Spin Spin Sugar

Got crazy, maybe drinking another glass of wine wasn't that cleaver. Nevertheless I started working on my Nigh Spinner (hence the strange titel, great song btw), I even worked inside my room. Resin dust isn't that nice, but same goes for those homes for the aged in germany. So shaving a year off or two while working with resin isn't that bad.

I filed away all mold lines, glued the new back hatch on the falcon model and even magnetized the beast. This doesn't allow fancy positions for the guns, but it keeps them from falling or breaking off.

Well, here are the pictures...bad as always, but its dark now here in europe and I still haven't found a decent camera in my mail box.

Spinner with the turret mounted on

6x2mm magnets in the gun casing, 4x1mm magnet placed in a hole I drilled into the hardpoint.

Neodyme magnets are rather strong, esp. if you try to stick them together with the wrong polarities, so I'm thinking about drilling two small holes in the turret right unterneath the guns and a corresponding hole in the muzzle, then placing two magnets with the same polarity facing towards each other in those. Should be enough to keep the guns hovering over the turret.

The first serpent...

I finished him ouple of minutes ago after I magnetised the chin-mounted weapons for all 8 tanks yesterday.

Tried 3 solutions for the turret/weapons. First try was to save me some magnets and glue cut off heads from nails on the weapons and magnets on both the turret and the weapon shield. Didn't worked out that well, since there are some molding lines on the back of the heads, resulting in a crooked look after putting all the parts together. Next idea was to replace those nails with stripes like I did with the walker weapons. No crooked look, but the shield was too close to the weapon&body.

Thanks to ynneads great tutorial dished the plan to be a cheapskate in terms of magnets, recalculated the amount of weapons I really need (nobody fields 5 SL or StarCan-Serpents anyway) and went ahead. Next challenge that came up during the process was the lack of proper drill for the weapon shield. My magnets are too large, so drilling the shield mounting would have very likely resulted in a disaster.

Thankfully I bought most of my magnet from the bay, some of them came in sets with other magnets mixed in. Digged through my box of magnets and found some 5x1 cylinder magnets, who fit into the shield mounting rather nicely. No drilling needed, only a small amount of glue on one side and put them in.

Put a cut of nail head on the one side of the magnet stack, to keep me from glueing the side with wrong polarity on. After that it was rather easy and here are some pictures.



As you can see I magnetized everything, including the chin weapons, the falcon pulse laser and the "count as prism tank" d-weapon.



Quick overview, showing both sides of the tanks. You can see the magnet in the serpent turret and the turret ring. The large 5x2mm magnet underneath the falcon keeps it save in my army case and on the flying base I'm going to build next week.

Finished my two prism tanks

Here they are (or at least one of them, the group picture turned out to be blurry)...

I'm not 100% convinced of that conversion, but as a stopgap they are okay. Only problem is the size of the gun compared to the turret. The cables at the rear and the fins on the front are touching the body, guess I need to increase the height of the turret ring somehow.

The gun is magnetized. I glued a 5x2 round magnet over the hole in the d-cannon and a small metal strip on the gun casing. Drilled a hole into the turret and placed a 1x5 cylinder magnet into it. Both magnets on the gun and the hull face a metal strip, keeping the gun from rotating downwards.

My own self-made army case

Any fellow eldarplayer, who loves playing a mechanised list, knows the pain. The GW army cases don't work very well with a force build around lots of tanks and rather few infantery models. And those cases aren't cheap either.

Some guys in germany use cases from the Feldherr (german word for commander) Line. Those cases offer a better cost/balance ratio compared to GW but they aren't cheap either. And for me they don't get the job done, which is getting a whole 1750-2k mechanised eldar force into one case.

To make things even more complicated: I don't own a driver's license, so I need an army-case which can be carried around rather comfortable. By hand because I need to keep my back free in cases that I either carry my shoulder bag (laptop, books for university...) with me. I commute to university by train each day and the local GW store lies on he way between my home and the local central station. So if my courses end late in the evening I rather prefer to stop by at the store for a short game once in a while instead of driving all the way home first, just for getting my army and leaving my shoulder bag at home.

I searched around the web until I found a powerseller who offers aluminium cases for RC helicopters at the bay. Took me two weeks of biding to get my hands on one but I got it for ~30€ (incl. shipping) in the end. The measurement inside of that case is 65cm long, 24 wide and 15 high. A falcon is 16x12x4 and a serpent is 18x14x5. After fooling around with google sketchup I came up with a blueprint. I went shopping in a DIY store (got a thin metal sheet and some glue) and a store offering foamed plastics for sound isolation and padding chairs&couches. After the shopping spree I spent ~20€, raising my total investment up to 50€, which is the price of a single black army case from GW.

I worked in the case during the breaks between swotting for my exams last week and that's how it looks after I finished it:



That is the case closed. Doesn't look like much, but the beauty lies within...



I used the metal sheet for securing my tanks from any vertical movement. The same magnets will be used for a better hold onto the flying base, which will contain a bolt head. The topmost layer holds 3 serpents and a falcon/prism tank and still has enough space left for all the turrets and 7 converted "jetbikers" on 40mm bases.



I'm not satisfied with the layer between the lid and bottom ones, but it should have enough room for ~60 infantery models on 25mm bases. The bottom layer is separated into compartments for two serpent tanks, another falcon, one lord, 3 walkers and 10 jetbikes. There is also the second half of metal sheet glued into the case, keeping my tanks save from sliding around.

The whole capacity adds up to:

• 7 tanks, allowing me to carry 7 out of 8 tanks I own
• 3 walkers
  
• 1 lord
  
• 60 infantery models
• 17 jetbikes

That means I can carry around enough models to even choose between 2-3+ lists, depending on the points played. And that all for less than 50€ which is quite a steal, compared to a GW case which only has enough space for less than half of my DIY case.

Bottom Line: DIY pays off, esp. if you don't want to play a horde army, carry around a mulitude of GW cases or battle force boxes fieled with kitchen paper tissue for savety purposes.