Double Eagle holding a lightning bolt on the tail, tail number in front of the horizontal aileron. No nose art on these ones - but I'm a sucker for the shark mouth which I think would look sweet on these guys and would go well with my plans for a Space Shark SM army.

So, after a brief break, I'm continuing to crank these out. I talked with some friends this weekend about the issues of structural integrity (cardboard) vs. neatness of the model (thin card) and one of them asked why I didn't make a hybrid model with some parts out of thin card and some out of cardboard. I started giving some thought to what parts I would want to use out of what material and decided it was a good idea. I broke out some cardboard to start building the fuselage (a box that my daughter's Duplos came in) and discovered an interesting (yet obvious) fact - not all cardboard is made equal. My daughter's lego box had much tighter corrugation than the previous cardboard that I had used. The cut edges reveal almost nothing. So, while I'd intended to construct a hybrid model, this latest model (Serial 25, I'm calling it) is a cardboard body.

I got through building the base body, though, and I still haven't picked up any new 0.5mm plasticard to use for the body plates. After a little thought, though, I decided - heck, I'll try using thin card for the body plates and see how it looks. I was very, very pleasantly surprised. In addition to looking as good as the plasticard, it was much easier to manipulate than the plasticard - it glued on and bent much easier than the plasticard does. Using the thin card body plates, I was able to whip through skinning pretty quickly.

From start to finish, Serial 25 has taken me less than 7 hours to construct. If I'd had the parts for the engine assemblies, I would have had this ready for priming in 7 hours flat. So here are the pics of Serial 25, so far. I'm going to pick up the engine assembly parts today, finish it off, and then throw some primer on it this afternoon.



Shot from the front right. You can see how the armor plates on the right side of the plane have the inside of the Cheerios box facing up, while the plates on the right have the outside of the box facing up.



Shot from the front.



Shot from the front left, including a close-up of the Cheerios box "wing art" - to be obliterated with a good coat of primer.

I'm really pleased with how this model turned out. I feel like this is the best one I've constructed yet. Because I was using cardboard with tight corrugation, I used more glue and less tape, making for a much cleaner, but still very solid-feeling model.

I like that cardboard, looks good. I have one concern with it, which I should have thought of with the other stuff as well...the cardboard "fraying" or seperating. Do you think the primer and final coat of spray varnish will seal it up?

Yep, I think the between the primer and varnish, there should be no problems with the cardboard fraying.

Man, it's really good of you to write up your building process in such good detail for posterity. It's also cool to see the more readily-available materials working out to be the ones that work best.

Do you have ideas on how to secure a good supply of that better-quality cardboard, once you're out of lego boxes? I guess you could just really spoil your daughter. "look honey, another 6 packages of Duplos! We'll just put them... um... in the Duplo closet. The very full Duplo closet."

And do any of the grognards reading this thread know about different specs of cardboard (like how it's classified), and how one would find and order a certain quality?

Finally, that wing art is hilarious. Kinda looks like Bill gates on the right there, but that could be an old lady.

Looking around the house, I've found some of that better quality cardboard in a new shoe box, but generally it does appear to be harder to find than the conventional stuff....add to the fact that today was recycling day, so some of my potential building material got hauled off.

I was hoping the wing art might be appreciated before I primered over it. I'm pretty sure it's just an old woman definitely not Bill Gates.

All I can say is holy wow! good job man makes my stuff look like a five year old built it.

Holy Crap those are amazing works of time and energy, I can't wait on trying to build my own. Double Eagle was a great book and I plan on modeling my planes based off them ( maybe Apostle Planes). Could you please send me the templates as well.

is it very strong, built wise. wouldn't card board make it fragile?

Man, if you'd waited another month or two it would have been a solid 1 year threadomancy!

No joke! Wow, this was the last thread I expected to see rise from the dead. If you're curious as to the playability of the models, PM Savnock - I've sold three of them to him. I'm not expecting to make any more any time soon, though, so I'll be having a Mod lock this thread.

Wo thats serious threadromancy.