Rough Rider Conversions Construction

One of the best units available to the Imperial Guard is also one of the worst in physical appearance, the Rough Riders. For some reason, mongol cavalry on horseback just don't blend well with 40th millenium military forces. So I want to give it a try to convert some Space Marine bikes to fit the role. Let's see how it goes! Assembly now complete!

20 August, 2006

For this conversion, I started with two boxes of Space Marine bikes. Not knowing which direction to take, I ordered a standard squadron as well as a Scout bike squadron. While both have some cool parts, the Scouts appear to be the best bet for what I want to do. I'm going to be using the lower half of the scout riders, modified bikes, and Cadian upper bodies. While the bikes are definitely Space Marines, with the bulk and feeling of power, I need to get it to be more of a Cadian feel. So I plan on using a thinner front wheel, trimmed down headlight shield, remove the bolters, and build a whole front fork. As of this writing, I am a few steps along, but I'll start at the beginning for you folks. And then do it another seven times.... so the scratch built pieces will need to be recast in resin.

29 August, 2006

Here are the first couple of steps in the process. I started by gluing together the bike halves with the back wheel attached. Since one of the major things I want to change is the absurdly oversized front wheel, I cut off the whole front fork assembly back to the gas tank. Next thing to correct was the also oversized foot platform hanging underneath. However, I did want to keep the foot pads and the exhaust pipes are necessary if you don't want to start re-doing the whole back end of the bike as well. So I cut off all the un-needed portions. The front winshield, or whatever the twin bolters are mounted on, is the last original piece of the bike itself that needs to be trimmed down. In this case, anything outside of the headlight portion was cut off as narrow as possible. The headlight piece was then glued onto the handebars. And this takes care of prepping the bike pieces from the original sprues.

3 October, 2006

Glue together all the parts from above, add in a new front wheel from a 1:72nd B-25 (this one from TrueDetails), and build a new front fork from some tube brass, styrene strips, and some wrapped wire for springs. And here you go! One problem I had was that the normal GW bases were too short and left a bit of an overhang. This was the initial one where I joined together two of the rectangular bases. Later, I changed the shape a bit. Next step, cast up some copies of the front fork and repeat all the above steps to make 6 bikes total. Moving along nicely now!

Ok, Got me a bike, now I need me a rider! This one was a bit tricky as my scuplting ability is still kinda poor. So I used a combination of Space Marine Scout Biker legs, Cadian upper body and right arm, but with the SM Biker hand. Some 'Green Stuff' to get it all to work together. And Viola! Repeat X6. Add the hunting lance arm from the actual Rough Riders, and we have us a squadron. Of course, some variety is needed as we as a Sergeant. Now, time to get painting, and that will be a different page.

Yes, I know it's been quite a while since the last update. I'd been painting so much Cadian stuff that I needed to take a bit of a break for a while. I've gotten back to puttering around on these guys, but as you can see there is still the need for a lot of painting work still.

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