Fort Construction: Workshop

 

Another big section of the fort is finished. This one is the spanners' workbench and tools, including some nice hydraulic arms. I probably went a bit overboard with the cables and the ductwork, but since the workbench itself was so detailed, I wanted the rest of the room to look like it matched.

As you can probably tell, most of this wall section is just built from the Mekboy Workshop terrain set, though it did take a bit of work to take the freestanding workshop and build it into the existing wall of the fort.

The biggest part was flipping the main wall of the workshop around and installing the bench on the wrong side. I decided to make the more detailed side of the piece face forward, since the other side would be glued to the wall. The piece is fairly symmetrical, so I really only had to carve some holes for a couple of wires and pipes to get the bench to sit (mostly) flush with the wall.

I ended up grinding off the back half of the wall to better attach it to the fort, so the workbench is now at a slightly odd angle. Plenty Orky, though.

Nice to see that the Orks keep their workspace as tidy as I keep mine.

Since the Mekboy Workshop came with a big hydraulic arm and I already had another as part of the gubbinz for my big trakk, I wanted to make some spots around the workshop where the arms could be installed. I went a little overboard making the mount for the arm, adding as many motors, compressors, and gears as I could fit into the tiny space I'd allotted myself. Though I guess going overboard is kind of on par with the rest of the workshop.

I was originally going to mount the second arm on the floor right next to the workbench, but that didn't give me much space if I wanted to make sure that this piece still fit together nicely with the other fort walls. Also, there was already more than enough detail crammed in this little section, so it couldn't hurt to spread it out a little bit.

I ended up making a little freestanding platform for the arm to sit in. I modeled it mostly on the assembly line platforms you see in car manufacturing plants, which seemed appropriate. I also had to pack more lead weights into this little thing than any other part of the fort just to keep it from tipping over when the arm swung around. Turned out pretty well, though.

Only a few more sections and this thing will be ready for some paint.

More Gubbinz

I probably should have stayed focused on getting the rest of my grots painted up in time for the campaign, but as is oft the case, I got distracted by another shiny idea and ended up spending a few days making gubbinz instead.  In addition to my lovely spikes and shoutas, Deezo now has a set of boarding planks and a big grabba.

The boarding planks were my first adventure into the realm of magnetization.  I had originally intended building magnetized gubbinz when I was first assembling my trakk, but unfortunately I wasn't even able to get a weapon, let alone a full set of gubbinz completed in time for the start of our first campaign.  I've still got a long way to go (plus two other vehicles that could use some love), but my trakk is growing into quite the monster.

Oh, I also gave myself the option to swap out the big grabba for a wrecka ball, just in case...

Anyway, since this was all being done after the whole trakk was assembled and painted, I had to go about it a bit differently than I had envisioned in the beginning.  Since the planks were detachable, I didn't trust the normal hinges, which weren't very deep.  I ended up putting a pin in each side, which didn't quite line up with the center of the hinge.  There was a lot of friction and sheering stress when you rotated it at first, but it seemed to eventually bend or warp itself into shape so that both planks rotate quite freely now.

There wasn't enough room between the truck bed and the tracks to slide the planks in between them (to say nothing of installing magnets), so I made some small platforms to extend the bed out over the tracks.  I wanted them to be as sturdy as possible, so I also gave each platform two long planks with some pins that would be glued to the bed.  Even with just a dry fitting, it held the platforms on pretty tight, so I'm pretty sure that they're not going anywhere.

Next up was the big grabba.  I was quite fond of Cygnus' use of the Battlewagon grabba on his big trakk, but I didn't want to just copy him outright.  I decided to base my grabba off a big mek power klaw, which had a nice robotic look to it, but was much too small to grab an ork.  The obvious solution to this problem was to bulk it up with a ton of plasticard and sprue.

While I'm pretty pleased with the end result, it was far from a smooth conversion.  Due to poor planning and a few holes that I drilled less than straight, this claw is pinned in somewhere between seven and nine different places.  There are five pins in the "wrist" portion alone.

Fortuately, the arm portion was much more straightforward.  Most of it is made from a Killa Kan arm, with a bit of shoota added on to give it some length.  The arm, shoota, and claw were all connected by a single long pin that ran down the middle of all three, so at least I know I don't screw these things up all the time.

Considering how long the big grabba is and how far forward its center of gravity is, I didn't trust the thin copper wire that I used to make the interchangeable weapon for my slaver, so I got some thin brass pipe to connect both my grabba and the wrecka ball to the vehicle.  The tube it slides into was build onto one of the boarding plank platforms.  The wrecka ball didn't have many changes made to it, other than adding a lot more spiky bits to the ball itself.

The finished gubbinz looked pretty good attached to the trakk.  The platforms for the boarding plank now make my trakk super wide (which can be a big deal in Gorkamorka), but not any wider than it is with all of its spikes attached, so I can live with it.

The big grabba looks surprisingly good painted up, considering what a hodgepodge of sprue and plasticard it actually is.  The mechanical bits that I used to cover up the huge chunks of sprue that made the wrist are a pair of vox casters that I happened to have lying around.  I thought I'd try my hand again at hazard stripes, and I'm fairly pleased by the results.  Ties it in nicely to Grizwoad's choppa.

 I also made a little control panel to control the hydraulics.

The wrecka ball also turned out quite nice, though it probably won't get a ton of play because of how much fun big grabbas are.  Maybe I need to add a mount to the back of my little flamecar...

So if my big trakk wasn't over-the-top enough before, it's certainly a lot more ridiculous now.  Proper Orky.  Although now that I'm to this point, I can't help thinking that it could really use a reinforced ram...maybe a mine layer too...

Sadly, finishing up the gubbinz took up the whole week before the start of the new campaign, so only half of my runts got painted in time to play.  I've also gotten terribly behind in my blogging, so I need to get caught up on all the events of our mini-campaign.  Until next time...