My Take On The New Baneblade

[Siegemaster]

So I finally broke down. Too many days lurking on this forum and the new Baneblade model have conspired to drag me back into buying GW models.
So I went out and bought a Baneblade last night. I am going to share with you all what I am going to do with it.
My current guard army leans more toward the machine cult than the imperial cult.
There are some things I don't like about the model. First of all there is a huge amount of rivets on this thing. Now I know rivets are an important part of any imperial guard tank but this baby looks some tought an ork how to rivet in a straight line and let him loose. So I am going to start by removing every other rivet or so making sure to keep it even. So I am going to start by removing every other rivet making sure to keep everything even. If I don't like that I will remove all rivets but the ones in the corners and maybe a few in between. I definatly want a more modern look to my Baneblade so there are some other things that have to change as well. The vision slits will have to be changed and the smoke launchers are much too big. The demolisher cannon is too long I will be shortening that. The search light looks like an afterthought and I will replace that with one from the regular accessory sprue. I also am not a fan of the lascannons on the sponsons. I think I have some leftovers from a landraider kit I will replace them with. And finally there will be some stowage and possiably sand bags, I have toyed with the idea of a heavy weapons team on the hull above the demolisher cannon in a sandbagged emplacement. Well those are my thoughts for now hopefuly I'll have some pictures tomorrow of this going together. I will do some progressive rivet removal pictures for you in case there are people out there who are intrested in how different levels of rivets looks

[Rectunator]

Nice ideas. I though about putting an hb-team on the deck but unfortunately theres no space anywhere so I ditched that idea. Personally I dont mind the rivets but I'd imagine it would look a lot more... coherent and simple if you remove 50% of them, which is a good thing. And yeah it was my ork.. sorry. I'm not going to use any of the vision slits in my tank but I read that someone's going to do that too and paint the small dents to look like they themselves are the slits propably with a periscope or something inside. I replaced the ridiculous smoke launchers with better ones, you might want to consider doing the same.

[Siegemaster]

I'll resize these and repost soon sorry for the links.

So these may not show well the rivets removed I think I may have to prime it before the full effect can be seen.
I didn't realize that the panels on the bottom sides were meant to be hinged on. I have actually cut out the lines between the panels. this may not be as visible as I would hope but I like knowing it is there.
Please don't tell me about the seam between the main hull and the back panel I know it is there. I haven't built a model in over a year and it is amazing how many tools i still need to find

[Rich H]

Looking good.
I would get some fine wet and dry paper and lightly sand the cut off rivets to stop their ghosts spoiling the smoothed out look. Looks alot more sensibly rivited together.

[Siegemaster]

Ya sand paper is one of the tools I am still trying to find. The surface is actually very smooth but I will probably prime and sand it and prime again to be sure I get it all smooth.

[Siegemaster]

So here is some progress. with more rivets removed. As I was doing this and getting up close and personal with the rivets on this beast I noticed something odd about the rivets around the armor plates on the main body of the tank around the turret ring. Heres a picture.

These rivets point straight up on a sloped surface. GW has done such a good job with this model why did they have to drop the ball on something as simple as this? I am sure it has something to do with the mold making process but it seems more like someone made a mistake than an inability to make proper rivets on a sloped surface as we have seen them on other models.

More Pics



This is my improved version of the Demolisher cannon i just cut out the piece attached to the ball and glued the barrel on after drilling out all the little holes. I feel much better about this. It looks much more like the siege cannon it was meant to be and less like another main gun.

[Mykman]

Hi

The marked rivets are really uglys , but this shape is not a mistake it is becouse the molding process limitations. The finished sprue is moving upvards when finished in the mold , and it`ll suck or broke when the pins lifting the product. This is similar onthe Black Templars sprue on the studded shoulderpad.
I really don`t understand why GW do theese mould making technologies in the era of slide moulding??
They can do in the new heavy bolters but don`t in theese rivets ?
Anyway i`ll sand them off completly !

sorry for the bad english !

[Siegemaster]

Mykman I figured that might be the reason but what about the rivets on the sloped surfaces of the chimera or the leman russ hull. it is just poor mold making if you ask me. when you see things like that next to the fact that the Heavy Bolters are "drilled out" you gust have to wonder what is going on there. Anyway enough ranting on to the update.

here is a sponson it is not fully glued together. If you want to partially assemble these for painting dont do what I did. glue the sides to the bottom not the top, then you can attach what you have finished to the tank and add the top when you are done. due th the way the track sides are made you cannot add the bottom after if you glue the top and sides on.
now lets remove those last pesky rivets.



next I will be priming this beast so we can get a good look at what it looks less about a hundred rivets.

[Khargoth]

Blagh. I didn't notice those upright rivets, but that's pretty poor.

A modelling trick I picked up from my dad: To replace those rivets, cut them off, get a piece of plastic rod about the same diameter, attack a slice of it in place of the rivet (don't worry if it's a bit 'long') and give the whole lot a go-over with some sand paper. The intent is to sand the rod pieces so that they're nice and rounded, and they look much more even in length.

I'm waiting for the Forgeworld Stormblade conversion kit to come out, but one thing I plan to do is get rid of the Stormblade's hull-mounted Heavy Bolter (it looks very 'tacked on') and have a sandbagged heavy weapons team on top of the hull. For the Baneblade you could possibly have a similar team with a Heavy Stubber instead of the traditional pintle mount, or get rid of the Heavy Bolter turret on the hull and have two teams with HB's. However it seems a little illogical, as the Baneblade has a turret with a very long barrel, which would make standing on pretty much any part of the hull a hazard.

[Lord Of Rebirth]

The only way I know to keep those rivets there would make that single (yet important >.> <.< GW morons....) a whole lot more expensive to make. They could use a mold where the "top" piece actually has some other pieces sliding inside it that come down on the piece as the proper angle to make the rivets then as the sprue de-molds those mold block inserts slide up inside the "top" block before the sprue is removed. If you look at the sprue with the sponson weapons on it a very similar idea is used where there is a "top" mold block then a "bottom" mold block as normal and then additional mold blocks come in from the sides.

The idea of the mold having more than two pieces isn't new or amazing or anything but it is harder to design, more expensive to make and more expensive to use since molding is usually done entirely by machines these days. The thing with it is considering how many Baneblades GW is gonna sell the cost of the design and manufacture of such molds is not even high. It is the kind of thing that over a reasonable production run would add something like ten cents to a maximum of a dollar to the cost to make each kit.

Over the source of even a million kits that is only a hundred thousand to a million dollars and for a -world wide corporation- like GW that is small bills. If they used this more advanced molding technology they could spiff up alot of parts and then make alot of new parts that they can't make without this technology. It makes me sad and while I want to work for GW one day it kinda makes me wish I could just take them over and produce some better quality kits...

Sorry to go so off topic! Your baneblade is looking great though. I bet it will turn out spiffy even after your modeling break.

[NickB]

Over the source of even a million kits that is only a hundred thousand to a million dollars and for a -world wide corporation- like GW that is small bills.

I think you may be confusing Games Workshop with the Pepsi Corporation.

[shadowhammer]

Want to know why the rivets suck? Cuz Despite all the advances in moulding technology, GW is cheap. Its easier to drill with a drill press straight down while constructing the mould then to calculate the angle needed and turn the block of aluminium side ways and make the rivets look real.

[Lord Of Rebirth]

I know GW isn't as big as Pepsi but it is still a big corporation. Just think of the number of stores and it is big. My friend has a single rental shop and it is worth almost 10 million and it is in a place maybe twice the size of my local GW. My point is while to a normal non-company owning person the cost of making correct molds would be unfordable for any company of a reasonable size it is easily affordable.

[Kugelblitz]

Can we get back on topic please?-K