Snowmobiles

[Moghal]

First tournament coming up, and I didn't want to turn up with a completely bland army, but my painting skills have never been particular spectacular... however, I've never even attempted a conversion before. So, job 1 was to green-stuff up robes for Sammael's legs in his Landspeeder, and a cloak for Belial to make him stand out - first experiments in green-stuff a relative success.

 

So I started to think about the next step, and this is what I came up with. It's as simple a conversion as I could think of, replacing the wheels on a Space Marine bike with skis on a frame.

 

Materials required: -

Space Marine bike (I've used the Ravenwing variants, but I don't believe that there's anything required that isn't on the normal sprues)

 

That's it - but don't throw away the sprues!

 

So, step one, cut away the two halves of the front mudguard, angling the cut along the surface of the mudguard. File down the burrs, and snip away the parts of the wheel-hub.

http://i807.photobucket.com/albums/yy353/Moghal/IMG_0572.jpg

 

Glue together the halves of the bike, and the mudguard. You can trim down the remnants of the front forks if you want, they won't be needed, but I don't think they'll get in the way. I got rid of them.

http://i807.photobucket.com/albums/yy353/Moghal/IMG_0573.jpg

 

Invert the mudguard and glue it to the front of the engine section - the angled lip at the bottom of the engine-bay should line up nicely with the lip of the mudguard, and the top edge should sit horizontally and glue onto the bottom of the cowl.

http://i807.photobucket.com/albums/yy353/Moghal/IMG_0581.jpg

http://i807.photobucket.com/albums/yy353/Moghal/IMG_0582.jpg

 

Cut down some lengths of sprue to the right size to be the arms and the skids. Glue one atop the other at right-angles - I kept the round locator pins from the sprue on the ski and mounted the arm on the top of that, which seemed to work reasonably well.

http://i807.photobucket.com/albums/yy353/Moghal/IMG_0583.jpg

 

Snip the inner end of the arm to line up with the angled side of the mudguard, and glue into place.

http://i807.photobucket.com/albums/yy353/Moghal/IMG_0584.jpg

http://i807.photobucket.com/albums/yy353/Moghal/IMG_0585.jpg

 

Cut a third length of sprue (longer than the other two) and angle the ends so that it glues from the ski behind the joint with the arm, and angles up behind the cowl towards the handlebars. I didn't measure, and mine ended up a little short, but the cowl hides most of it, and it isn't obvious.

http://i807.photobucket.com/albums/yy353/Moghal/IMG_0587.jpg

http://i807.photobucket.com/albums/yy353/Moghal/IMG_0588.jpg

 

And the final result: Captain Tempus Gideon, Deathwatch Marine formerly of the Silver Pinion chapter's 2nd Company.

http://i807.photobucket.com/albums/yy353/Moghal/IMG_0589.jpg

 

So, I know the painting leaves a lot to be desired - if anyone can see anything that I'm obviously doing wrong I'd appreciate any pointers. Other than that, I like the general effect - I think the mudguard works surprisingly well inverted like that, although from the top it does leave a bit of a gap that needs filling with something. I'm short on time, so I've masked it off with a little bonnet-ornament statue.

 

The skids themselves sort of work - if you want a conversion that doesn't require any extra parts, then it's fine, but I can't help but feel that someone with a better eye for pieces, or some more experience with these sort of conversions would know of better looking pieces to use.

 

Anyway, all comments gratefully received.

 

M.

[Metal Fingered Villain]

good idea, statue on the front looks a little silly, some think plasticard cut to shape and glued over the top would be a simple solution, just lay the piece on flat and trace around and cut it out, sand it down a little bit and stick on an eagle icon.

[vishtank]

cool idea! i like it!

[Chaptermaster Graymantle]

Cool!

I have had a snow bike conversion project planned for quite some time now myself, but I never seem to get around to doing it.

Nice to see that other people do and that it works.

Very good work! :)

[risK]

Wow, nice conversion!

 

I did some snow mobiles as well in past. Although I went a different route. I used some plastic coffee stirrers, which I bended with heat (candle flame).

http://www.sphaerentor.com/wh40k/gallery/risk/risk17.jpg

http://www.sphaerentor.com/wh40k/gallery/risk/risk20.jpg

 

Some action shots:

http://www.deinearmee.de/praesentation/1065436024/Hezekiel.jpg

http://www.deinearmee.de/praesentation/1065436024/Sirach2.jpg

The ski mounts were done with plasticcard, wire, some spruebits and plastic wheel parts. The trike also features tracks instead of a rear wheel (not visible in the picture).

 

But I really like your variant, as it seems to go farer away from the original bikes. I wish, that I've turned the mudgards upside down like you did, because in my version, they make no sense at all. But without them, the snowmobiles looked too flimsy.

 

Keep up your good work.

[Eberious]

Ha, what a neat idea. Never thought of doing that.

 

Might give it a go one day.

[Moghal]

Hehe... well, that sort of raised the bar a bit, didn't it!!!

 

Seriously, much better looking skids than on mine, and significantly better paintwork, too. Something to aspire to. Mine are off to a tournament tomorrow, but after that I should have the luxury of digging out some better materials and knocking together something that looks better - and with some inspiration, too.

 

Cheers,

 

M.