Pike Nose Land Raider

Captain MAGpie's "IS" Patter Pike Nosed Land Raider 

A Games Workshop Land Raider Alternative

Soooo ANGRY!

Quixus over at Bolter and Chainsword asked if I could do a hull mounted weapon such as those on the ForgeWorld Spartan, and the sponsons of said tank. Well, as a responses to half of that request, and to the challenge Marcin Ciszewicz and D.A. Pizzey over at 40K Converters made, I came up with this version of the Land Raider.

In this tutorial, I will build the Hull of the Land Raider pictured above. The turret can be found here (Captain MAGpie's "Thunderlord" Land Raider Turret).

Ok, lets get into the build.

The tutorial

1) What you will need for: the template

• The Template (below)
• Cardboard
• Printer (Or a ruler and a lot of time)
• Fine-Point marker

I recommend printing the template on cardboard, scaling it so that the yellow reference block is 25mm (1 inch) when printed out, then cutting the shapes out with a pair of scissors and transferring the shapes to your plasticard with a fine-point marker.

To make life easier, cut all the green sections from 0.5mm Plasticard. The blue sections are decorative armour plates and you can cut those from thinker sheets and customise them to your like. I used 1mm and it looked pretty good. Lastly, the red section are 2mm and the brown 3mm thick styrene, and this is not easy to cut. You can cut it from 1mm and glue 2 together, or if you have access to a scribing took, use that to cut the 2mm. In fact, even the 1mm cut well with a scriber.

Additionally, print and cut a test turret from paper first, and make a paper-craft version just to test for scaling. There is a lot of cutting in this build, so making a fitting or printer scaling mistake will be frustrating. Also, you may "scale" it to your liking at this point, making it either bigger or smaller.

What you will need for: "Cyclone" Stalker Turret

• 1 x Land Raider kit from Games Workshop
• 0.5mm flat Styrene Plasticard Sheet
• 1mm flat Styrene plasticard sheet
• 2mm flat Styrene plasticard sheet
• 3mm flat Styrene plasticard sheet
• Putty such as Green Stuff or Milliput (Optional, but I advise using this. So much easier to hide bloopers)
• A VERY sharp hobby knife
• Scribing tool. (Optional, but very useful for thick cutting. I use the Tamiya scriber, and its pretty good.)
• A fine-point marker
• Metal Ruler
• Glue (I'll level with you. Use an extra thin solvent type glue here. It just makes life so much simpler. I use Tamiya Extra Thin, and believe me, you will have a hard time convincing me to use anything else. I almost feel that I should be wearing welding goggles when I use this stuff with ABS/Styrene.)
• Sharp Cutters
• Files and sanding paper (Fine)
• Patience and a first aid kit

Step 1 - Template

Print the template onto cardboard and cut it out with scissors or a knife.

Step 2 - Transfer and cut

Transfer the shapes to your plasticard using a fine-point marker, and cut them out using a knife.

Important! Remember to gut the green parts from 0.5mm sheet and the blue parts from 1mm or thicker, the red parts, 2mm, and the brown parts 3mm.

The build, once cut, is fairly simple. So once everything is cut, the hard part is over! ALSO, I cheated a bit. With the two nose plates, I cut them from a single piece, then scribed a bend in, and simply bent them into place. No glue required at this point!

Scribed and bent

Who needs glue? Ha, I am so smart...

Step 3 - Lower Glacis Plate

The lower glacis I cut from 3mm styrene. Its a land raider, it needs to look the part... But 3mm is no joke. So, don't use a knife, use a scribing tool. Once you are about halfway through the plastic, you can just snap the part out, or do what I did, just go all the way. Its actually quick. Maybe 8 to 10 strokes and you would have scribed away all the material.Its clean and easy, and requires less first aid. Next, file the angle where it will attach to the existing land raider hull.

Scribed out.

Angle filed in.

Step 4 - Nose

Glue all the pieces of the nose together. Its pretty straight forward.

ACCESSORISE

What I did, was to cut a few lengths of sprue from the kit, and attach them to the lower glacis plate. Its just for texture and effect, but adds really beautiful detail to a part of the model from scrap.

Test fit only for  the photo. LOVE it when things fit perfectly.

 I went ahead and cut the front armour plates as well, and attached those. I scribed some panel lines in just for effect and riveted it all together.

Used the knife-method to create the flame-cut appearance on the plate.

Ready to go on!

Step 5 - Prep the Land Raider

NOTE: This conversion requires some permanent structural changes to the model. Don't do this if you are not confidant with conversions yet.

Cut away the door casing and jab.

Cutting cutting cutting... And band-aid.... I NEED HEALING!

Cut away the original door casing and jab. File smooth and putty up any holes. If you plan to glue it shut, you don't have to worry about that. For this, you can use a variety of tools. I used my hobby cutter and would probably do that gain.

Tools of the trade

Cut away the material. 

As you can see, its just a rough cut. Cut finer in stages to prevent damage.

Just about done here. 

Sand, fill holes, sand and done.

Step 6 - Build the model sides and rear to test fit

At this point go ahead and build most of the chassis. You wont need the old doors, and don't need to attach the roof just yet if you still want to do things to it.

Ready for test-fitting

Step 7 - Glue the nose in place

Glue the nose in place, and you can now go ahead and glue the land raiders roof in place as well.

Step 8 - Roof

Ok, things get a little less easy here.

Those 2 weird shapes on the left hand side of the template, you that's the roof. So those 2 pieces are easy. Simply cut them and glue them together (one on top of the other) as indicated here.

Now, the back of that top plate fits onto the roof of the raider. You don't have to use a shape like that, but there it is if you want to.

NOW, depending if you used thicknesses I have, you will have roughly the same sizes as me, you will have about the same measurements as me, but at this point, variance is actually easily addressed. Once the nose and roof is attached, you will have an idea of how much space you have between the nose-roof, and the roof plate of the raider. With that in mind, you can start on the next part.

Step 9 - Chassis mounted bolters

I used the bolters and nose-mount part from a Storm-Raven kit for the hull mounted weapon. You can used pretty much anything else, but I wanted to use that. I also wanted to make the weapon able to swivel. BIG Optional.

So I started with an upper-and lower housing for the nose-mount. I did this by cutting a shape form 1mm styrene, drilling a hole in the middle, mounting it on my Dremmel tool, and scribing a nice circular running grove in it. Then I cut it straight down the middle, and I had an upper and lower guide rail.

Other ways exist, but this is what I did.

A perfect fit.

There are two sides to every Schwartz.

Now, I started building the actual housing. It was a simple matter of just building the sides of the housing from small pieced of styrene, and gluing to upper and lower parts together with the gun mount in place. I extended the gun mount a little to minimise the gaps on the sides of it.

Now I just built the walls to either side of the guns.
I did not add measurements of those in this tutorial, as like I explained, it can vary depending on the material you used, accuracy of cuts etc. Here, you have the chance to fix problems by cutting the exact size your specific build will need.

Make sure you test fit them constantly!

As a final step, I just accessorise the top.

Step 10 - Glue the roof!

Pretty much done at this point. If you WANT to add a turret mark the hole and cut it in.

And that will be that.

Step 11 - Ready for the final step!

  And now, for the IS Pike Nose Raider, and Brother Coffee!

Hope you enjoyed it. And as always, I would LOVE to see you take on the template. Post up picks or links to your Land Raider Conversions.

Captain MAGpie,
Styrene Addict