Vendetta Conversion/Scratchbuild (5)

Welcome ladies and gentlemen, to the penultimate instalment of this guide to the creation of my Vendetta gunships.  Today's post will again be picture heavy, and fairly extensive, because it deals with the creation of the rotors.  These are entirely fabricated from plasticard and as such require a more detailed explanation.

Now, the design of these rotors owes much to another individual.  This guy is one of the greatest scratch builders I have yet discovered on the interweb.  His name is Klaus and he builds, sculpts and paints to an incredible standard.  In fact, his skill is matched only by his imagination.  I believe he has a few blogs, but the one I follow is called DEI GRECI, and can be found here.  My inspiration for these rotors comes from his own VTOL gunship, the Charon, which can be found here.  That link is to the completed diorama, if you search a little you will find his own rotor construction post. 

Anyway, without further ado, here is how i did it.  

 

For various reasons i dont have a circle cutter, so i just cut my circles out by hand. I used the lid of a spray can and a 40mm base for the large and small circles respectively.  They were then cut out very painstakingly with a knife and filed down for smoothness.  As you will see later, the circles are not perfect, but its not noticeable on the final product so sod it :)

To join the top and bottom of each rotor i used some rectangular plasticard rod cut to regular lengths (in my case, 14mm). 

8 of these rod sections were glued around the bottom of each rotor.  One gap is intentionally larger than the rest because this is where the rotor will join the hull.  The top is then glued on.

Now for the rotor blades.  I knew from the start that i had to have these loose so that they could spin when blown on.  Just because its cool :)

This did made it a lot harder to build though...

I began by cutting 9 sections of plasticard for the rotors, and a section of tube to attach them to.  I used a piece of Basilisk barrel because I didn't have any tubes at the time, and it worked just fine.  

So that they would stick on at the correct angle I filed one end of each rotor blade with a curved diamond file, ensuring a similar angle on each. 

 The first three blades in place. 

And the other 6.  It was very difficult to get them all to a similar angle, but it didn't matter much, because they would be mounted within a fully enclosed cowl.  As long as they didn't hit the top or bottom then it was OK.  

With a little wriggling, the blades were placed inside the cowling.  Someone less impatient than me would do the sensible thing and glue the top on after the rotors were inside ;)

I then cut the pieces needed for the next stage.  Again, I didn't have any rod, so I used spare sections of flying base instead.   Below are pictures of where the bits above go when glued down.  This bit is stupidly fiddly, and involves constantly blowing on the rotors to make sure they don't accidentally get glued in place while the rest dries.  Fun stuff.

It is especially important here to ensure the two bits which attach the rotors are level at the point where they will also join the hull.  If they are not, the rotor will sit at an angle, and look really stupid.

I then used 0.25mm plasticard strips to fill in the gaps around the outside. 

Using the technique I discussed on my hydras, I magnetised two pieces of plasticard so that they would fit snugly onto the hull, and glued them to the rotors.  

This is what they looked like at the basic level, before any gaps were filled in and details added. 

And here they are attached to the hull.


Well, that's it for today.  In next weeks post, the final in this series, I'll talk you through the construction of the interior.