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At some point, i got myself a pair of chimera blanks - the sprue that just has the hull and the treads on it. This is great for making artillery, the back part of which I'm going to scratchbuild anyways, but there's a problem.

That chimera sprue doesn't come with the top hatch for the turret:



If I want to build a turret, I can do that just fine with plasticard, but what I can't get is the slightly domed shape of THIS BIT with anything in my skill set. At least, not consistently.

The problem is that apparently this is the one 40k bit that is absolutely not for sale anywhere on the entire internet.

So I'm trying to figure out what to do. I do have one of these hatches, so it's possible that I could cast it, but that would cost a lot and require a lot of time and futziness as I've never done anything with casting, and thus have neither the equipment nor materials required. I could also use a rhino cupola instead (the internet sells a lot of these), but the rhino hatches are about 10%-25% larger than the guard vehicle ones. Not only does this mean more futzing, but I'm rather concerned that they'll look out of place.

To make it worse, most of the newer guard vehicles have the bottom, more difficult part of this all (the rounded part that the hatch fits into) pre-moulded onto the turrets. Unless I want to put a russ turret on my artillery, this is a no-go...

I've been searching and straining for a month now, and things are starting to get time critical. Does anybody have any idea what I could do?

Redesign the hatch to look kinda similar but be easier to build?

Just use a hatch from the rhino/land raider sprue - sure it's a little larger, but just represents a battlefield modification/repair. In fact, it could even represent a special vehicle, e.g. a command vehicle

A Rhino hatch isn't a bad idea. Maybe sculpt it out of Green Stuff? Wouldn't be hard to lube up the hatch and press the Green Stuff down on it until it cures. Perhaps a Green Stuff press mold would work? I've not done one yet so I'm not sure what the limitations are.

Well if you don't mind shelling out a few $ for it, the IG vehicle accessory sprue has alot of excellent items on it that are absolutely great to have.


I mean $15 isn't cheap for JUST the hatch, however, if you had need of the rest of the items on there I feel it's worth it. I've bought them several times.

Simple: find a domed button the right size. Add rivets and handle and latches. Boom.

Plastruct makes domed plastic caps...

Their eliptical and dished dome caps are perfect for that sort of thing.

http://plastruct.com/picat/TUBING_FITTINGS_9.pdf

With them being hard plastic, you can use strip and rod to add the refinements like hinges and rivets.