RTCTC: Ferro-Zepor Pattern Macro Cannon Defense Tower

Zhu Bajie

Member
Inspired to get my bum in gear by Sto'Knorr Macekillers Rogue Trader Control Tower Challenge - basically a challenge to build a piece of Rogue Trader scenery out of some old rubbish. I've ploughed through my box of plastic trash to start putting together something...



A Meridian Miniatures 'prussian with turban head' which I'm using as my Humanspace Empires era Tékumel planetary-scout / geoforming reconnaissance crew, aka Imperial Guard, shown for scale. Pulled together a 300ml tub of buttermilk and a Lynx deodorant cap, which are probably one of the most over-engineered things in the history of anti-persperant deodorant packaging. Also deodorant is a mainstay of RT modelling, so couldn't resist. Also couldn't resist straying from the and weaponising the thing...



Some smaller junk. Felt tip pen parts, rawl plugs, broken clothes pegs. Yeah, I've been hoarding junk for a while...



Grabbed some inspiration. Sorry for the blurry photo, but I guess you can tell it's the Rogue Trader book. Obviously any kind of tower weapon thing is going to be a Very Heavy Weapon and the The typo on the Marco Cannon is just too cool. So that's vaguely where I'm headed. Obviously I couldn't give two hoots about being accurate to the drawing, but it's that kind of thing.

More after the attachment break...
 

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Zhu Bajie

Member
In fact TWO of that kind of thing...



That's two sides of a clothes peg that have had their ends cut off, a felt-tip pen barrel sawn off at 45 degrees, a Rawlplug and the end of a bigger Rawlplug stuck onto it aka a Mk 0 Marco Cannon. There's some nice bits like the circle on the side of the nozzle and the ribbing on the clothes-peg, and the dents int the side of the Rawlplug. The smaller-rawlplug fit exactly into the pen casing. The mold-lines however are a bit meh, and the gap on the main barrel will need filling with milliput, effort, but I hope worth it for the barrel texture.



The twin Marco Cannons were then mounted inside the turret.
The turret was made by removing the button and mechanism from the Lynx can top, then re-inserting the button the wrong-way-round and leaving it sitting up above its natural groove (like in the first photo in this thread). The twin Macro Cannons were then glued inside, and by coincidence fitted almost perfectly.

Then added two halved ends of the larger Rawlplug to look like swivel-caps so it ends up like this:



and that's as far as it has got. On the to-do list:

  1. The hollow inside the turret needs filling - probably some kind of mechanics for the swivel.
  2. add some indication of rotatory action between the turret and the tower.
  3. Tower also needs a door.
  4. Basing / painting.
 

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Suber

Member
This is pure RT, I think you nailed the spirit, and it's looking really nice. Looking forward to more!
 

ardyer

Member
Amazing... I wish in had the vision to see those guns from those pieces. Excellent work!

Sent from my R1 HD using Tapatalk
 

Fimm McCool

Member
Hah! That's superb. Now find every piece of household stuff you've used to create that turret, put them in a jiffy bag and charge £30 for a pack. :)
 

Zhu Bajie

Member
Hey, thanks for the kind words and motivation :) Nice idea Fimm. Buy only Official ForgeWaste™ merchandise From Zhu Industries.

Some progress...



The big gear is built out of a fizzy-pop bottle lid, and the ring part that stays on the bottom. These did not fit well, so I shortened one then cut the ring, trimmed off the little 'teeth' with a scalpel and glued that over the two halves of the bottle lid. You can also see where I've gap-filled on the Rawlplug using Milliput.



The top of the turret - finished off the pivot sockets with half of one of those plastic mushrooms that are supposed to fill the holes in pre-drilled flat-packed furniture, and also used those to fill the round gap where the clothespeg bit goes round I did like the shape it made but it needed filling. Also see more Milliput work. Big photos sure throw up the tiny gaps, might go over with some Milli-juice later.

You can also see the interesting star shaped hole in the Rawlplug end. Looks a bit like the Imperial graphic from Star Wars to me.

200




Then decided to glue two milk-bottle lids (one semi-skimmed, one skimmed - that's important, the Standard Template Construction Manual said so) to each other to make the turny bit under the tower.

To Do List:

Fill gap on back of turret with something...
Tower needs a door
Basing
Painting
 

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Zhu Bajie

Member
Had a few hours off normal weekend chores, so watched Moontrap aka Chaos Dreadnoughts on The Moon, starring Chekov out of Star Trek and Bruce Campbell and made a door for the tower.



It's a spout / lid thing from a carton of fruit juice, not sure what brand, as I tend to separate them and throw them in the bitz box as they go. Why on earth they need these things is anyones guess, when simply flipping up one corner, then cutting it off makes a perfectly serviceable pouring spout and sealing device.

Anyway after a bit of whittling and watching Chekov blow up a Chaos Dreadnought with a shotgun I ended up with this:



Which I'm really happy with. The arch has a nice Tatooinish, Tékumelyani vibe. It's even got weird little circle bits that can be painted like open/close indicator lights, larger bits that could be an intercom system and a large industrial punch switch or whatever.

Then I stuck it on to my cream pot, along with a bit of sprue as a kind of drainpipe or something. Makes no sense to have externalised MEP on a defense system, but its cool and industrial innit, and not sticking a random bit of sprue to a building is against Building Regs in the year 40k. By this time Bruce and Chekovs Lunar Lander had been robbed by a giant alien robot.



Needs a bit of Miliput work around the external arch to blend it into the tower, then job done. On to basing, sticking the turret to the tower and painting.
 

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Zhu Bajie

Member
Cheers Suber!

Made a bit of progress, more putty-filling, basing and undercoating done.



'Ideal viewing angle' even tho' this is a piece of heavy architecture, I wanted to give it a a sense of movement, so have mounted the tower off-center on the base and angled the turret to the left of the main door.

The base is a CD, to which the tower was glued with superglue. The floor texture is sawdust over PVA - I use quite watered down PVA our of habit, and this is two coats. The rocks are bits of gravel picked up in the street.



Focal interest point, downpipe and front-door. I was a bit concerned just sticking a door-frame on and leaving the pot wall as the door, but I think it works quite well, even in its unpainted state.



Boring side. I say boring, but it will have a big graphic on it. A little undecided exactly what, but probably some large, bold, industrial looking stencilled alien script. The wall is scarily flat and smooth and I'm slightly regretting not texturising it as rough concrete. However, that's not really the Rogue Trader way, and I'll have to try to get the paintwork to do the job, and scouring the blogs for tips for that.
 

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Zhu Bajie

Member
Oh and meanwhile, the next project has presented itself.



A venerable 1975 Matchbox Battlekings No.K111 Missile Launcher that I'll be 'renovating' and repurposing as a APC. The BattleKings range being the same one as the original 2000AD Land Raider / Raider Command thing. But that's for after the tower...
 

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Zhu Bajie

Member
Got some paint added today. Tower - blocked in a futuristic urban desert camo pattern, blacked and dry-brushed the metal areas. Splodged paint around the base.





Just needs a military insignia and details added (door lights), maybe some weathering...
 

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Jeff McC

Member
Camo pattern looks great and is really crisp. How did you do it - freehand? or did you use some sort of a mask?
 

Zhu Bajie

Member
Cheers guys!

I'm um-ing and ahh-ing over what to do for the graphics at the moment. Part of me wants to just do random futuristic alienish stuff, and the other wants it to fit thematically with my alternate-history Tekumelyáni / Humanspace Empires thing. For various reasons (thermonuclear war amongst them) I'll probably be using Gurmukhi numerals ੧ ੪ and maybe having Macro Cannon written in Punjabi - ਮੈਕਰੋ ਤੋਪ .

Jeff - the camo pattern is just freehanded.
 
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