Warhawk Production Log - Part I

This production log will chronicle my efforts at putting together the first of Matt Plonski's Warhawk kits to roll off the assembly line.  he made this kit when I mentioned on the Apocalypse40K Forums that I wanted to build the Epic model of the Space Marine Lander.

Matt used a CAD program to design the Warhawk, which he then cut in sheet acrylic.

These 6 parts make up each wing.  You have to pay attention to which way the etched detail faces.  This is all well explained in the directions.

The directions are pretty good.  Exceptional for a garage kit!

The Wing assemblies after being glued together.  They look funny because you actually see the CA glue between the parts as they are clear acrylic.  All one had to do was line up the parts and glue them together.  

One thing that you really need to consider is how much finishing you will want to do.  These wing parts are stacked and the edges look it, containing 2-4 layers.  You may want to use some sheet styrene to finish off the edges.

Warhawk rolls of the assembly lines!

Matt Plonski has been working on a Warhawk Lander for me for a few months.  Well, I finally got my box of parts in the mail!  Here is the final render of what the ship looks like:

Of course the inspiration is this model from Epic:

And what is great is Matt did an AMAZING job on building a set of directions to go with the kit.  Here are some sample pages:

More to come as I start putting this beast together!

Alec

Space Marine Warhawk WIP

Matt Plonski of Apoc-Eclipse,is building the Epic Space Marine Lander for me in 40K scale.  He is doing an awesome job and so I thought I would share his progress with you all.

From Matt:

I design in Microsoft Visio (a 2D drawing program) which nicely exports to Corel Draw (used in the shop for the laser) and Rhino3D (used by me to virtually assemble the model).

Here's a full render of the assembled model. The cylinders are representative of the 1" turrets found on most Space Marine vehicles. There are a lot of them. There will also be a set of Land Raider-sized sponsons on the nose.

The Forge World Thunderhawk Transporter uses friction to hold the tank it carries in place, like fingers. While that might be OK for them, I couldn't in good faith design my grapples to work like that. A Land Raider has a very distinct center hull which can be grabbed from below, so I used that to my advantage. The added bonus is that the grapples end up looking like the claws from a bird of prey.

Here is a shot of the rear hull:

The engine intakes are 50mm fans from Evil Mushroom. While this will work with up to 3" fans, I think this size is more evocative of the original model which has small intakes on fat engines.

The plan is to make another set of grapples for the Rhino-sized vehicles. The thought is to make it so you can switch them out as the mission dictates.

The datasheet will allow ~20 infantry in the front (through assault ramps), ~30 in the rear (regular doors), and transport either four Land Raiders or six Rhino-type tanks. Hopefully two Land Raiders and four Rhinos will work. One centerline-mounted Turbo Laser, one set of LR sponsons, and all of those turrets (twin-linked Lascannon, TL Heavy Bolter, TL AA Autocannon, multi-melta, TL assault cannon, etc.). No bombs or missiles planned.

For more on the Warhawk, follow the thread on the Apocalypse40K Forum.