Friday, March 25, 2016

On the table now - Tau Barracuda

I am taking a bit of a giant project. Normally I hate large vehicles as they take too long to complete. I have been putting off starting this Forge World Tau Barracuda for a while now. I needed to figure out a few things. First, how to properly mount the ship on a stand. Second, hot to magnetize and convert the ship. 

The Barracuda does not come with a sane way to mount it. It predates the current flight stands and only had a randomly-sized hole in the middle of the bottom. I could use a brass rod to hold it up but that would not reliably hold this beefy piece of resin.  What I decided to do was to get a wooden base from the Christian-run hobby store and some nut and bolts from the hardware store and make my own base. I drilled though the base then widened the hole from 1/8" to 1/4" with a spiral bit being careful to keep my hole perpendicular to the base. After that I drove a partially threaded bolt through the bottom and Gorilla Glued it into place. After trimming up the predictable overflow, I packed the hole with super glue just to be sure. 

Now all I needed was a way to secure the base to the flyer. Good think I got nuts. I drilled a hole slightly smaller than the nut int he base of the flyer then hammered the nut in. I dripped super glue in the crevices to secure it. I am still a little nervous as a hard bump or tweak could rip the nut our of the base of the flyer. 

I wanted the weapons the be removable so that it will be easy to track if they are blown off but also so they can be swapped out. I have had the idea of a "tank hunter" Barracuda that is armed with a Rail Gun and Markerlights rather than Ion Cannon and Burst Cannons. I am not going to buy and convert a second one of these models so this one has to be able to be swapped between the two. I magged the main nose-mounted gun and the turrets (after deciding to glue them in place). 

I also magnetized the cockpit and the canopy so that they stay in but can also be removed. 

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