Welcome to (yet another) new segment for the blog. Joining such illustrous segments like Musings, Gallery and Tablebuild-posts is Skunkworks Project. This new set of posts will be chronicling slightly larger conversion projects / builds in more detail. Hope you, dear potential reader, might find this interesting and/or inspiring!
This build will convert a standard Imperial Guard/Astra Militarum Chimera into a Demolisher-turret armed Demolisher tank for my Autokrator-based Ordo Reductor army. And to give credit for inspiration for the rear-placed turret on the chimera chassis, look no further than here SandWyrms Converting Chimeras w. backset turret
Starting off, I assembled the tank in the four main parts as seen below in the first photo.
I had decided for a set back turret look for this build, so a bit of hobby sawing was in order (descriptive wording there). These cuts were made on the top plate of the Chimera as follows:
The first cut (use a razor saw) was in front of the second pair of telescopes around the hatch, bisecting the gun mount. This cut is to make the rear top plate/rear door part of the build the correct size.
The second cut was made across the plate at the front end of the forwardmost gun port. Advice: be as careful when cutting as possible, mainly to maintain a straight cut which will help in the next part of the build... Oh and razor saw + fingers can actually hurt!
Dryfitting time. The recently cut front part of the top hull is placed to see if it sits as far back as planned. Some plasticard is added to act as support for the front half to assist in fitting it to the rear part of the upper hull. This is due to the inner supports on the track units not matching with the top part.
To give the hull a straight line facing to the front, a piece of the upper hull needed removing. Sadly I forgot to be diligent and take enough photos for the measurement, but the link at the start of this blogpost has more info on that. The piece was gently cut away and the front was sanded. It was then affixed to the tank proper, and lined up with the rear upper hull.
After sanding all the rivets down and making sure it all sits flat, a new front was added to the upper hull, and a piece of plasticard added as a top plate at the front. A liberal amount of greenstuff was then added and sanded. The hole in the top is to mark where the hatch will go later on)
Textured plasticard was then added to the fron of the tank, as well as some more green stuff..
Further work on the front. More textured plasticard added, the hole for the hatch cut out and a fair bit of sanding done. The top piece of plasticard at the front is yet to be sorted.
Side view. The gun ports are filled in with a mix of spackle and glue then sanded and covered with greenstuff. A bit of detailing added to the rear, and the rivets and imperial symbols removed on the side of the tank.
After the sides were sanded properly, a piece of textured plasticard was glued on and cut to size.
No tank is complete without track guards! nor without a bolter, for those...boltery moments. The bolter is a mix of pieces from the Chimera turret and a hatch lid. The front plasticard was smoothed down at this point, and some etched brass left-overs added to the track guards to add some details.
Second photo shows the tank when a lot of cleanup and sanding had been done, and the demolisher turret was dryfitted.
With the tank cleaned from all the dust, some more detailing was added at the back end and then a coat of primer. The "white glossy bits" is only light reflecting on the black.
Hope this post served as an inspiration to build your own tanks. I will post a gallery once all my tanks are painted up!
//Nevindar
