Still More Freebootas!

I'm still working on my Freeboota army - here's one where I tried a few new things:

Here's the parts I started with - the standard Ork Boy parts + one of the MaxMini heads:

I started by cutting off the base slot, and removing the blade from the chainsword.  I left the hilt and handguard from the chainsword - the way it's molded, it would be really difficult to remove, plus I thought I would try to integrate it with the new weapon:

I did some work with my jeweler's files to clean up the hilt:

...then I chose a sword from the Razig weapon sprue:

I cut the blade from the sword and cleaned up the edge with my files:

Then I attached the sword blade to the hilt that was molded with the model:

I would have like to pin the blade, but the way it tapers means it's too thin to pin without mangling it.

Next I glued on the head:

(A note on just how detailed the MaxMini heads are - at first I thought this head had some excess flash around the eyes and I started to scrape it off - until I realized that the sculpt had the Ork wearing tiny, round eyeglasses!)

I wanted to do something new with this model to give it a "pirate-y" touch - after thinking about it for a while, I realized "What says "pirate" more than a peg leg?!?"

I started by chopping off one of the Ork's legs at the knee:

...then I took a banner pole from a pile of Fantasy bits, and chopped some pieces off:

I drilled a hole into the knee joint of the Ork:

...then I fit the piece of banner pole into the hole:

I was actually really pleased with how this came out - I thought I was going to have to sculpt around the knee joint where the peg leg is attached, but it looks so clean as-is that I decided to just leave it alone.

Next I turned my attention to the gun - my first step was to cut off the slugga:

...then I drilled out the hand:

I actually got this one perfect (for once!) - I drilled out the hand and didn't damage a single finger:

One boy in each of my Mobs can take a Big Shoota, but I actually haven't converted one yet - I decided this would be my first.  For the Big Shoota, I'm using the Imperial Arquebus from Freebooter Miniatures:

The fit of the rifle in the Ork's hand was too tight, so I actually had to open up the hand a bit.  I just inserted my hobby knife blade between the thumb and the palm and made a quick cut:

This gave me enough slack to get the rifle into the hand.  To secure it, I just put a very thin film of superglue on the rifle right in front of the hand, and spun it around a few times.

And here's the finished product, after sculpting the cuff around the boot and re-sculpting the thumb with some Green Stuff: