Converted Fellblade!

Finally!

This was a large project. I though that the Fire Raptor was tough, and in many ways it was, but not close to this. This kit is fundamentally flawed; things just don't fit and you have to be creative.

Let's take it from the top. This is a long story, and I took a lot of pics along the way.

Fitting the turret

The turret shell came in warped into an egg shape. Here are a few pics that show what I mean by that; there's a bulge on the turret's rear right. Compare the shape of the turret with the circle that's cut into the turret platform.

Now, pretty much all resin that came in this kit was warped in some way, but the turret is the problem. It's a thick chunk of resin and you can't really heat something that thick from the inside.

So I drilled a few holes along the edge that needed to be bent inwards:

After the pic was taken, I expanded the holes a little bit and made it one continuous hole. With that, I could heat the wall that was bulging out, push it inwards, and finally sand the bottom back into a flat surface. Here's what the bottom of the turret looks like now, you can see sanding marks:

Fitting the front of the hull

The front of the hull on Fellblades is generally bad designed. A quick google search will show you numerous problems with how the front plate fits with the wheel platforms sticking out.

I don't want to link to people fitting this wrong because that's poor form in the hobby. But feel free to look at any random Fellblade online, likely you'll see that something's wrong.

I really took my time with this and I think I figured it out. The top of the tank is too short for this to fit properly. The bottom of the tank is plastic and is therefore consistent in size, while the entire upper side is made in resin, and I believe, has shrunk a bit. So to fit the front upper plate, you have to move and rotate the front vertical plate a bit backwards, and then nothing fits anymore.

Anyway, I padded the front plate with some plasticard that I believe is 1.5mm thick:

With that, the front plate could comfortably reach to sitting above the front vertical plate, so it didn't have to be pushed back, so the wheel mounts sit flush on the model:

Converting the "small" weaponry

By small, here I mean the twin heavy bolter/flamer.

As discussed here, I decided to de-twin the weapon that's normally mounted on the front plate and house them in additional turrets, for cool reasons. Since 40k Fellblades may optionally take an additional heavy bolter/flamer, I decided to use the default weapon mount to house that additional weapon.

Some dremel work and presto: all magnetized, reversible heavy bolter/flamer.

The sponsons on the side were a lot more work. It took not only a lot of manual work to install, but I designed and 3D printed turret mounts as well. Let the pics do the talking:

After some dremel work:

I intentionally designed the door-shaped sponson inserts in two parts: the inserts themselves and the sponson guards. The reason is to be able to sand the insert perfectly flush with the side of the tank without the guard getting in the way, after filling all gaps with Milliput of course. Holes that pin them together were printed too, so after the sanding was done, I could just pin the guards onto the inserts and have a perfectly symmetrical fit.

Needless to say, all small weapon options are magnetized:

Finishing touches

The tracks come with Imperial eagles all over. Those are from the Drop Pod kit and look great. Alongside all the other bits I threw around, they really make this Fellblade more of a 40k model than a 30k model.

Was it too much? I don't think so. Remember that this is not only a 40k model, but one of a Black Templars-descendant chapter. Moderation is not welcome.

I drilled the main guns and all the exhausts:

That's it!

Some glamour shots:

Getting up to this stage took about 6 weeks. It's not the only thing I worked on, but considering I had to wait for 3D prints etc, it's about ok. I'm not going to start painting immediately, I want to get my airbrush-fu to a higher stage first. I might basecoat it first just to be able to see any surface blemishes or seams that I may have missed.

If you're still reading this, thank you. Hope if was interesting or useful!

Monolith Conversion w/ 3D Printed Parts

Hey,

I had this one ready to go for a very long time, but I didn't want to work on it before finishing Praetorians. Now with even more 3D printed parts!

I designed four parts: the panel on the front side, the inside parts of those four columns on top, the crystal itself, and the inside of those three-column things that normally sit on the side of a Monolith.

The front panel was simply an attempt at making the normal panel look more interesting. Typically you'd see Necron symbol stickers applied on the sides of that panel. I had mine 3D printed with actual Necron symbols as I don't use stickers.

As a sidenote, the front panel is black because I was trying out a new material - Shapeways high def black plastic. The result was streaky, slightly bent, and with artifacts on the rear side that needed sanding. I'm not impressed.

As for the top, there's a lot going on.

First, I didn't want my Monolith to be as tall as they are normally. I also hate the tall rear column that comes with the model - it's hollow and it shows. To solve this, I used the (shorter) three column setup in the back, and converted a two column setup on the sides. I rotated the roof by 90 degrees to make this work. I think it looks better; the Monolith looks less tall, more bulky, and it exposes the roof of the model nicely.

Finally, to keep the rear columns from being empty, I modeled a pattern you can normally see on the wings of a Necron Scythe:

Here's the pattern I had on my mind designing it:

As you can see, I missed the length of these parts by a big margin. They're about 3-4mm too short. I could compensate with sprue bits, use a lot of miliput to make that shim seamless, and it looks good now.

The roof is typically bland and empty for this model. To compensate, I designed the columns that face the middle on the roof and a custom crystal, all with way more details than the stock model. The columns now have vertical rods that I'm going to paint to be fire hot, with two "hoops" that hold them in place and expose two small ports.

The crystal is identical to the original in size, but is surrounded in a heavy metal looking circle to keep it in place. This metal is engraved, and has ports on the bottom facing each of the four columns:

I have rubber rope that's exactly the right diameter to connect the crystal to the columns. That's going to look so good when it's done. I'm not doing that before I'm done painting however.

All these white parts I had 3D printed on Shapeways, using their Frosted Ultra Detail material (the some one that was used for snake tails for my Praetorians).

Finally, I made the model mountable on a flying stand:

It levitates at about 3" above the ground. This is a good height for it, and of course, it can be used on the ground.

I did not use the stock Gauss weapons because, frankly, they're too big. They make the model look a bit goofy. These small Gauss weapons make it seem bigger, bulkier by comparison. I used Destroyer weapons to accomplish this.

And, finally, I drowned this model in Milliput and have been sanding for days. This model is awful! Nothing fits together, I've been filing and sanding for a week. It's ridiculous. I don't see myself making a second Monolith.

But I'm in love with this one!

I think that's about everything. I'm still thinking about how to paint it - where do I use dark grey, where do I use light blue. I don't think I have much of a choice, to be honest, but we'll see.

Anyway, here are some other pics I snapped while working on the model at various points in time, and thanks for looking.