Scratchbuilding Tutorial: Part V (and last)

(versión en Español)

PART I
PART II
PART III
PART IV
PART V

Today we'll finish the turret by adding some details and casting it in resin.

To start detailing it, I take some tin foil (as you can see, I took it from wine bottles)...

And cut some straigh strips from it.

You'll need to flatten them with some tool (the ruler, your cutter's rod, etc.).

I apply a small drop of cyanocrilate (superglue, krazy glue or similar) on the cannon.

Glue one end of the strip and carefully wrap it around the cannon, adding some small cyanocrylate drops now and them.

I cut the strip once I see that the width is enoungh.

Once the glue is dry, I sand the ending to make a smooth ring around the cannon body.

And that's it, you can easily add volume to any tube in this way.

Now we are going to do some riveting. I am going to do just a small quantity, but for a complete 40K tank I could make up to 500! You could develop a Zen-like state of mind once you finish 100 of them in a single run, if not, try do do more... :)

I have here my handy and cheap homemade punch-and-die tool. I am going to make a tutorial later about it but, for the time being, I'll just tell you that you put a thin styrene sheet between the steel and the acrylic parts, put a punch in the hole and hit it with the hammer.

If you do this during some time, you'll have a small pile of very small styrene discs (0,6 mm in the pic). Forget about the tweezers to hold them, the best way to manipulate those small rivets is by gently picking them with the point of a new cutter blade. Once you have it on the cutter, appply some styrene cement inthe surface to be riveted and put the rivet on it.

Once I am happy with the rivets, I declare the master model finished.

I will now do a mold to cast the turret and cannon, exactly as we discussed before in the resin casting tutorial series.

The cannon is going to be cast differently. I am going to do an open mold for it. I temporaly glue the cannon to a solid surface, build the mold box and pour the silicone, but just in a single step, I will not do another part for the mold. Once the silicone cures, I'll pour the resin by the open left by the base of the cannon piece.

The pieces are cast and sanded.

And here we have the finished turret piece. However... Do you remember those marks we left for the handles on the master model? Well, now it is time to drill some actual holes on there!

Once the holes are drilled, I cut some wire of the same gauge.

And use my pliers to bend it...

...to the desired shape.

I'll do six of them.

Now I put a drop of cyanocrilate on the holes.

And add the handles. The excess of cyanocrilate will look as a welding point once it dries.

I now use someting round to shape some more wire.

And insert it in their place. You'll notice that I use small pliers instead of tweezers to do that, they give you better grip on the piece.

And that's the finished turret.

I hope that you have enjoyed this tutorial, I wanted to make it look as simple as it really is. So... Now, fetch your tools and go convert something! :)