Tuesday, November 22, 2011

A Sky Full of Ork

So I've been edging round Warhammer 40K for a few years now, and finally played my first big ol' battle with some mates. Was fun. Am hooked. I'm gonna go for the Orks, cause they're stupid and hilarious and have ridiculous rules around some of their units that all fit the big risk/big payout style of gaming I like. Plus I'm taken with the Stormboyz - Orks with Rokkits!!!! - and have this silly idea for an army based around as many Stormboyz as I can field - which should be about 60 of the blighters...

Gawd knows where the money's gonna come for all this, but I have the creative itch something bad, and kinda don't want it to go to waste. I also have a bunch of coke bottles lying around, and I think I can make a pretty badass Ork Landa out of them. They're a bit zeppeliny and blobby and if mashed together the right way will (I think) look pretty cool. 

But Coke bottles are really difficult to work with. Polyethylene terephthalate is really hard to glue, it isn't that strong, and paint doesn't adhere to the surface very well. So I've been doing a bit o' research to see if I can make it happen.

Glueing polyethylene terephthalate -  for a bit of cash you can fork out for special plastic glues. I'm yet to test it but that's solved easily enough.

Strength - I'm thinking of using plaster of paris to fill up the insides of the bottles. Interestingly, plaster of paris generates considerable heat - enough to cause third degree burns if you  encase parts of your body in them - but a quick check and I learn Science! Polyethylene terephthalate melts at 250C so should be fine. I also want to add several lengths of PVC piping running through the length of the bottle, as well as sticking out the sides so that I can then have an easier time attaching different bottles together.

Paint -  turns out there's specialist paint for priming polyethylene. Just gotta find out if it works with modeling paints. Which it should, given all GW's minis are, well... plastic.

So yeah. It's still all in my head. But it might just work...

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