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Cable wrote:Awesome conversion work!!!

Can you post photos of how you did the interior rhino doors? (do they swing open or slide?) Thanks.

Nothing so exciting I'm afraid. I just cut the inner doors clean away!

Used this tutorial as the basis of the build, struggled with the hinges which is why I went with the L shaped pins in the end...

http://www.bolterandchainsword.com/index.php?showtopic=122281

Exhaust armour added, then had to reposition the sponson magnets as the extra armour pushes them out further from the body. Quick cut, added a piece of plasticard and re-glued...

Nice job upgrading that armor! I was thinking of doing something similar with a rhino I've got, but you've executed that perfectly!

Ooooooo! Me like!
I haven't seen a lot of platicard wips on the site, and would like to see more. Good job!

I've never used a Rhino before, but is it possible to just stick a giant cannon on top of one and a few side-sponson weapons and call it a predator? (assuming, of course that they are the proper weapons.)

Cave_Dweller wrote:Nice job upgrading that armor! I was thinking of doing something similar with a rhino I've got, but you've executed that perfectly!

Thanks! I think they're looking good as well !

obi-wan34 wrote:Ooooooo! Me like!
I haven't seen a lot of platicard wips on the site, and would like to see more. Good job!

Well, if I go with the scratchbuilt Thunderhawk, Dakka Dakka may end up drowning in plasticard off cuts !!

crazypsyko666 wrote:I've never used a Rhino before, but is it possible to just stick a giant cannon on top of one and a few side-sponson weapons and call it a predator? (assuming, of course that they are the proper weapons.)

I guess you can do whatever you want, as long as your opponent agrees to having the piece as 'counts as'. I would imagine that given the history of the 40K 'verse, there must be plenty of variations on the Rhino chasis?

Here's some shots of more WIP - been magnetising everything in sight. I love magnets !

Predator mode


Close-up of magnetised turret hatch


Top plate removable to enable change of vehicle designation


Rhino mode, with turret hatch moved to front hatch


oops, forgot to put the extra armour on for the shots...

What happened to the hinges on the roof hatches?

This is such a good WIP log, and great work on the extra armour, it looks so well made. How do you cut your plastic card?

That is some solid work! This gave me loads of inspiration on how to magnetize my tanks!

I was mostly wondering (in my previous post) if the bodies were the same. Great job, anyways. That armor looks great and natural.

whalemusic360 wrote:What happened to the hinges on the roof hatches?

LOL, good spot - that was a result of experimenting with different hinge systems, but went a bit wrong on these and I ended up chopping them totally off ! Will be remodelling them at some stage with some thin plastic rod.

tipios wrote:This is such a good WIP log, and great work on the extra armour, it looks so well made. How do you cut your plastic card?

Cheers. I have several approaches to working with palsticard and also depends on the thickness. Sometmes I score the plastic part way then snap off, especially for the thicker grade. With more intricate shapes I'll drill pilot holes then score with a sharp blade. For quick cuts a sharp pair of scissors or side cutters are just as good.

All edges are smoothed with needle file and fine sandpaper, this gets rid of the bur from cutting with a blade and also gets rid of any bumps or mis-cut. Always glue together with plastic glue, not only does it make for solid joins but can also be used to fill gaps.

Another way that I haven't used yet is to get a fine fret(?) saw, these cut in any direction and can easily handle tricky shapes. I'll be investing in one of these soon and will show the results.

I have also in the past experimented with a Dremel and cutting disc, but didn't like the results

c0un7_z3r0 wrote:That is some solid work! This gave me loads of inspiration on how to magnetize my tanks!

Cool, glad it's inspired. Magnets are great !

crazypsyko666 wrote:I was mostly wondering (in my previous post) if the bodies were the same. Great job, anyways. That armor looks great and natural.

Ahh, okay. Yes it's all from the same basic body style. Many people suggest that you never buy a basic Rhino but always go for a variant as you can magnetise and have multiple styles of tank for the price of one. My Rhino was bought as a Rhino, I got it on eBay and a lot cheaper than buying new, only problem was it stunk of cigarettes, so had to leave the sprues outside to air, then wash all the parts in warm soapy water to get rid of the smell !!

I love the extra armour - looks fantastic.

That pred looks really good. great work.

Thanks for the info, and can't wait for mor pics

Not really an update, but the 3mm blue LEDs arrived today, only ordered them yesterday www.phenoptic.com Great service, highly recomended...

Going to do a test fit once the batteries and holders turn up (running from 3v coin cell batteries). Also need to go raid the garage and see if I can find my old soldering iron, think it's been in a box for the past 15-20 years as I haven't used it since my college days.

In the meantime I was looking at weathering techniques for tanks and found this excellent video on Youtube.




Dear Santa, if I promise to be good for the rest of the year...

I'm sure this would have been posted before, but it's still epic...

Update time...

Cut a hole for the battery access (using a CR2035 3v coin cell battery and holder) to power 3mm LEDs


Made a housing for the battery holder out of plasticard. Battery holder contacts stick through for wires to be attached




Battery holder in place (top)


(bottom)


Next job will be to locate the on/off switch - this will most likely go next to the battery compartment, although am just waiting on the on/off switch to arrive in the post and not really sure how big they are until they do!!

Update: switches have now arrived, bit bigger than I thought they'd be, but still okay to fit next to the battery holder. I'll recess them slightly so there's only a minimum of the switch poking through the base of the tank.


Switch in place (not glued yet)


View from below

Ha, that Youtube video of the Rhino is classic! May not be the best looking Rhino out there, but still awesome. Who owns that thing?

I love the way you are customizing the Rhino, I have always thought that they should look more beefy. Now you just gotta get them painted!

_Tim?

Some_Call_Me_Tim? wrote:Ha, that Youtube video of the Rhino is classic! May not be the best looking Rhino out there, but still awesome. Who owns that thing?

I love the way you are customizing the Rhino, I have always thought that they should look more beefy. Now you just gotta get them painted!

_Tim?

I don't know for sure who owns it, but THQ and GW commissioned a company called Tanks-a-lot to build this and based it on a British FV432 troop carrier. Wonder if it's parked outside GW HQ ??

Yeah, the painting will need to wait until I buy a good airbrush and can get the hang of using it - really want to do a top notch job on these models. Gonna be delayed further though as I was playing around today and managed to break the hinges on one of the Rhino side doors clean off... Now have to go back and fix this up - might even add some extra plating on the bottom of the doors to make them stronger...

Really Cool! I always wondered how people magnetised Rhinos and Preds..... But nice work!

Ruglud wrote:Not really an update, but the 3mm blue LEDs arrived today, only ordered them yesterday www.phenoptic.com Great service, highly recomended...

Going to do a test fit once the batteries and holders turn up (running from 3v coin cell batteries). Also need to go raid the garage and see if I can find my old soldering iron, think it's been in a box for the past 15-20 years as I haven't used it since my college days.

In the meantime I was looking at weathering techniques for tanks and found this excellent video on Youtube.




Dear Santa, if I promise to be good for the rest of the year...

I'm sure this would have been posted before, but it's still epic...

No sir, if it was epic, it would be much smaller!

@chuckwilliams LOL

Update time, and a damn fiddly one at that. Have been adding rivets all over the Rhino's extra armour plates and boy where there a lot to add. Rivets are the tiny balls from a water filter that had been hanging around the kitchen for an age, drilled a shallow hole then super glued them in. Pretty mind numbing, but the results look good and luckily there will be a lot less to do on the Predator armour.







Next up will be adding rivets to the Pred, then spraying some primer over everything to see if there any rough edges or filling needed

I've heard about using water filters and consequently I passed on the info but I'd never actually seen it done before now. I'm blown away but how good the scale match is for them. Great work buddy a really top notch model coming together here.

I look forward to the pred with bated breath.

Just to note that not all water filters contain them - I desperately waited for the filter in my water jug to need changing only to discover it does not contain the nice round beads, but a kind of gritty/gravel type stuff.

I am however informed that the Britta filters have them in.

Excellent, I use Britta anyway, you kind of have too in LDN the water here sucks.

@Ruglud - did you file the tops of the beads flat or did you leave them rounded?

@LennySmash, yeah, the rivets look good in the 'flesh' although I reckon will look even better when some paint's been applied, hopefully will get the pred armour done in the morning before heading to work in the afternoon...

For now I've just left the beads round, hadn't thought about flattening them but will take a look once I've put a primer coat over the lot. I find that a good constant colour shows up any imperfections nicely.

@SilverMK2 - Yep, It was a Brita filter that I opened and inside was thousands upon thousands of tiny beads and a mixture of really small to really, really, really small. Mixed in with these is small pieces of what looks like charcoal, might come in handy at a later date for bases?? I reckon there'll be enough beads in here for a lifetime of riveting riveting (it's actually quite tedious process !!)

Cheers,
R

Update is amazing) after reading I cut open my brita filter, I now have a million tiny beads, and have a chaos lemanruss I needed to add rivets too, but never new how I was gona do it. I heard you could use brita filters but have never seen it done until now. Thanks alot Ruglud, this is such a helpful blog I love it The Rhino looks really nice.

@tipios Glad to have been a help and good luck with the rivets.

My only advice is to drill a very shallow indent where you want the rivets to go then use superglue by applying with a needle (need to squirt some of the glue out onto a flat surface like an old jar lid or an old blister pack).

Another option is to drip some plastic glue in the indent and allow the beads to bond when the plastic melts then resets - the beads wont melt, but if the hole is too deep they might sink in and you'll have to redrill.

I've tried both methods and they're equally effective but would say you might want to have a practice on a scrap piece of plastic to get the hang of it.

UPDATE:

Rivets added to the Predator armour - used the plastic glue method as described above (the armour is not yet fixed in place)



Next steps... Apply primer to both tanks, spray the battery compartments black, assemble LED lighting

Cheers,
R

Looking really good dude. Can't wait to see more.

Ga.

Got a bit lost on the off-topic forums and my modeling time got sucked away into the void, but I'm going cold turkey now and getting back to this.

I've got an airbrush and compressor now but need to get some good quality paints so have decided to move to other minis in the Space Marine Blog.

Here's the first, an AOBR dreadnought. Constructed it last year and undercoated it, it looked a bit plain though so I'm going to add new elements to him. It isn't going to a Venerable or Ironclad but I carried on the armour theme and andded some plates. Also a smoke launcher and spotlight. I may also do something with the power fist, but haven't quite worked out what yet. Oh and I'll also drill out the flamer barrels