Dwarfs Part X: More Gyrocopter

The next part of rebuilding the heap of a Gyrocopter I bought is fabricating a new blade assembly.  I decided to make it in one piece for strength, and to magnetize it so it could be removed for easy packing in a transport case.  I started by grabbing some scrap cardboard out of the recycling bin and sketching a blade shape that I liked:

...then I cut it out and used it to transfer the pattern to a sheet of plasticard:

The middle was a bit wobbly, so I reinforced it with a bit of plasticard, then added some Green Stuff to mount the magnet to:

Next, I grabbed some styrene tubing and build a "frame" - the plan here is to paint these with a "wood grain" effect so they look like wooden poles:

I sculpted some ropes out of Green Stuff, to look like they're tying the frame together and to hide the gaps a bit:

Next, I used some scrap plasticard and a small hole punch to make some "rivets":

Primered:

I used black paint, P3 brown ink, & Vallejo Game Ink smokey brown for the wood effect:

I picked up a pack of flight bases at my FLGS and sculpted a mounting spot for one:

Finished model:

Overall, I'm pretty pleased (especially considering what I started with!)

Dwarfs Part IX: Gyrocopter

...the next thing I decided I needed for my Dwarf army was a standout "centerpiece" model - one that I could heavily convert, try to do a great paint job on, and would generally keep the army from looking like just a big mass of troops.  It would also help if it was a model that was popular in Dwarf lists.  My first thought was Dwarf High King Thorgrim Grudgebearer:

Image from Games Workshop

...but, as I said before, cost is a big factor in building this army - I looked around the usually places, but there were no cheap used versions of this model available.  The only other model that really appealed to me was the Gyrocopter:

Image from Games Workshop

Looking for a cheap version of this model also proved tough - even pretty busted-up ones were going for a significant chunk of change on eBay.  I finally won an auction for one that was missing as many parts as were there:

Pic from auction listing

I waited for it to get here and hoped for the best.

Once the model arrived, I saw how bad it was:

Yikes.  No rotors.  No gun.  No tail stabilizer.  Busted landing skids.  Dried-up clots of superglue everywhere.  Doesn't even look like it was ever cleaned properly.

I chipped off the excess glue the best I could, grabbed my plasticard & Green Stuff, and got to work.  First order of business was to replace the missing tail stabilizer:

Next: I reconstructed some struts for the landing skids using styrene tubing:

Tying in the rear stabilizer & customizing an exhaust port:

Next, I needed to replace the main gun - I grabbed a ship's cannon I had in my bitz box from a Reaper Razig weapons pack, but it was too big - so, I cut it down, re-sculpted it, and added a mounting point:

Next up - building the blade assembly!

Deffrolla Mark V

...as I mentioned last time, I finished my final Battlewagon - I just needed to build the Deffrolla.  Here's a photo dump of the build process - if you want the complete write-up with detailed instructions, you can find it here.