Update on powering the Shadowsword

So I was working on the Shadowsword today. Well the left side of it anyway. I installed a pair of yellow LEDs in the head lamps, a green LED on the Lascannon turret as a targeting array and a red LED in the base of the lascannon barrel. Drilling that barrel out was a royal pain in the posterior.

Now there is a couple hick ups in the work. Firstly, the turret has 2 pairs of wires running through it's axis. What does this mean? Well it means that the turret barrely turns. It kind of turns, like 15 degrees or so. I can force it to turn more, but I risk damaging the connections inside the turret. The second problem is the sides of the lascannon barrel. In the process of drilling it out they were thinned down considerably, and the LED at the base of the barrel glows through the sides of the barrel. I'm hoping a layer of chaos black will cover this up.

Sadly, there was another problem. In the process of adding in these circuits, I accidentally short circuited the red LED in the main cannon and it blew out. So the Shadow Sword cannon will no longer light up. :(

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Thunderhawk... kind of

So I've got the Paperhammer Thunderhawk built. And now I'm working on the next phase of the plan, preparing to build the plastic one. Now as I've said I want to build in a series of LEDs to the model to light it up in various ways. Well, I've never really worked with electronics before so I've been reading up on them and learning how to build simple circuits to accomplish what I want. I'm not ready to begin laying out the Thunderhawk circuits, but I am moving in that direction. One of the best tutorials I've found for setting up simple circuits can be found here ==> TerraGenesis.

Now first off: I am never ordering parts from Radio Shack again! There are a couple reasons for this. I placed an order for 56 various parts (LEDs, switches, Battery clips, ect). Last Monday I received a package. Consisting of 5 of the parts I ordered. I contacted customer service to ask about it. Turns out Radio Shack  does not use a central clearing house for it's online orders, instead shipping orders out on a first available basis from several warehouses. What does that mean? Well instead of getting 1 package with all my parts in it, I received a series of 7 packages spread out over the week.

The second thing, in the order I ordered 1 unit, of 5 9-volt battery clips. What did I receive? 5 units of 5 9-Volt battery clips. So... not only does Radio shack use a piss poor system for filling orders, but they can't even get the orders right. Wow, just total fail!

Anyway, I got the parts in and made a first effort to accomplish installing the LED into something:

Shadowsword cannon... fire!

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Hell Brute conversion part 3

So the Hell Brute is done!

 

I finished filling in the musculature around the body and on the arm, and added cabling from the fits to the shoulder, and from the back to the hip.  I would have liked to add more detail to the back and joints, but I need to be patient and allow the putty to dry entirely. Patience isn't my strong suit. So I have to call it done at this stage and just come back to it later.

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Hell Brute conversion part 2

So got some work done on the converted hell brute.

I had to go a bit different with mounting the body. I actually have a length of brass rod running from under the base up through the arm into the shoulder. And then the shoulder is pinned to the body. The Torso is largely free standing in this regard. But because I cut apart the abs of the brute and have repositioned it, I have to rebuild the detail for the body.

To help in this regard I put a length of piping in the body and am using that as a base to build up the abs and back detail. I've got a couple lengths of smaller tubing I'm going to use for the hydraulics in the body.












And just because I had the original Hell brute on my desk. we get to the Brothers:

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Hell Brute conversion

I'm going to taking a little brake from the thunderhawk, for a couple reasons. Firstly because I simply don't have the time to commit to it for the next few days. Secondly because I have to wait for several shipments to come in before I do much more. Next step is exploring the electronics part of that particular project. First thing is going to be wiring up a Shadow Sword. I've got the model kit, just waiting for the electronic parts to show up.

In the mean time I'm beginning to rebuild my Chaos Forces, and with the Chaotic contents of 2 Dark Vengeance sets, a squad of Chaos Terminators and a box of Chaos Marines I'd say I'm well on my way. I have to say as far as snap fit models go thes models from the Dark Vengeance set are excellent! I quickly traded the Dark Angels for more chaos models. So now I have 12 Chosen, 40 Cultists, 2 lords, and 2 Hell brutes. The Cultists I don't have any particular plans for converting. The Chosen I'm looking at for conversion possibilities and likewise for the lord. The HellBrute however... I've already got plans for him and have begun on it.

Got it all cut up, and ready to be rebuilt.

I've going to re-possition the entire model so that the Brute is smashing it's fist into the ground and rather then being armed with a Multi-melta it'll be armed with a Twin Linked lascannon. So you can see I've busted the major components of the model up good and proper and already set to work on the arm. To further differentiate this from the run of the mill Hellbrute I'm also going to changing a lot of smaller details. Rebuilding the arm with different details, changing the head. Removing the chest tendrils and replacing them with deterioration marks.

So, I've got the fingers on the fist cut and repositioned.

I mentioned I was going to replace the head with another one. I was originally going to use a screaming zombie head, but I couldn't find one in my bitz box. Which of course means it'll turn up right after I finish the model.

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Thunderhawk part 11

Wow...

Okay so I took a new job a couple weeks ago. I knew it was going to give me more hours so I'd have less free time for 40k. What I didn't know was just how much it was going to get me in terms of extra hours. A month ago I was averaging 22 to 28 hours a week plus 10-12 hours for school work and classes. In the last three weeks I've consistently been scheduled for 32-35 hours a week, and due to a combination of work load and staffing issues I've been working 45+ hours a week plus the 10-12 hours of school and homework, and I've had to travel a fair amount for training for the new job. So all in all I've been pulling 50-60 hours a week for work and generally when I got home I have just enough energy to  log online for half an hour to forty minutes to check my email, catch up with a couple folks, and then promptly crash for the night. Now things seem to be settling down a bit and I'm getting a bit of normalcy back in my life.

So I've effectively hit a dead end in building the paper hammer thunderhawk.

 it's not that I messed up or have to start over, it's that I've basically reached the limit of working with cardboard and the medium simply will not work the remaining parts. I've also reached the end of the template, which is frankly somewhat confusing since it doesn't include instructions for building the heavy bolter mounts and sponsons. 

But this basically concluded phase 1 of the thunderhawk project; building the paper hammer version.

So what's next? Well now I get to go back over the model and search for problems, areas where the thickness of the cardboard creates problems, areas where the parts just flat out don't work. So what am I talking about?

Well there are a lot of places where the cardboard stacks up in such a way that parts that should mesh up, have a gap between them.
Like so:

Another problem I encountered was that cardboard as a tendency to warp causing a bending in odd ways. 2 really great examples are on the top of the paper hammer thunderhawk:

The upper housing warped inwards, causing the Thunderhawk cannon mounting to angle inwards while the upper body warped inwards as well. A liberal application of glue allows the upper mounting to be attached to the upper body, but if you look you can see the warping.

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