BCK's Thread of Stuff: Maybe not eldar...

[Brother-Chaplain Kage]

Chest 2.0

 

http://i.imgur.com/5nEcejj.png

[Lord_Ikka]

Nice!

[Daemon2027]

I like it now it's defined more, are you doing to add a bit of bulk to the waist, feels a litttle thin at the moment.

[Brother-Chaplain Kage]

Terminators have always had a wasp waist and I have already thickened it some, but due to how the Tartaros leg armor has the extended section at the hip, I don't know if there will be room to add anything. Here's a better shot of what I've already done to the waist, as well as some work to bulk out the legs without sculpting over the front of them.

 

http://i.imgur.com/K9GyODR.png

[Lord_Ikka]

I kind of like the "overbite" of the torso armor- reminds me of an old tank turret.

[Brother-Chaplain Kage]

That's the idea, Ikka - sloped and angled armor to help deflect attacks.

 

I had a go at one of the lightning claw blades of his Ghost Razors; the art and the original model both have the claws curved similar to a large felidae predator so I kept to that.

 

http://i.imgur.com/Wgw8AV2.png

 

The tip of the blade will remain outside the housing when retracted, because curves, and I marked the length at the back end of the housing for the extended shot. The fun part is going to be getting all four metal claws to be the same size and shape.

[Brother-Chaplain Kage]

Ok, I've finished making the lightning claw blades, very lightly glued them down for a test fit, and I'm pretty excited at how they turned out.

 

http://i.imgur.com/HdNaOW1.gif

 

Maybe a little more excited than that, but here's a shot of them before final grinding to fit the power claw housing:

 

http://i.imgur.com/eXq1lBE.png

 

I had to even them out a little and take out some of the curve on the back end so they'd sit properly. They're not perfect, but it's hard to tell if you're not looking at blown up photos on the internet.

 

http://i.imgur.com/hm5LLzG.png

 

 

When I saw all four of them glued down like that, I have to admit, my excitement was more like this:

 

http://i.imgur.com/MY3Q50z.gif

 

And the man himself doing a runway turn for us.

 

http://i.imgur.com/xUbcOQS.png

 

[DuskRaider]

Those look great... how are you making those? I believe you said in a prior thread with paper clips, but I don't recall how you flattened them or gave them a bladed edge.

[Augustus b'Raass]

Dude it looks fantastic! I went like this when I saw them:

[Brother-Chaplain Kage]

Those look great... how are you making those? I believe you said in a prior thread with paper clips, but I don't recall how you flattened them or gave them a bladed edge.

 

The first several blades I tried were done with large paperclips that had been sitting in a pen holder on my computer desk for years. After I burned through those, the only ones the same size I could find had these evenly spaced grooves cut into the entire length so I went to a hardware store and picked up a small spool of 18 gauge steel wire which is just tad bit bigger around than the paperclips. To flatten them, I have an old pin vice that would hurt my hand when trying to drill with it and it now does things like being a good handle to hold the steel wire in while I flatten it with a hammer. You can see on the back end of these where I left plenty of room for the pin vice to grip it.

 

http://i.imgur.com/eXq1lBE.png

 

After that, it's a lot of work with a Dremel (still holding it in the pin vice), and you really need to have some kind of powered grinding tool because even though the steel wire is soft enough to bend with your hands, it's hard enough that a file barely scratches it. I previously had 2 battery powered Dremels and kept a different shape grinding tool in each, but the slowly dying batteries were taking forever to recharge and no one sold them in a retail store. They only had a Low and High speed setting, so when I bought a corded Dremel recently, I got a variable speed model that essentially has 5-6 speeds. If you try to do something like this, be prepared to accidentally destroy the shape you were going for until you learn to gauge how fast the Dremel will remove material. It still happened to me on these lightning claws after all the mini blades I've made and I had to remake all four of them. After I get the shape where I want it, I switch to removing imperfections in the blade from the hammer and I try to get that as smooth as I can with the Dremel before moving to wet sanding with low grit paper and moving up to a medium and a high grit. And that's it.

 

It sounds like a lot, but for a single blade, barring any screw ups, it takes maybe half an hour from start to finish.

Edited May 20, 2017 by Brother Chaplain Kage

[Mechanist]

He looks epic and the claws just finish the look perfectly.

[WarriorFish]

Lightning claw blades came out fantastic - though I'm sure they'll find some real blood in time, they look sharp!

[DarKHaZZ13]

BCK, I expect you'll get a swathe of DM's from people wanting to commission you to make them some claws, they are freaking awesome my dude.

Seriously impressive.

[Brother-Chaplain Kage]

Cheers, brothers. :)

 

WF - I didn't draw blood with these, but I certainly have with some of the other mini metal blades I've made.

[hushrong]

Be still my gentle heart!

 

The Tyrant is looking magnificent and the claws!

[lionofjudah]

[Ovidius Incertus]

I have no words.... 

[Brother-Chaplain Kage]

I'm trying to decide what to have under his left foot. Normally, I'm not a fan of having dead figures on a base, but maybe a marine of one of the loyalist chapters from the Badab war who is unidentifiable because he's been burnt to a crisp?

[Charlo]

Absolutely awesome Tyrant.

 

Maybe go for one of the chapters who allied with him, a sort of "you've failed me for the last time" vibe.

[hushrong]

Dead marines used as a floor mat are always great.

 

However if I could make a suggestion: why not a broken Aquila? I think there is some sweet symbolism with the Tyrant of Badab crushing an already shattered emblem of the Imperium beneath his armored boot.

[Brother-Chaplain Kage]

That's probably a better idea than the dead marine underfoot with the power pack making the level of his foot too low.

[Lord_Ikka]

Ooooh, that claw is lovely. The Tyrant is living up to his reputation.

[Monstra Sumus]

Hot damn. He's a treat to look at. 

[Brother-Chaplain Kage]

Ooooh, that claw is lovely. The Tyrant is living up to his reputation.

 

Good to hear, 'cause that's exactly what I was hoping for. I always go into a new conversion with a specific idea that I want to pull off, but it's more difficult when the idea is "I want people to like my version better than the original". You're almost setting yourself up for failure, especially when the original is a fairly popular figure.

 

Hot damn. He's a treat to look at. 

 

Hopefully he'll get updated for 8th and be the absolute monster I'm trying to make the figure into.

 

 

Tonight is just a small update on some of my blade making stuff, though I do have some greenstuff curing on Huron's DW shoulder pad trim. The 18 guage wire I have been using to make my blades worked for most of the stuff I wanted to do, but when making them for Marines, I wanted them to be thicker and more substantial, but still more realistic than the comically huge thickness of some of the plastic blades. I got some 16 gauge wire this afternoon and had a go at making a two-handed marine sword just to see how it felt.

 

Here it is next to some Grey Knights blades and to the right you can see the different wire sizes for comparison.

 

http://i.imgur.com/5xh1DHp.png

 

With the 18 gauge I couldn't have flattened it out wide enough to make a blade this size without making it too thin to work with, but the 16 works just fine. Even though this was just a trial, it turned out pretty good and it might have to go to a Librarian or something.

Edited May 23, 2017 by Brother Chaplain Kage

[Brother-Chaplain Kage]

Here's one of my older figures I'm dusting off for my Claws.

 

http://i.imgur.com/855EsRn.png

 

Some years ago I had some idea to change up his chest and don't remember what (or why I messed with such a cool figure) but I've done a lot of rebuilding with leftover GS from this past week. Below the two abdomen plates will be a tabard so that's extra GS I just pulled down to start on the base for it.

Edited May 24, 2017 by Brother Chaplain Kage