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Welcome to PaddyMick's Chopshop, the semi-legal 40K vehicle garage where I will be carrying out conversions with alternate and official 40K vehicles.

First on the chopping block is a Hades Breaching Drill I didn't want to pay Forge World prices for. Here's the official model. Mine's the Desert terrain version innit.

I am part-way through the build and need to add bits to the side, like pistons or something.

Bits used so far:
a 1/72 armourfast tank chassis I bought by mistake
Balsa wood
Raumjager Infantry model with arms and control panel from a Goliath
Goliath Rockgrinder blades
a couple of spare tank bits
Ice lolly sticks - these may feature in a few conversions as I like to eat ice lollys













I have enough parts for 2 so i'm starting the second one now





I bought the Goliath kit for a future project - it's going to be a Trukk in a Blood Axe warband, and it may also be the gift that keeps on giving, as I'll use the Incinorator gun to make a Hellhound, along with these bits - a 3d printed apc, lego technics wheels and moar lollys.



I've used bits like this before for a Desert Pattern Taurox



....and finally for now, here's a glimpse of that future ork project

Great looking vehicles here!

Thanks Gwyn

I forgot to mention i'm also working on a squad of scout sentinels using Robogear kits:



I've had some modest success with this line of models before, for armoured sentinels:

Welcome back to the Chop Shop.

Here are the two ready-to-paint Hades Breaching Drills, with added pistons and tanky bits. Also pictured are a couple of the Combat Engineers, the sappers who use the drills to assault enemy fortifications.

Here are the completed Hades Breaching Drills

Great work all around!

I love the Robogear kits- have done couple of projects with them and saw the natural use of the T-rex walkers as sentinels, but could never get going doing something with them; your project has given me some ideas to get going with. I've done up a couple of the Tehnolog tanks and one of the 'monitor/guardian' tracked things- lots of fun and they used to be cheap.

Wasn't sure t first about your Hades Drills- but man, did they ever turn out good in the end! Nice adaptation nd the weathering and general grub to them makes 'em look properly well-used.

Rock on!

Some really imaginative stuff there, very nice.

Cheers guys! i'm never sure how these things are going to turn out but i'm happy this time.
Re: robogear kits, yeah they are awesome, i'm gonna use the rocket launchers for a Manticore soon. When I say soon, probably next year or when the Guard codex gets released and I get inspired again.

Got a few conventional marine vehicles to paint up now, but will be getting round to starting the Ork project after that.

Many thanks for reading

Those came out really good! Well done mate!

amazing from what you started with. Looking forward to future instalments.
Btw, you have a place where you post about your reclaimed marines? You planning to do it here? Maybe?

 jeff white wrote:
amazing from what you started with. Looking forward to future instalments.
Btw, you have a place where you post about your reclaimed marines? You planning to do it here? Maybe?

Cheers, yeah, I did a showcase thread at 1000pts,Broken Skulls is the name of the custom chapter now. I'll update it soon I reckon 'cos I've got loads more done and on the way. It's 'cos of that project that this thread ain't been updated in a while, there's loads of vehicles but no conversions as such, just bodging rescues.

Those drills are great and the sentinels look like modernized/enhanced versions of the egg walking egg sentinels of RT!

Are you planning to stick to ground vehicles or is something like a converted Valkyrie in the mix?

dangerously interesting blog, on the horizon !


change , course ! its there !





Automatically Appended Next Post:

"sir, i spotted, here

"some, really cool conversions,


i cant belive it ! i only heard, about such,


marvels,





Automatically Appended Next Post:


well, i think its a good introduction to a latest idea that i have


"a galactic spaceship, unaware of the danger ,

has reached the aeldari borders of galaxy, and


didnt notice the time gate, where Eldar was making time experiments,



tricked with marvelous visions, and wonderful potential gains, from the

unexisting dimensions,


the Imperial, "Supera Gold" , has caused a small collapse,


from the time gate, on the next , boundary has emerged


- Reptilian race , inventors , who was driven with reptilian god wisdom, of taking over, and incorporating,


the scanners, that Reptilians was using, right after they reached the, dimension,


has caused the "Imperia super galaxy ship, to panic reactions,


and,

in result, the Evil sorcerer , ship was contacting , the nearest, (...)



"the next result of this, unfortunate journey,


was, a whole tribe of devilish evil,


that appeared on the planet ,





Automatically Appended Next Post:

"oh, i know, that GW simply hates to ,


produce some dwarfish size, gnome like models,


i just suppose, that for balance a Reptilian , could be supported,


by, Evil sorcerers and,


possibly, an evil hellish diabolic monsters



but , mainly i'm thinking about some gnome-like soldiers,



whatever this idea would become, i think - its cool

Pass that reefer, dubman
Sounds great mate go for it

@Valhallen, no plans yet for flyers, but i'll have to have a think on that. The next stage of this project, after the stuff mentioned above, will take me into 2023 I reckon. I'm adding sandrunner cavalry and mounting my general on a giant sandworm.

Biggest vehicle in the army done is a Crassus, from an Aliens APC 3d printed prototype for a kit this guy on ebay was building, cost about £20, not muching conversion needed, but plenty of dollar saved.



Also quite pleased with the Leman Russ, from american korean war tank kits, bulked out with 2 cassette tapes in cases in the middle

Wow) You, my friend, should continue! It seems to me that you will even have your own, recognizable style)

 Massive_Damage wrote:
Wow) You, my friend, should continue! It seems to me that you will even have your own, recognizable style)

Thanks mate! Looking forward to seeing some more of your stuff too, especially if it's orks.

I have loads of half started Guard stuff still to do, but could not resist jumping ahead and breaking ground on a new project. This is the big one, my dream army from when I was a kid. It's mostly RT era space ork infantry, but there are a few vehicles, and I decided to start the project with a trukk boyz mob so I could get some time in the Mek's Workshop.

Goliath as trukk looks good.

I put the orks on hold to get ready for a GT with Guard and came away thinking I need to change my list, so I am making different turrets for my taurox and building 3 more. The plan is to eventually have 6 that can count as any chimera or taurox chassis vehicle.

Here's a completed manticore and chimera and some works in progress. Chassis is a 3d printed modern apc, bulked out with lego wheels, lollipop sticks and rockets are robogear.

Progress on more chimera chassis.







I built three scout sentinels from Robogear kits. Roll cages will be added after painting so I can get at the pilots, who are half robogear, half iron core and half raumjager infantry. The big guns are from leftover bits that could count as multi-lasers or auto-cannons, and are magnetized.







***yep I only realised after taking these pics that the legs are backwards on one sentinel, so i'll have to get the hacksaw out and re-adjust - that's why it's called the chop shop!***

BONUS PIC

I needed to give my assault squad jump packs but didn't want to spend any money, and the official ones aren't very graceful, so I chopped up a normal power pack and added my favourite building material.

_Love_ seeing Robogear and Tehnolog bits being used in conversions and yours are great!

Interesting mash-up of parts for the Sentinel pilots too, very nice looking from the pics you've provided.

I like the jump packs too- back in the day (late 80's) everyone was constrained by a) no money and b) no kits: things like Rhinos and jump packs didn't exist yet. Nice, simple, realistic within the confines of the game conversions you've made there.

Rock on!

Thanks Meer_Cat. The Wargames Atlantic kits are great, I used them for all my infantry.
I do remember the days when neccessity lead to creativity and since coming back to the hobby I find that it's still just as much fun.

Some painting progress, and I realised I needed some lasgun arrays for the chimera. I have magnetized them with magnets in the hull and strips of metal from a baked bean can lid on the lollipop stickgun mounts. Guns are from the Iron Core kit.

I need the guns on the sentinels to be Heavy Flamers, so I glued a plug fuse to each one to look like a prometheum tank. The barrel kinda works as a flamer too, I like it.



I knew burnt out plug fuses would be worth adding to the bits box. I think only the UK uses them though.

nice work on those vehicles, I particularly like the grinder track ones.
I would suggest to try adding an extra layer of smaller details, such as little screws or actual GW bits to finish some of the areas and not leave too many flat/untextured surfaces.
You did a good job on the rhinos with the wheels, although I find the wheels design a bit too toy-like, but interesting nonethelsess. Before adding the details I would have sanded the surfaces, since it clearly looks like a 3d printed model. Maybe you make it work with some interesting weathering and painting

Cheers Killatores, that's interesting, I never even thought about sanding them down to get rid of the lines. I won't be doing to these as they are already nearly done but I may try it on the next 3d printed stuff I do.

 PaddyMick wrote:
Cheers Killatores, that's interesting, I never even thought about sanding them down to get rid of the lines. I won't be doing to these as they are already nearly done but I may try it on the next 3d printed stuff I do.

You an probably use milliput to fill the surface first, and sand it after. Its work, but I would say it would give a better final result.

The heavy flamers look neat- I'm stealing that idea!

'Sfunny, it never occurred to me to try sanding 3d printed pieces down until Killatores mentioned here, and now it seems so obvious. I had a bunch of printed wall sections that were supposed to be stucco and the print lines just didn't work. I tried smoothing them out by 'painting' white glue on them, but that wasn't terribly successful. The trick of smearing milliput on and then sanding smooth sounds like it can't miss, though, looking forward to trying it out.

Age old trade off: Print at finer resolution and take a lot longer or print faster with a rougher surface at the end.

Great addition to your Sentinels!

Nice one Meer_Cat

Here's the whole batch I was working on laid out ready for varnishing. I'll take a break now but will hopefully get an army shot before the RTT i'm playing with these guys next week.

Here's that army shot I promised, taking these guys to an RTT tomorrow.



Next thing for me will probs be marines but this i'll post again when I do more work on those ork vehicles.

These are looking great, Paddy! Always cool to see an army shot.