Chopping up the Armorcast Baneblade; Blackadder's Heresy

[Blackadder]

Well I did it and I'm glad. Back in the days when my son was just starting out in 40K gaming we bought a tired old Armorcast Baneblade on Ebay and refurbished it. Although he was in ecstasy over it I was always bothered by the rather primitive design and the cranium sized rivets so after I replaced it with a Mars Pattern Baneblade (his fav not mine) I asked him if I could do a bit of a face-lift on the old relic.

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As usual my documentation is sporadic and there's a lot of pictures of the same thing. My biggest regret is not showing the step by step manufacture of the demolisher cannon which I am especially proud of. Casting new lascannons for the sponsons is missing but the actual barrel manufacture is available so let's get started with a battle board scene of the tank company and the hapless Armor cast Baneblade in her prime.

Here we see the victim in my favorite color scheme,

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Gray sandable primer with flat black accents.

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The Lucius Pattern Baneblade in the foreground is my favorite tank. I picked it up on EBay for next to nothing and it was a pitiful wreck with the treads glued on backwards and globs of glue and paint all over it. After I lovingly scrapped all the paint and glue off I pried apart all the pieces with surprisingly little breakage and reassembled. That project will be documented in another thread.


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Not too big on camouflaging Superheavy tanks as the true life dimensions are literally as big as my house so other that disguising it as a boulder there's not much point.

EB

[Blackadder]

First order of business is to get rid of the outrageous over-sized rivets

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and cut out the sponsons for a drum mounted pair of bolters.

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I find a razor saw and sandpaper invaluable in modifying resin models, also the resin does not hold paint very well so scraping with a dull Exacto #11 tip while time consuming will remove all the paint down to the bare resin.

EB

[Blackadder]

I take a rather dim view of the new GW Baneblade considering the bottom has dropped out of the resin Baneblade market. My hard won Forgeworld Baneblades have lost considerable value since the advent of this kit and I'm surprised Forgeworld hasn't protested this copy. LOL

I'll not be using any parts from the Baneblade plastic kit. Almost every thing will be cast or scratch built including the nuts on the bolt on bumper. Rivets are the easiest of all, I use various sized straight pins. Pins have the added value of anchoring the armor panels where plastic is glued on resin and at the scale we're talking a round head and a hex head bolt are too similar to be concerned about IMHO.

About the only bits I used are the various hatches and doors and vents mainly from Leman Russ and Chimera kits.

The chopping continues:

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If I had it to do over again, I probably would not have chopped up the turret as apart from the excellent mount lock design there was very little left of the original turret when I finished.

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I feel like Sweeney Todd,

The Blackadder

[Blackadder]

Time to stop my mad careering path of destruction and actually do something constructive.

Using industrial quality 'Met-all' epoxy I formed the rear storage compartments on the turret and by laminating sheets of styrene from the slat of a cheap Venetian Blind fabricated the front turret shield. The strap hinges are from round stock and blind material.

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The main gun is a gray marker pen and the secondary gun is scratchbuilt out of various sized plastic tubing. styrene blind strips formed the edge gusset strips and decorating pins for Styrofoam ornaments cut to length form the rivets. I'm more than a little irritated that I didn't document the fabrication of the front hull details. The forward viewport hatch approximated the one that is offered as a bitz from the chimera kit that I didn't know was available. I have the dubious knowledge that mine required a couple of hours labor. The headlight housings, armor, hatch with periscope, periscope forward viewport splash shield were all hand crafted from styrene. Flare launchers and winged skull are the only bitz in the picture.

Insanity thy name is Blackadder

[Blackadder]

I tried casting lascannons but the detail was too fine so I opted to make them from scratch. The lascannon turrets were cast from the Forgeworld turrets using latex rubber moulds which in themselves are very hard to make. If anyone knows an easy way to make latex moulds, I would appreciate the input.

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I had purchased a bag of mixed brass tubing scraps years ago at a hobby fair and with a razor saw and jewellers files a managed to cobble together a fair looking set of lascannons.

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The lascannon base was a piece of thin printer case material and the electrical cable the very thinnest styrene rod superglued together and inserted into a very thin brass collar. The cannon barrel and details were all superglued together (no soldering required) drilling an appropriate sized hole into the turret and supergluing the cannon assembly into the turret brought me to the stage pictured below.

An application of a thin coat of grey primer to reveal the flaws, revealed no flaws.

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Imagine that,

The Blackadder

[MaltonNecromancer]

I like this.

A lot.

The old Armourcast kits are goofy, but they're so accurate to the old Epic models I can't help but love them. Updating them is a really good idea, and it's looking good - those brass lascannon look excellent. You're also quite right about the insane rivets.

Great work so far!

[Meph]

Nice idea and execution mate. Looks good.

[Blackadder]

More shots of the detail

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[Blackadder]

TThe Armourcast Baneblade in her prime (r).
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EB