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First i need to give you a little background. I was building a Dark Angels army for small local tournament. Was planning on using a IG detachment but then realised that there might be some Fallen there. So i ditched Imperial Guards and added some mor Da troops.
I decided to put in Twinlinked Lascannon razorback. The only problem was i dont have the turret.

So i decided to quickly built one myself. I am inexperienced scratch builder (well, i can do some goblin stuff but you can't go wrong there). And i don't even have the materials (like styrene tubing).
So i wenttoon a short trip to hardware store and picked some materials there. I spend around 5€ on various bits but will only use a few of them. With visit to the shop and taking pictures around half an hour work.
Since i was looking for tutorials and never done one myself i said why not give it a go.

Here it is.
The materials and the process.
I still need to insert some guitar wire and do some details, but the basics are covered.
Two of them are because it's supposed to be twinlinked

I just realized that the chasis for weapons (from 1st picture) might also be used as a sponson or dreadnought arm.
Just need to turn the cannon for 90 degrees

What do you think, any easy improvements i could do?

I mentioned that those chasis could do as a dreadnought arm.

I tried it out and here it is:
Mortis Dreadnoughs with 2 twinlinked autocannons.
I could still add amunition drums,
maybe like the one at quad gun.



Its all hardware store parts, well except the actual dreadnought.

So what do you think? Should i work on it and improve the design or should i try something else?

Is it worth the effort?

Those are really nice! I would say that they could be a tad longer, but that's just my opinion. Overall, great work, so why not start work on something new, like a converted Land Speeder?

why Landspeeder?
I actually have 3 of them but don't remember when last i used some.
Maybe with the new DA codex...

that's the way of scratchbuilding I love: taking bits from household and workshop and suddenly - voila! It is a nice WYSIWYG conversion... Your barrels and mounts are great! I expecially like how you use the Fischer wallplugs: like every good hunter, you don't waste anything of your prey! I will definitely copy your approach, although I will probably cut some wood for the gun-casing.

Very ingeniouis scratchbuilds. Well done

well , since you live in europe , i will give you the benefit of the doubt that your hardware stores are smaller and dont have the items labeled on the shelves where they are located , but without you actually listing what the items are , or what they are used for , there is no way i can find them in a US hardware store the size of a walmart super center , and your great tutorial doesnt really help me .

How presumptuous of you...

You see I -could- assume that since you're American your school didn't teach you properly, which would explain why your post is full of gramatical and punctual errors. I am more inclined to think though that you just weren't paying attention during that particular lesson and that it's not the schools fault nor the fault of America.

How do you know what the "smaller" [citation needed] hardware stores in Europe are like? I would imagine that they are probably just as well labeled as any American store. Ok so Lacert didn't list all the bits he used, so what? As he said in the OP, he's never written a tutorial before so maybe he forgot. You could get off your high horse and use your own initative to draw a picture of the offending non labeled item. Then when you take it into your Walmart super center you could show someone in the store the picture and see if they know where to find them or even if they stock them.

 Snrub wrote:
How presumptuous of you...

You see I -could- assume that since you're American your school didn't teach you properly, which would explain why your post is full of gramatical and punctual errors. I am more inclined to think though that you just weren't paying attention during that particular lesson and that it's not the schools fault nor the fault of America.

How do you know what the "smaller" [citation needed] hardware stores in Europe are like? I would imagine that they are probably just as well labeled as any American store. Ok so Lacert didn't list all the bits he used, so what? As he said in the OP, he's never written a tutorial before so maybe he forgot. You could get off your high horse and use your own initative to draw a picture of the offending non labeled item. Then when you take it into your Walmart super center you could show someone in the store the picture and see if they know where to find them or even if they stock them.

then the point of making it into a tutorial is ?

and i didnt say i would go to a walmart super center , but rather used it as a SIZE comparisson since i know walmart has built atleast some stores in europe . if i took the actual piece to a walmart super center and showed it to an associate , God only knows what department they would send me to .

i would be going to a "home depot" or "lowes" , which are dedicated hardware stores that are the SIZE of a walmart super center . had you ever actually BEEN to a home depot , you would realize that actually getting a hold of some one to "help" you is your first challenge , and finding a store floor associate who will actually give you the right answer is an even bigger challenge .

just posting some pics and saying "i used some parts that i dont know what they are for" , doesnt help anyone else to actually build the project , especially for other people like the OP who dont have substantial experience at scratch building , so while it doesnt really "help" me , it does even less for most inexperienced modelers out there .

Wow that was pretty condescending.
The rifle parts are rawlplugs or plastic dowels, the mountings look like they are from the worlds cheapest draw fitting pretty nondescript though so i could be wrong.

if i would new the names in English, i would list them, but i don't even know them in our language.

I can take pictures in the actual store with names and labels the next time i go there.

I will try to give you some more useful info. The way i did it is i just went there and bought some things that looked like they would be of any use to me

The store i went to is called Merkur (http://www.merkur.si/). Is like home depot store, pretty big for our standards.

Most of the parts i used come from department that sells screws, washers, fisher wallplughs etc...

I will post the pictures again with the names (translated with google translate). I don't have problems with regular English but when it come to specialist names i simply don't know their equivalents. More so when the names are obscure even in our own language.

Going and taking those pics was going above and beyond. Great job.

I like this tutorial. Even if someone can't find the exact same part in their country, it's enough of a start to look for the right sort of shape.

Not bad, not bad. If you could get a nice "stuff you need" pic people could just walk into a hardware store and buy the stuff by showing the pic.

Those kebab sticks could be replaced with wire or some tubing to get rid of the wooden feel (also breakage).

Great job indeed!

Snazzy looking tutorial. I freakin' LOVE using things completely unrelated to the hobby.

Thanks for this!

Gotta go take a walk around the plumbing section of my local Ace...

Ignore the trolls on the thread mate.

You went above and beyond going to the store taking pictures, and those are lovely scratchbuilds.

Hell, I think you should make a Predator or something, entirely scratchbuilt. Good job!

How do you keep the wood from soaking up your primer and paint? I have tried using wood dowels like that on others things but it always looks terrible with paint on it.

I made an entirely wooden (balsa) Ork Titan, and I sprayed it with Glossy Black spray paint first before putting the primer and then the paint on

the thick gloss spray soaks into the wood and you can apply the primer easily later.

 Baldsmug wrote:
How do you keep the wood from soaking up your primer and paint? I have tried using wood dowels like that on others things but it always looks terrible with paint on it.

This i will have to work on. I did receive some tubes and rods from e-bay so i hope further projects won't use as much wood.
I have mostly build balsa wood fantasy goblin/snotling models and there weren't any problems as those were supposed to look like wood (and i did dip them, for extra woody look).
Actually thanks for the warning

Nice tutorial, you really went the extra mile to list out the components used.

Great tutorial... this should be of interest to anybody trying to scratch-build any vehicles of Imperial design!