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This has probably been done before, but here is an easy way to build a believable (I think) meltagun out of spare parts from mostly-useless Death Company bits.

What you'll need:

1. A bolter -- almost any bolter will do, but I need the Death Company bolt guns like I need a root canal, and there's 5 in the pack.
2. An inferno pistol. Some kits you get them from include Death Company, Sanguinary Guard and Blood Angels Tactical Marines.

A picture is worth a thousand words, so, here you go:





Essentially, I cut off the front of the Inferno pistol, starting right behind the first bottom ridge. Without anything else, that's the front of the meltagun. On the gun end, I cut off everything to the right of the barrel, and the targeting reticle. The two pieces fit perfectly, and if you allow a small gap, you can have a pleasing vertical gap that will match the original horizontal gap on the bolter. On all of the DC bolters, you will get to preserve the Blood Angels/Death Company iconography on the botler, as a bonus!

Then, you need to shave off the bolter magazine, cutting first to simply remove the clip, and then cutting closer, near to the trigger so that the drop is not as great. II notched it 45 degrees at the end of the block, to soften the squareness of it all, but this isn't necessary. I then cut the cylindrical device on the top right of the inferno pistol (inferno fuel cell?), cut off the little ammo lever on the bolter, and glued the fuel cell to cover it.

I used a little bit of modelling putty to fill up the original horizontal line in the inferno pistol, because it doesn't line up. I also used some putty on the top (you can't see this), and then a hobby knife to score it, to make the ring around the front part of the gun consistent and cleanly aligned.

Finally, I used a small, ridged hose to connect where the bolter clip used to sit, to near the start of the gun. I don't think this is, strictly speaking necessary, since combi-meltas don't have such a cable. However, I had spares from the left hand supporting the DC Thunderhammer, because (a) I don't think I'll ever use a thunder hammer on a DC and (b) even if I did, the power cable isn't exactly a must have. I think I'd put a bolt pistol in the left hand anyhow, as I typically hate crossed arms. Speaking of which, many of the converted meltaguns can be posed with a 1-handed meltagun, freeing up the other hand to display a chainsword -- again, the main reason being, this allows you to paint the chest area with the model built.

I hope you like this! Please let men know what you think of the finished meltagun Is it good enough to run WYSIWYG in one of your games?

Edit -- Oh yeah, Infernus, inferno, potatus, potato I always mix up what I call them and I didn't feel like going into the graphics file and correcting that I think they are all called Inferno pistols now?

Thats a fine meltagun, quite passable.

Although I think I'd just buy meltaguns from bits stores if I was short. Combi meltas... seem more worth while.

HairySticks wrote:
Thats a fine meltagun, quite passable.

Although I think I'd just buy meltaguns from bits stores if I was short. Combi meltas... seem more worth while.

Yeah, 3rd party bits are very convenient

I had purchased 4 deathstorm boxes, so I had all these DC parts, and the DC sprues come with a wealth of infefnus and bolt pistols (both left and right handed, yay), and of 5 BA themed boltguns. My thought was to take these parts and use them on a Tactical box to make Assault Marines (with DP / no JP), or use them with the DC upper torsos to make Assault Marines with JP.

I absolutely despise the Assault Marine kit. It ranks up there with the Command HQ kit as one of those old crappy kits with no interesting bits (not to mention, all the wrong bits). One of the reasons I decided to make BA my next army was because they have nicely themed tactical and assault sprues.

I have done close to that to give a bolter sister of battle a melta. So it also works with the bolters of one piece metal minis.

I couldn't agree more with you about the assault squads but then that's how I feel about the plastic catachans as well. They're so tired looking & only have a flamer, no melta, plasma, grenade launcher or even the quintessential heavy flamer. The only thing gw did very right with that kit (and very wrong with the Cadians) was the separate lasguns.

We used to do this sort of thing 15 years ago when the only plastic melta was on the Space Wolf sprue and the only plastic flamer was on the Tactical sprue and plastic plasma didn't even exist. Nowadays GW sticks in extra weapons everywhere... if you're short, you're doing something wrong!

Unless you play guard. Then your melta & plasma are STILL metal full models or forgeworld or it's bits sourcing &/or a converting you go.

Or you buy a full command squad to get one of each!

Really like this conversion! Looks good, and I personally prefer to modify instead of buy.