THE
WARP STORM

As you may already know I have amassed a small collection of tanks based on the classic Rhino chassis. Tonight I started working on two Razorbacks and a Vindicator!

To begin with I'm just stripping and disassembling where possible. Removing metal pieces, and any plastic pieces that want to come off.



It's time consuming, but it's actually going quite well. Several pieces (exhausts, headlights etc) have come away that I wasn't expecting, which is a bonus. I'm assuming they were perhaps glued over paint, or maybe with super glue. I did unfortunately break an exhaust tip off one, but most of them are damaged anyway, so I'm already working out how to replace them where necessary. One of the Razorbacks has also kindly split itself into 3 - main chassis and two sides. 7 of the 8 connections for the grab rail have also come away (last one has been cleaned and is soaking again - hoping it doesn't need a knife) which I'm pleased about.
Annoyingly there's a lot of sticky super glue on the Vindicator in particular, but I've got that soaking again to hopefully work it away a little.

Lots more scrubbing to do, and I need to get the metal components into acetone, but it's a start!

Plan is to strip everything on all the banks first. When I'm left with a mountain of clean pieces I'll start looking at repairing and rebuilding. =]

Haha how long were you scrubbing for? Going to get strong from this!!
Are you thinking about doing anything unique with them for dark angels? Like DA symbols etc

It was somewhere around two hours work I think. A fair amount was spent on fiddly bits and slowly working at glue though.
Once they've had another soak I'm hoping that the stubborn bits of paint will have been loosened, the one remaining grab rail connection point will have softened, and the sticky super glue will have loosened too. A lot of it wasn't that accessible, so it's not had the iso working on it yet. Need to get some cotton buds in harder to reach places too.

No plans yet, kinda making it up as I go. Definitely work to do still before that though!
There's exhausts to repair or replace - some are broken, some missing. Thinking I'll just order some plastic rod and work from there.
Some have gaps to fill - mostly due to chassis construction being wrong. I'm thinking plasticard and greenstuff to smooth.
Some have extra bits that I need to remove, like badly placed HK missile mounting points. These I might end up having to take a knife to, but we'll see.
Some are also missing the bolters from the top hatches. I think I might have one or two in my bits box, but I'm going to figure this out as I get to it. Maybe GS mould?

The side doors obviously won't work with icons due to the shape, but I have plenty of DA iconography that I could try and squeeze in. After managing 10,000 years of service they probably deserve a little ornamentation!

Excited to see where this goes! Are you going to wait for an airbrush to paint them or going with the trusty old brush method?

I was tempted to try the Artis Opus Series D stippling/drybrush method (I'll find you a video if you're not familiar), but decided against it as it wouldn't suit the rest of the army.
I'm thinking now flat colours (which on something that size I would rather do with an airbrush) and then shade/weather.

I've got plenty to do though. About to post in my eBay thread about my latest aquisition, but I now have 8 (I think) classic tanks to restore, three more modern ones to work on, and I plan on at least three Deimos patterns in the future (Rhino, Predator, Vindicator).
I'll be stripping all these and breaking them all down where I can. Then it's a case of cleaning them up, filling gaps etc, and deciding how I want to put them back together - the various chassis may end up swapping from one thing to another. After that there will be more repairing if necessary and magnetising where it'll be useful.

Lots of work!

Going to look great when you get them all done..although this will be alot of work.. when do you think you'll ready to paint them

Early in my retirement years?
To be honest I'm not sure. At the minute I have zero hobby time (all-day DIYing, and the room I work in is the one being redone), and I'll need airbrush money. If I'm being realistic probably some time late in year, if not early next. I'm going to be painting Orks in the short term I think, maybe some Guard. That'll give me time to build the money to get the supplies to get my Marines right, and then buy a fancy paint thrower.

pawl wrote: ↑09 Jul 20, 01:04 Early in my retirement years?

Hahaha

To be fair I think it's definitely worth waiting for the air brush. These will be great models to get good with the airbrush I reckon! Plus I can't imagine doing a full tank with a brush now

Oh yeah, I'm in no rush to make a mess of them! I've tried painting both tanks and speeders by hand, and even when I had figured out that thinning paints properly is a good idea it was still a difficult process. I'll take the time and get it right. Hopefully.

Wow, dedicated! Reusing at its best. Good luck!