War Wagon Conversion

Background

A few months ago (May-ish), my two War Wagons and a couple of Pyg Tanks found themselves flying into a wall at great speeds. I’m not going into details. Words were said, someone had an outburst, things were thrown, parenting powers were immediately activated, and the only victims were some models. They sat on the shelf, waiting for inspiration.

Inspiration

Over the last six months or so, I’ve run across cool videos on the you tubes, showing all sorts of projects and artsy-craftsy things. Things like Studson Studio’s Howl’s moving castle made from junk. Things like Nerdforge’s many many projects. I’ve also been watching a ton of DC cartoons, Sci-fi movies, and things with cool machines.

The plan

Literally no plan. I only knew that this new War Wagon should be airborne. So, flipping the chassis, and sticking on the seat seemed appropriate. I started by test fitting the seats, pilot’s deck, and cannon. The flight deck doesn’t quite fit the chassis, and the cannon’s chair looks like it might fit underneath, but holding the chair in place would maybe need greenstuff.

Gluing up the cannon

Luckily, the chair fits well into the canon, and the cannon has a mount already build into the War Wagon. The Tuffalo yoke looks like a cool support for the chair. I see it moving around like the chair in the Millenium Falcon, but the piece looks more like the thing in the original Alien.

Flight deck

Fitting the flight deck to the chassis means cutting into the floor, evening out the walls, and then adding in some green stuff.

Balloons

The gator-juice bottles make for a good structure. Cut off the drinking end, add packing material to fill out the back (my Chilly Con Carnage shipment arrived, so yay packing paper). Tape wraps everything up and makes it into a glue-able surface. Wrapping paper makes for good enough canvas. My thought is that the trollkin just fold it, sew it, dope it, and paint it. Then it gets held in with some thick ropes. The trouble is where the ropes go. I drilled some holes, but couldn’t get the twine through. A piece of wire, bent, made a good needle for threading the twine.

Wire Twisting

I attempted to braid some wire, but that didn’t work. Instead, I fell back on the old twist method (using a vice and drill). After twisting, I drilled a hole through the tuffalo harness, and glued the wire into them. I drilled holes in the chassis to accept the wire. It’s very strong and springy, and the mess tends to flip back at you when you work, sometimes popping out.

Prime, paint, and done!

Primed in black. The paint is craft paint for the balloon, but Vallejo goes on the model proper. Green stuff filled in gaps. A fresh base was used for one of the wagons because one was broken. The other was mostly fine, with some gaps. I painted the gaps blue/brown, and added water effect. It looks white in the pictures, but dries clear.


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