Suppressor: Building a better Taurox 002

I'm back with more on how I'm building myself a better looking Taurox (in my opinion). For anyone who plans to do any sort of scratchbuilding I cannot stress enough the usefulness of having a good steel ruler on hand. I also keep a 12" adjustable square on hand. Together they are awesome.

Using my nice steel ruler and a mechanical pencil, I carefully marked out most of the parts I will need for this next step of construction. Before going too crazy with the cutting I made sure to mark any guide lines I might need later.

A steel ruler helps get all these guide lines right, too

After all the cutting I ended up with a couple piles of identical parts and a pile of offcuts. These can be used as braces for the project, or just added to my bucket of scraps. Either way they will find use later.

Watch me turn this pile of parts into a third hull

First I score the sides of the LEGO bricks with a stencil knife. This will help the superglue adhere to the surface better. The attach point between LEGO and sheet styrene will be the only place I use superglue on this model.

Once both sides are in place, I drill out holes for the LEGO axles to fit into

Examples of the braces I mentioned before

Here they are, three Suppressor pattern Taurox hulls ready for the next stage of assembly. The bits on the top of the forward and middle hulls are the forward view ports. I'll leave them separate from the hull until I am ready to start adding details.

Next step: finish the armour.

Cheers,

CJ

Suppressor: Building a better Taurox 001

Last week I showed off my mac & cheese taurox proxy prototype. This week I am excited to tell you that my order from Plankystone via Bricklink.com came in, and I was able to begin construction of my variant pattern as my continued commitment to the 6MMRPC..

Supply drop!

Here is roughly what I'm looking for from my Suppressor pattern Taurox. I did up a bunch of 1:1 drawings, then built the card version to see what it looks like, and I was happy then. Now that the wheels are here, I'm very happy.

Before I started cutting into the plasticard shown above, I built a jig out of the LEGO bricks I had on hand.

This piece of plasticard is the base I'll build on. Using the jig allows the placement of all bricks to be the same across all three builds.

I repeated this process for all three models. It was rather easy with the jig to help keep everything in line.

Three Suppressor pattern chassis ready for continued construction.

Cheers,

CJ

eBay: amidoinitrite?

...I'd like to think so.

Hello everyone out there in internet land. I've recently had some great luck on eBay and I'd love to share with you all.

The above is the contents of the latest auction I picked up. Included were the following:

• 1 sealed Space Marine Tactical Squad (2004 recut)
• 2 Imperial Aquila 40k dice sets in tin
• Crashed Imperial Aquila Lander terrain
• Battlefield Accessories sprue still in bag
• 4 white metal Space Marine Scouts with sniper rifles
• 1 Battle for Maccrage Space Marine Tactical Squad
• 1 Space Marine Devastator with heavy bolter
• Codex: Tau (3rd ed)
• Codex: Tyranids (4th ed)
• Codex: Space Marines (4th ed)
• Battle for Maccrage mini rulebook

Not bad, eh? Even better is the fact that for the aforementioned prizes I paid less for the winning bid than the shipping, and the total was still only 29$. The moral of the story is to watch eBay, ladies and gentlemen. I don't know if the fact that the codices are all outmoded or what, but the contents of the auction were clearly listed, and the photos that were included with the listing showed basically the same that mine does.

This wasn't a last minute snipe, either. I had forgotten about this one, and got an email letting me know that I had in fact won the lot. Want to know the real kicker? I came to this listing in the first place in search of the crashed lander terrain piece a few weeks ago when the terrain bender I've been on set in.

In other news, in the 6MMRPC I've taken steps to begin prototyping of the Suppressor pattern Taurox:

This is my proof of concept, and a practice run at getting all the measurements figured out in 3d. Everything is going well so far. Stay tuned for more progress on the mac n cheese tank ;)

Cheers,

CJ

Paint Table Saturday no. 15

Welcome to the return of Paint Table Saturday. With the completion of 1st Platoon, I have since turned my attentions to 2nd Platoon.

Here they are ready for paint...

...and the first completed model of 3rd squad 2nd Platoon.

This new found progress leads me to the second part of today's post:

The 6 Month Mountain Reduction & Painting Challenge has kicked off, and I've decided to get in. Other bloggers such as Admiral Drax, Rictus, and Mordain 7th are in ahead of me, and where I took the inspiration from in the first place. The rules are as follows:

1. No purchasing of new miniatures, EXCEPT if you use a joker card.  Like in a deck of cards, you get two jokers to use on a figure purchase during the six months of the challenge.  Could be a blister pack, an ebay bundle, or a single figure...you can't splurge.

2.  Gifts do not count against you. Christmas and or birthdays etc. Also, if you're given gift cards by your hobby illiterate family or friends, you can without penalty use them on anything you want miniatures wise.  I luck out here, as I'll have Christmas and my birthday during this 6 Months.

3.  Paints, terrain (or materials), and other hobby supplies do not apply to the no purchasing rule.

4.  At least one hobby related blog post and/or Instagram update a week.  If you Instagram, be sure to hashtag your pic with #6MMRPC

5.  Zombtober will be part of the 6 month challenge so, Zombie related stuff during October is ENCOURAGED!

Good luck!

Cheers,

CJ