Scratchbuild: Deffrolla Mk. II

I got the second Battlewagon in the fleet finished, and needed to make the Deffrolla (if you want the full-blown scratch-built Deffrolla tutorial, click here).  I found something I thought might speed up the process a bit:

This is an assortment of styrene tubes, rods, & "girders" from Gale Force Nine.  I mostly bought this as proof-of-concept - as I've mentioned before, Gale Force Nine stuff is pricey, but I wanted to get this since it includes many different sizes, and I wasn't sure which I would need.  (Now that I have a better idea, I will head to my local train-oriented hobby shop and pick it up directly from the source, namely Evergreen and/or Plastruct). 

To start with, I cut some of the tubes to size (I might have to pick up a cheap tubing cutter, as it would make it easier to cut these without mangling the ends):

Then I made some "sandwiches" out of foamcore, and covered them in plasticard:

I made the rolla itself the same as last time, out of a 3/4" PVC coupler & reducer, and covered the ends with plasticard:

I decided to Greenstuff the gap in the rolla this time (and yes, it was a hassle, as I anticipated):

Like before, I cut some random shapes to act as armor plates, glued them to the rolla, and added rivets punched out of plasticard:

Next, I drilled holes in the plasticard "boxes" and set about getting the angles right - once I had them figured out, I glued the pipes in place and added rivets:

(Some Green Stuff was used to fill the tubing at the attachment points for reinforcement).

Some guitar strings were used to simulate hydraulic lines:

I drilled holes in the end of the support arms, and inserted toothpicks to attach the rolla:

Test fitting:

I used the small wooden spools as spacers - I decided they needed some rivets too, to help them blend in.  I also added some toothpicks to the front:

And here it is mounted, and after the spikey bits have been added:

...at this point, the model sat on my desk for a few days while I worked on other stuff.  I kept looking at it and thinking that the "spikes" needed something, but I couldn't think of what.  One morning, inspiration struck: since they looked like pikes, how about some heads?

I started with these skulls from a Warhammer Fantasy Chaos Marauders kit.  The skulls were originally mounted hanging from a banner pole, andthe sculpt had a metal bracket on the top of the skull (left pic) that I had to shave off & file down (right pic).  I also dug into my Space Marine bits and cut some spare helmets from some sprues.

Then I just drilled through them with my pin vise:

,,,and mounted them on the spikes:

I also drilled some holes at the upper arms of the Rolla mount:

...and added these hanging-skull-on-a-chain bits:

Unfortunately, I got a little carried away with the pin vise, and accidentally drilled all the way through the arm:

...luckily, my bag 'o rivets was there to help:

...I gave the other side of the Battlewagon the same treatment.

And here's the finished product:

...overall I'm pretty pleased with the results on this one too.  Did the styrene tubing speed up the process?  Yeah, a bit - this one took me about three hours to build, as opposed to six hours for the first one, so it cut the time in half.  It's still a pretty involved process, though.  I think if I had the tubing cutter it would speed things up even more.  I believe Plastruct & Evergreen also make styrene stock in rectangular shapes as well, and that would speed things up greatly - working with the foamcore and "wrapping" it in plasticard is the most time-consuming part.  Lars4life tipped me off about a shop here in town that carries the full line of Plastruct products, so when I get a chance I'll head over and see what I can find...