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Hi all,
I started working on a scratchbuilt mixed-media Land Raider a couple of months ago, using Eli Patoroch's "Land_Raider II 2009" template.
It is built using paper, cardboard, bits of plastic, casting plaster, sculpy, apoxie sculpt and a couple of other things.

I've taken some liberties with the build: for example, the sponson-mounted meltas and thunderfire cannon designs are my own.

The build is complete; at this stage I am painting it. The original forum build log is over at papermodelers.com,
but I want to post a slightly cleaned up and condensed log on this and other sites.

Also, I'm new at a lot of this, so I'd appreciate some comments, especially on the paint job.

In the attached photos you can see the internal construction of the track housings, the plating on the sides, and the main body.

To make the tracks, I decided to build a couple of track masters out of card and plastic rod.
I then made a mold of these with caulking silicone.

Next I cast a bunch of tracks using Skullduggery Perfect Cast, and attached them to the track housings.

I built some iconography using Apoxie Sculpt, added the engine, cowling and smoke stacks, and added the headlights.
The cages around the headlights were made with some thin-gauge electric wire.

Built the hatches (a slight deviation from the Patoroch design), added the Mechanicus symbol and the radar dish.

I decided to forgo the original design's lascannons, in favour of multi-meltas, but I had to build these from scratch.

So I designed the body in OpenSCAD and unfolded it with Pepakura. The barrels are from popsicle sticks, I added some
vinyl tubing, and the skulls are Apoxie Sculpt, made from a press mold I constructed from a master.

The armour over the meltas were also designed in OpenSCAD + Pepakura.

The Thunderfire cannon is next; I made a housing for it, built the barrels from rolled up paper and added the barrel spacers.
There are some auxillary tubing around the barrels, I added cotton swab tubes for these.

All the rivets on the model are made from either cardboard punchouts or Sculpey, which I press fit into a piece of board with punched out holes.

The engine vents are made from pieces of index card and cardboard, superglued to a printout of the pattern, then
cut and glued to the body.

Next I applied some wood hardener to the entire model. This adds some strength to the softer pieces of the model, and
smooths the surfaces a bit. It goes all shiny, but this will be covered by the primer and paint job.

Then primed with gray spray paint, then pre-shaded with airbrushed black, followed by a basecoat of red.
The tracks got a brushed-on coating of black.

I realized that some parts of the unpainted paper was visible in the crevasses between the tracks and the body, so I masked the tracks off
and airbrushed them black (making sure to hit the crevasses), then brushed on gunmetal, and washed it with several coats
of dark and strong tone wash.

I then went and painted a bunch of detail, and gave it all a clear coat of varnish.

Right now some of the fine details (the aquilla, sensors and windows) are done, as well as the burnt-metal barrels on the multi-meltas,
and the blood gem on the main gun's raven. I've started on (a beginner's attempt at) OSL on the front headlights, these will have a bluish tint to them.
I still need to do a bunch of highlighting on the main body, and a bit of weathering. And of course the whole thing is still shiny from the
gloss coat I put on before this step - it'll get a good matte varnish coat after.

The main sore-thumb however is the two doors on the side. I got sick of the bleached bone / orangey color I started with, so I re-based them
dark blue, and then added a brushed-on pre-shade. I'm layering this with lighter coats of grey-white now, Then I have to
do the details: the raven gets a black coat with the blood gem, and the crown will be gold.

Here's the finished model:

That's stunningly detailed mate well done.

Just caught up on this project and am very impressed! Awesome work dude, a joy to see come together.

I think if I see this on table then I will think it is original one!

Nicely done. Could we get a size comparison vs a marine for this bad boy?