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So, I was flipping through IA:A2, when I saw this totally sweet Kustom Ork Battle Fortress.



I was immediately smitten. Look at that thing! It looks like an angry fist, ready to rip through the lines of anything that stands in it's way. As I admired it, I considered. They don't make this kit, AFAIK. I can't buy it anywhere.

I thought some more.


I already have a Supa Kannon that I haven't built, as I had no carrier vehicle for it.

Dare I dream?


Could... could I build something like this?






No, probably not, I thought.

Well, barring that, could I spend a bunch of money on yet another project I won't complete?

Surely!

And could I post a worklog on Dakka Dakka, to which many people will view, and comment muchly upon, and then slowly become more and more disappointed as they realize I'm rarely able to finish my projects?








Let us begin!

So, I started with these here plastic I-beams.



I made a box skeleton using these. I didn't take a picture of this, so imagine this:



But....

Made of plastic.

Speaking of, I knew I'd need a lot of styrene for this. I stopped at Lowes on the way home, got 2 more loctite superglues, and one of these signs for five bucks. I did some quick testing and was pleased to discover, no prep needed, just cut and use - plastic cement has no problem welding it together even over the printing. .

So they I cut a tank side shape out of cardboard. Then I repeated it 5 more times, and glued them into 2 sides, 3 sheets thick, the whole time thinking I should have also gotten a sheet of plexiglas for another 2 bucks and saved myself a lot of sanding and gluing here.

So, I glued it together into this:



and here's a Mekboy for size reference:



OK, I'm up to the part where I make wheels. I started with wheels:



The top left is a tube made of solid aluminite resin, which I cast at some point in the past in case I needed rods that thick (that's what she said). The one to the right of it is the same tube, but adorned with rivets where rivets were, and a center bolt. The rivets are were made of water filter beads, but they came off when I demolded it. I probably should have taken a picture before I cast it, but... I didn't. So, pretend. The ones below it are actually the tops that came with my needle-free syringes: they come in single--serving syringe tubes, and the top flips off and you take the needle free syringe out.



You can get the syringes for 10 cents each if you buy a whole box on Amazon (and you should if you use resin, since it's a godsend for measuring without spilling your giant bottles), but I don't see the ones I got with those tops anymore: so maybe find a junkie or look for a soda bottle or something. The rest of the rivets are hex bolts from Tichy Train Group.

Once these were done, I made a mold of them.



That's the mold, yes. Once I made 3 more of those little wheels, I cast a lot more of them.




Like, a lot more. I figure I need at least 16 each, right?

Then I made this bogie:


And that's where I am right now - I need to get the bogies finished.

My original idea was the bogie would be 4 wheels, like so:



but now I'm thinking it might be too wide.



Looking at the Kill Bursta, which is pretty similar in size, I think a single wheel width + slightly offset bogie wide would work best. The treads will already be a little wider than on the KB, no reason for them to be almost twice as wide.

Can't wait to see how it turns out.

Also I learned something in this thread: Ouze has ink.

Looks pretty great so far.

 Alfndrate wrote:
Can't wait to see how it turns out.

Also I learned something in this thread: Ouze has ink.

I was thinking the same thing - impressive indeed!

What do you do in 'real life'?

Nice start on that beast. my scratch build supa fortress started out as a building and a landraider.

Aww, I got beat on the "ink" comment by two people

Awesome beginning to an amazing project, Ouze!

Alpharius wrote:[What do you do in 'real life'?

I'm an RJE operator for a company that makes farm equipment (think green and yellow). My day consists of watching automated jobs on a mainframe server that's older than I am, and if the job crashes (or more accurately, abends, for ABnormally ENDs) then depending on the job, I either do nothing, or restart it, or call an analyst in the morning and tell them, or call an analyst immediately, even at 3am on Thanksgiving (this actually happened). On a slow day I can watch 3 movies in a row (pausing only every 30 min to do a 30 second check), and on a busy day I'm going pretty nuts, but the former is much more normal then the latter - it's usually very quiet unless the network breaks. It's pretty cush all in all, but it is complicated, and now that I work in the day I'm getting way fatter because it's totally sedentary and there are tons of fast food places around here. I've worked here for 7 years, but up until to 2 months ago I worked doing something totally different (night helpdesk'ing) and my hours were 11pm to 9am - so nothing was open, so I couldn't just, like, have a giant ass sandwich delivered (which also just happened). There are increasingly rumors that we'll be able to work from home this year, something I'm truly hoping for, even though I know I'll probably just get even fatter, quicker.

I mean, there's a rib place 100 yards from my job. Ribs.

sonofruss wrote:Nice start on that beast. my scratch build supa fortress started out as a building and a landraider.

Do you have pictures of this? I'd love to steal all your best ideas see them and get some inspiration.

I cast a few more bogies last night, I should have 4 and I think I need 6. I'm going to go single width I think, with double wheels.

Also, I don't know if there is a better way to do this, but I'm planning on just, like, making a track by hand, then making 2 or 3 more, and then making a mold with however many pieces I made and recasting them until I have as many links as I have. If there is a faster or better way to do this, I'm all ears....

No picks of it for some reason the card reader on my laptop stopped working so the only cameras i have is an ipod touch or my blackberry that can't transfer anything i will try with the ipod tho.

Sure, even if the pics aren't so great I'd like to see them.

I just finished 3 treads and got them into a mold. I'll demold them in the morning and take pics then; I might try and make more then 3 links first. I had a 4th one but I kinda messed it up, it was the first attempt and I decided with all the effort I'm putting into this I'm only going to use the stuff that came out right, not the sort-of-OK halfass parts I make.

Also, if this winds up coming out quality, I intend to ask a mod to move this to the larger forums when it's done (or almost so) so keep that in mind if you don't want to post stuff. I thought I'd keep it here for now in case I screw it up or abandon it, which seems to be what Yak's post says this area is for.

Lol I don't have a prob looks like they came out ok and I will spoiler them so they don't bog down the page The tower comes off and yes it will easily fit 20 boys lol it could fit 20 mega nobs.
Put the wrong link in lol

Good idea (about putting it out in the larger forum) when it's getting ready!

Have you talked to Wehrkind about casting? He's my go-to guy if I ever need something cast and knows a lot of tricks. But the way you're going about it sounds like the right way to go to me.

Jeez, that's a pretty incredible battle fortress, sizewise. What did you use for the Deffrolla tube and caps?

So far as casting, I haven't talked to Wehr or Jacqualine or anyone since I'm only using simple, one-piece molds for this. I'm not a great caster, but I'm competent enough for that - it's double-sided molds that give me problems, and I'm not using those here and probably won't.

Here are the treads:



I had a bunch of errands to run today so I couldn't build any more original ones, but I did get out 2 casts of the 3 I did. I'm not sure how many I'll need in the end, I should probably figure that out at some point.

I also need to figure out more tread patterns to use.

Also, I might sand down those rivets on the sides of the treads a little, they seem to poke out a bit too much.

This is hot. Likin' it. I also concur that moving it out to the general forums once you're happy with it and ready for release into the larger world is a good approach. When I did my big "learning 6th" thread, I later re-posted some of the more detailed battle reports in the main forums with a bit of cleanup.

Yes, the purpose of the den!

Love those treads!!

The end caps are old jerky chew containers and the roller is 2" abs tubing need to get another pack of brass tacks to rivet it up and add the gun that comes on the GW deff rolla sprew to the tower.

Nothing groundbreaking today, just more slogging along.

I'm starting to be concerned I made the treads a little too wide.





If they aren't too wide, they're certainly on the outer edge of the "OK" envelope. On the other hand, after seeing that guy's double-wide rhinos, I'm not so sure, since the wide treads look pretty awesome on his.

I am considering doing something with the body to balance it out, though I haven't decided yet. The cab is going to naturally lengthen it a little anyway, and maybe I can put something in the rear to lengthen it even more.

Otherwise, I just made more links today. I made a new moldbox, and created 3 new links - only one of which worked out, the other were all misshapen somehow - and realized I could fit 4 in the box instead of 3, so I can bang out 7 at a time now. I also slightly rejiggered one of the existing ones, so I should have 5 unique tread patterns.

Wow, this is very nice indeed. I do like folk building giant death machines out of random.

Subbed w/ respect. I admire scratch build skills, and you have them aplenty. Looking forward to seeing what is coming next.

Also, regarding the ink- have you spent any time (military or otherwise) in a Polynesian / Pacific Rim location? Doesn't usually see Koa fish unless someone has.

It don't matter if they look wide an ork made them and that is how it is lol

My fingers are killing me.

I had done around, I don't know, about 20 track links and felt pretty good about it. So I did some math - 6.5" bottom, 8" top, and about 2.5 and 3" on the sides and determined that each side of "Daisy", after subtracting what the deck will cover, would be about 16" or so - 32" of track total. Since each link is about half an inch, I need 64 links, plus a fudge factor for the inevitable screwups.

Luckily I'm working 11pm to 11am tonight, so, like a boss,



With the ones I had previously made, that should be adequate.

I could have made a larger mold, with say, 10 links in it, and made it faster. That has it's own problems, though - I'm using Alumilite instead of Tap resin. Alumilite has some distinct advantages - it's cheap, I can get it retail here, and it's very forgiving on the ratio - it's about 50/50, but if you're off a little it's fine. The only issue is it kicks really, really fast. The Tap resin starts to kick in about 10 minutes or so and can be demolded in around 30 minutes, and can be sanded & stuff in around 45 min - it will be as rigid as it's getting. The Alumilite, on the other hand, starts to kick in about 4 minutes and can no longer be poured within 5. It can be carefully demolded in around 12 minutes and can be sanded & such in about 20, depending. Larger batches kick faster and harder - those big wheels started to kick within 3 minutes and were sandable within 12 or so minutes, there being that much more catalyst present. So, it was great for getting a lot of work done fast, but any larger of a mold and I wouldn't have had time to pick out the air bubbles with a toothpick before it started to kick. At home I guess I could have blasted it with a heat gun but with my crappy electrical infrastructure I'd probably pop a breaker, so whatever.

That brought me to another point - in addition to what's pictured, there are another 7 or so that I have in a baggie to test when I get home with primer. They're bubbly, and it's my fault. Some of you guys know about resin, so you can skip this part. If you don't know about resin, it's hydroscopic - it will absorb water from air. If it absorbs enough of it, it starts to bubble up and look like crap. At that point, the resin has gone bad and needs to be replaced - all resin has a shelf life when you open it. With my casting habits, this is usually about a year or so. You can extend it by, after using the resin, spraying a gas blanket inside the bottles to keep air off it, which I do at home.

Anyway, I poured out 30cc's of resin and catalyst into little medicine cups instead of using straight from the bottle (which have dropper tips). By the bottom of those medicine cups, the catalyst had absorbed enough moisture to (maybe) ruin the casts. I say maybe because the bubbles obviously go up, towards the part of the tread you can't see anyway - the bottoms look perfect. I'll prime them and see how they look; but one of my rules for this project was no half-assing anything and calling it good, so I'll toss them if the primer reveals bubbles.

Mostly this little essay was an excuse to use the word "hygroscopic".

 Skalk Bloodaxe wrote:
Also, regarding the ink- have you spent any time (military or otherwise) in a Polynesian / Pacific Rim location? Doesn't usually see Koa fish unless someone has.

No military, and no exotic travel. My dad was a big koi keeper, and so am I. I've kept them for about... 6 or 7 years, I want to say? I built a pond pretty shortly after moving to Iowa, where I finally had land with which to do so. Anyway, my dad died about a year ago, and I got that tattoo to commemorate him, since it was really the only thing we had in common (it was a really broken relationship, but that's a whole other thread).

Looks like the project is starting to... link together nicely

I love it when a plan comes together...

Really liking this so far! Are the cast wheels resin?

 SilverMK2 wrote:
Looks like the project is starting to... link together nicely

Be careful where you tread.

 Briancj wrote:

 SilverMK2 wrote:
Looks like the project is starting to... link together nicely

Be careful where you tread.

Please keep the thread on track.

Ermagawd! Ouze, this is frigging awesome so far

 MeanGreenStompa wrote:

 Briancj wrote:

 SilverMK2 wrote:
Looks like the project is starting to... link together nicely

Be careful where you tread.

Please keep the thread on track.

Hat trick! Well done.

 MeanGreenStompa wrote:
Really liking this so far! Are the cast wheels resin?

Yes, everything you see is either

A.) Styrene, cut from "No Parking" signs I got at lowes, or

B.) Alumilite, which is a kind of resin I'm experimenting with over my normal Tap Plastics Urethane. Again, I hasten to add that the kick times posted on those products totally don't match the reality I've seen: the Alumilite kicks a lot faster then the Tap.


I put in an order last night for some textured styrene - diamond plate, grille, corrugated. I'm getting ahead of myself, as I still have lots of structural work to do yet. I also got some clear styrene sheet for maybe some windows in the cab.

Ink- that's a way cooler reason, and I appreciate the symbolism in each regard.

Casting madness! You do really good work.