Conversion: AdMech Leman Russ'

Overcompensating much?

Well, hey there! The conversions for the AdMech are plentiful, seeing as almost nothing is standardized within the fandex. I figured that with the Leman Russ being the little-to-convert rock of the fandex as it's in the IG codex, conversion work would be quite simple... And then my imagination slid in; the ever-present devil on my shoulder whispering sweet nothings of plasticard, casting and greenstuff. Because of this, the five variants of the Leman Russ took more work than I had original anticipated. But before I get into each variant available in the dex and how I created them in model-form, this post will be a quick rundown of what universal work will be done for all five types of the Leman Russ. More after the break.

First, weapon sponsons. I'm in no way reinventing the wheel, here, but for those who have somehow missed how to magnetize these things I'll give a quick rundown of what this process involves. First you have the following sponson that we'll need to modify, removing the back wall on one side and placing a magnet in its place:

Next, the slot these weapons go in. Place a magnet within the slot on the corresponding side of the weapon in the same area you want the weapon's magnet to line up with. Note that your magnets will need to be 1/32" in thickness or smaller to require no drilling:

Next, the sponsons and their attachment to the tank itself. For this I used two methods as my curiosity on whether one could outlast the other lingered. First, using some extra sprue with shaved/flat ends, I glued one end to the inside of the sponson like so:

And the other end with an appropriately sized magnet:

Alternatively you can use a method that Eric over at The Midnight Shift showed me (and in my opinion will be the winner in this trial) connecting a bar from the top to the bottom of the inside of the sponson like so:

And then shaving down an area on this bar for a magnet to be placed:

The latter will probably require a dremmel, but in either case, place a magnet in the appropriate location on the tank as well. I've seen a lot of people drill into their model to accomplish this task, but once painted I think these look like details already in place and I don't enjoy drilling into models if I don't have to:

Now these two look pretty snazzy already, but I wanted a flare of AdMech involved in their make as well. If you look to my tutorial on casting for beginners on MWC, you'll see the item I used for that tutorial is what I'm going to use for these two Leman Russ':

These things fit perfectly on the back of the tank and leave just enough room for the exhaust pipes.

And there you have it. In the next few conversion posts for the Leman Russ I'll be going into how to kit out each variant that is listed in the fandex and magnet them so you don't have to purchase a Leman Russ for each.

Later days.

EDIT:
For the Leman Russ variants in the fandex there are several different weapon options, and until recently I hadn't gotten the chance to decide how I wanted it to happen. Now that the parts for the weapons have finally come in the mail I've got the practice down.

First I glued some spare plastic bars inside the turret. I put an overabundance of glue around the edges to insure these things would never come off. Next I repeated the same process on the inside of the turret base:

After this I glued in a plastic bar inside the chassis as well so it matches up with the turret's base. On the turret base's underside I clipped off the locking-pegs as I won't need them with the magnets applied like so:

Now with functioning turrets, it's time to get magnets inside the weapon mounts placing them on the bars I furiously glued in earlier:

And that's all there is to it. Now I can switch out weapons quickly. Which weapons? Stay tuned for those posts soon.