The Alexa - a Sisters of Battle Scratchbuilt Thunderhawk: stage 0, planning!

First, listen to this;

If you don't think that is one of the best songs of the last half-century, you are wrong and I don't know what can be done with you.

What does Billy Joel's seminal paean to Long Island bubbies have to do with Sisters of Battle? Well, very little as it happens - but the eponymous boat of the song (inspired by Joel's own boat named after his daughter) was the inspiration for the name of my next crazy project.

(Sidebar: yes, I know I have many unfinished projects, but I am setting a "rule" - more a guideline, really - that I won't purchase a new project until I have finished the last project I bought. I have technically speaking violated this rule already with this project - I have bought the parts for it - but I am not going to start working on it until the last one I bought - the Opus - is completed.)

So what is this project? Simply put, a Thunderhawk gunship. But not any Thunderhawk gunship - a Sisters of Battle Thunderhawk gunship. With my Order's unique relationship with the Mechanicus, this is likely to not be a pure Thunderhawk, but something modified from the same chassis.

Like this, but more gothic

I did a quick internet search to see if others had done the same thing - no-one I found had done. Initially, I was going to simply buy the ForgeWorld Thunderhawk model and convert it up. But the more I thought about this, the more it seemed a foolish idea. It is 450 quid, about $630 US at current exchange rates. That's a huge amount of money for a single model - far more than I would want to spend. So, I did a more thorough search for scratchbuilt Thunderhawk templates - I thought I could use one of those.

It seems as if GW's IP lawyers have been cracking down on things, because all the links I could find led to file-hosting sites with a terse note saying accounts had been suspended for violating the terms of service. But I was able to find a very simple set of plans on Dakka which I was much inspired by. That model was made using foamboard, but I thought I could use plasticard instead. One of the features I thought very clever was the use of the Star Wars podracer for the engines.

I actually printed these plans and started to tape them together to get a better idea of scale

Later, I found this set of plans, which are the ones I am going to use (although I will be modifying them somewhat). The first thing I had to do was get 1:1 scale templates so I could see how big this thing would be and get an idea of how much plasticard I would need to buy.

Well, this was the first adventure! The proportions of each individual image are correct - that is, a line of 40mm is half the size of a line of 80mm - but each one is scaled differently to the others, so there is no way to simply print them all at a certain percentage of size and get 1:1 templates. I had to open each one in an image editing program, count the number of pixels in a particular line, do a little bit of math, and then resize the image to edit the px / in ratio so - when printed at 100% size - they would be the correct dimensions. That was a couple of hours work!

Blue lines are my conversion sketches . . . yes, arched gothic windows.

Of course arched gothic windows.

You can see the general idea of the build from the picture above - I want to use the Pegasus Gothic sets to make the sides of the fuselage (as luck would have it, they are pretty much exactly the right height when the templates are correctly scaled!) Not only will this cut down on the amount of detailing I have to do, but also provide a very authentic "grimdark cathedrals & skulls" look to the Sisters vehicle. The above image shows 4 panels along the side; I will likely go with 5.

In addition to the main plans, I was much inspired by this project from Blackadder. His scratchbuilding work is incredible, and far beyond my skills I think. But his very detailed pictures and descriptions are a great help, as is the 3d render (not his work) which he found and uploaded as the second post in that thread. I shall be using that render for detail reference as well as general scale.

I decided to build the model from plasticard, and found a good supplier in eStreetPlastics (from Billy Joel to Bruce Springsteen, eh?) I did a rough calculation and worked out that I would need 5 sheets of 12"x24" plasticard to cut out all the templates. I added one for security and bought 6 sheets each of 1/8" (approx. 3mm) and .060" (approx. 1.5mm) plasticard, and some Weld On 4 cement (I'd seen it used in YouTube crafting videos, and was intrigued by it) with an applicator. My plan is to build the body of the Thunderhawk with the 1/8" sheets and then make the distinctive "Imperial vehicle" panels with the thinner stuff.

I also bought a Pegasus Gothic set, a couple (the Thunderhawk has three engines) of Podracers from eBay (the price of these now "vintage" toys has risen since the foamboard T-hawk guide was written, but it wasn't too expensive), a handful of GW bits and a 1/8" piece of steel bar to act as a wing bracer.

My goal was to build the Thunderhawk for $225 or less (plus raiding the bitz box). This number was not quite arbitrarily chosen; it is half the Sterling cost of the official model, in US dollars. Here is the breakdown of what I've spent so far;

2x Anakin Skywalker podracer toys : $33.42

Plasticard & cement: $86.38

Pegasus Gothic scenery: $33.26

GW bits (weapons, pilots, door): $49.98

Steel bar: $7.41

Total: $210.45

The only things I am missing are two pairs of the Immolator heavy bolters (I have stand-ins - but the Immolator ones have the cool Sisters design - if you have any you are willing to part with, please comment below!)

So that is where this stands and . . . oh, what was the Billy Joel connection? Well, every vehicle in my army has a name - Magdalena the Knight-Titan, the Opus etc. - and I decided this one would be called Alexa. Alexa Resurrectrix - the reborn defender of Man. The background will be that she is a crashed Thunderhawk repaired by the Order and put to their use.

Some items have arrived (the plasticard and cement arrived today and I am super-pleased to discover initial tests indicate the cement will fuse the podracer plastic to the styrene sheets!) and others are in transit. I will begin work on her in earnest on Easter Sunday - that seems an auspicious date to start!

Let me know what you think!

=][= Danforth Laertes