Saturday, July 7, 2012

Hobby: Slat Armor for a Leman Russ

So, because I now have a tank hunting squadron of Leman Russ hulled vehicles I decided they will need extra armor.  I have bought the FW extra armor for the Chimera chassis in the past and am really happy with it, but I wanted something different for these tanks.  I decided to go with slat armor, which operated by detonating explosives before they reach the hull of the vehicle and taking away much of their penetrative power.

Below You can see the frame all layed out over a pattern I have made on a sheet of 3x5 card.


Next I added a few vertical supports and glued it all together with plastruct plastic weld.  Really happy with this product for use with plasticard and the like as it actually bonds the materials and won't be anywhere as brittle as super glue for this application.


Next I begin to add the slats.  I used 2 pieces of balsa to give a uniform spacing and a little tub of basing dirt to hold it in place while I laid each slat.


After a little while I had all the slats glued on, so I just had to give them a little time before I trimmed them all up.


He is the final result.  I really like the way it came out and I will definitely go forward with this project.  I will need to buy some more strip styrene in order to finish the other 5 for the squadron.  Will be adding magnets to the hulls so that they are not permanent.  None of the 3 vehicles have sponson weapons, so this was much easier because of that.  It would be possible to do with sponsons though and I think that it would look pretty cool on a Russ with sponsons as well.


I'm going to be adding some plasticard details to the Baneblade I am reworking in the near future.  At the least there will be mud flaps such as the ones on the FW super-heavies.

Thanks for stopping by.

8 comments:

  1. Excellent work! I love spaced armour on vehicles, I wished I had done it more often on my RS Tanks.

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    1. Thanks man. I always like spaced armor as well, so I have been adding it to more stuff recently. (Like my Dust walker)

      You could always make more for your next army, I hope the sale of your current one will really help you get it started.

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    2. Thanks mate it will,

      I already have a shopping list sorted on the Forgeworld site and every bid higher something gets added to it, haha.

      If it gets to $1500Aus I will buy an entire ~1750pt army of all forgeworld models as well as a full 4x4 set of the Zone Mortalis Tiles.

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    3. All FW army would be pretty amazing. Zone mortalis is pretty cool too! Good luck!

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    4. Oh and speaking of Dust, my germans just got a Konigsluther and a sniper team. The Konigsluther is HUGE! I realy like the look of both variants actually so I will paint the whole lot.

      How are you going on the Dust, have you done any more to your models?

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    5. Yeah, I've got 4 units painted I just have not decided on how I want to base them and have not gotten around to taking any photos. I'll post about them soon. Probably mid week. Can't wait to get a Konigsluther for my force.

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  2. That does look very nice! Hope to see one painted up!

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    Replies
    1. Thanks, I will have to build the rest before I start painting these tanks and I still have a couple other units to paint before I want to get to this squadron.

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What do you think?