Tutorial: Razorback Flamer Turrets

Tutorial:  Twin Linked Heavy Flamer 

Razor Back Turrets.

As many Blood Angles players have had to do, Scratch building Heavy Flamer turrets is a fun and challenging prospect, read:  Crappy.  My best ideas that won't break the bank, revolved around the Flamestorm cannon.  There are plenty of alternatives out there, the Imperial Guard Sentinel Heavy Flamer, creating a scratchbuilt flamer, plastic tube and plasticard based, or re-purposing the Baal Predator sponsons.  Read on to see my solution.




First thing:  Baal Sponsons and Sentinel flamers were out of budget for me to buy bits for.  That would have been 12 of them (2 for each turret x 6 razors).  Scratchbuilt solutions can be done, I was able to scratch build Autocannons, but heavy flamers?  That requires a bit more complex shapes, fuel hoses, promethium tanks, etc.  ...No thanks.  That brings me to the Flamestorm Cannons from the Land Raider Redeemer.  Each sponson is a large two barrelled cannon, fuel hose, and twin Promethium tanks.  Plus, for each LRC kit you get two...for three kits worth you can bit out 6 cannons.  I already own two from my own LRC kit, and found 4 more on e-bay for a steal.

So, some experimenting and a bot of little work gave me the following:

Flamestorm = Heavy Flamer?  Yes?

The key to conversion for me is that ever important, proof of concept.  Because I already have all of my other turrets magnetized, so these should be no different.  This requires me to magnetize not only the actual cannon, but the top cannon cover (the bit with the sensor and weapon cover, part of the turret) as well.

Firstly, here are the cannon bits from one LRC sponson sprue.  This consists of  4 cannon halves, 4 promethium canister sides, and two end cap/connector bits.

First step was to look at the bits and see what there is to work with.  A little bit of dry fitting, and a top down/sideways approach worked right in my head.  But in order to look right, the hoses should be removed and placed in a more sensible location.  The bits we have to work with now, are like so:

I removed the Pilot light hose, and the Primary fuel line, then trimmed and cleaned up the cuts.  Wanting to connect the fuel tanks to the cannon, the end cap/connector tank bit is not necessary.  Placing the cannon horizontal, I need to create a mounting solution to attach the weapon to the Razorback mount.  Our patient must be told...an incision had to be made:

The easiest way was to use my Dremel and the grinding disc to melt through the plastic of the post hole half and magnetize it to the weapon arm.  Adding a magnet?  No space.  Second best thing?  Metal sheeting.  Creating a sandwich of Metal, Magnet, and metal was the solution.  Here are the steps:

1. Slice out the section with dremel/knife/burneing hatred, or just sheer willpower.  *Always cleanup the space very thoroughly and dry fit the weapon mount for width.
2. Slap in some sheetmetal squares, and line the area for the mount magnet to grab onto.
3. Grind down the corners, and cleanup the sheetmetal edging.

Next step, we put it all together.

Flipping the cannon back over to the "top" side, I drilled a hole, mounted a magnet and began to place the hoses and tank in place, like so.

The open end of the tank closes the end of the cannon, and the hose portion pops right on top in the gap between the tanks.  The pic above should be pretty easy to follow.

Flipping it over, we can add the pilot light on the bottom tip.  We should have two pilots, but one in the center looks good enough for me.  The cannon came with the one bit and looks pretty clean with the middle one if you ask me.

..and just like that, our cannon is pretty much done.

The keys rules for this kind of thing are simple:

• Dry fit EVERYTHING.
• If you are magnetizing, polarity is important.  Always use your first magnet to set your second.
• Metal to magnet, is very useful, and should be tested and relied on in areas that don't have thick plastic, or lack space...Like the inside of a Flamestorm cannon!

Slapping on the weapon cover/sensor, give us this.  The last pic is the flamer slapped onto the weapon mount.  It looks kinda thin from the side but I feel, it still conveys "Hey, I'm a flame weapon".  What do you think?

And to finalize it here are all the magnetized weapon options I have for each razorback:

• Twin Linked Heavy Flamer.
• Twin Linked Heavy Bolter.
• Twin linked Lascannon.
• Lascannon/Twin Linked Plasmagun
• Twin linked Assault Cannon.
• Also - you can see the magnetized hatch weapons (storm bolter and Hunter Killer) I have and the rhino hatch top there as well.

So there you have it.  Flamestorm Sponson = Twin linked Heavy Flamer

Thanks for reading.  I hope you liked the tutorial and can find some use from my project!

-MikeD