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How can I make my own pods, or find cheaper alternatives?


teblin

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Hello all.

 

GW drop pods are rather expensive, especially since I don't have any atm and want to buy a number at once.

 

I've tried some print-out stuff but my arts and crafts skills are a little lacking. Is it possible to kitbash a drop pod?

 

Or is there a third-party 28mm modelling company that makes some kind of drop pod equivalent for a good price?

 

Thanks.

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Stay far away from anything you suspect to be a re-cast. Legality aside building the drop pod is bad enough as it is, I can't imagine how awful it would be to do the same with resin parts :pinch:

 

Also make sure to check if the doors are glued shut or not, depending on your preference. To avoid any drama go with either every pod fully modeled or every pod glued shut with a standard 5+ cover for everything it blocks. 

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I would think you could do a reasonable mock-up for a drop pod using plasticard or other craft materials.  Even balsa wood could be made to work.  I mean, it probably won't have the detail GW's pod has, but it doesn't need to.  You probably have extra stormbolters from tank kits unless you really use all the pintle-mounted stormbolters, so that would get you started at least, and could use double bolters when those run out.

 

Recommend either modeling with the doors closed or the doors open, and having them be fixed in that position.  Making the doors *work* in a scratch-built is going to be hard, especially if you don't have much experience scratch-building.

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Take a plastic cup with flat sides- about... 5-6" tall. Flip it over. Attach 5 'fins' to it, and put a stormbolter turret on top- the bit should be easy to find, theres an extra one on every whirlwind sprue for example or you could convert from the TDA stormbolter arm with a little effort.

 

Spraypaint to undercoat, paint in chapter colors, place on table.

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Don't use polystyrene, whatever you do. it melts when exposed to glue, paint, primer, solvent, coffee, etc go for good old fashioned plastic. 

 

But like I said, look on ebay. Lots of drop pods on there that are going for okay prices

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I'm not sure why schematics for this would be verboten.  There were several years during which scratch-built ones were the only drop pods there were.  I can't believe schematics which predated GW's own model could possibly 'violate IP'.  Indeed, the general appearance of the drop pod (rather than the specific details of the model) is pretty much not IP at all, because people other than GW modeled it first.

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Don't use polystyrene, whatever you do. it melts when exposed to glue, paint, primer, solvent, coffee, etc go for good old fashioned plastic.

 

But like I said, look on ebay. Lots of drop pods on there that are going for okay prices

Coat the styrofoam in wood filler, thinned wood glue, latex paint, or acrylic medium and it won't melt when sprayed.
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They aren't too hard to do, I drew some templates up and built this myself out of plasticard:

gallery_60109_5815_211512.jpg

It looked pretty convicing when painted up. Used it a local tourney and whenever I deployed it people kept on trying to open it....

Suppose you could do the same and then cast the component pieces in resin so you only have to do the hard arts and crafts bit once.

Cheers

LM

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