Tutorial: Plastic rail gun.

Click on the pictures for a larger image.

Tools: X-acto knife, hobby saw and miter box, clippers, files, glue, ruler, pencil, pin vice, wire


Materials: fusion blaster, flamer, burst cannon, crisis suit head antennas (or any other Tau antenna you want to use)
Styrene (aka plasticard) strips
.080 x .0125
.030 x .080
.020 x .125
I use styrene from Evergreen Scale Models (evergreenscalemodels.com)


First I cut apart the weapons to get the parts I would need. From the fusion blaster remove the cylinder and emitter ends and cut the muzzle from the main body of the gun. Remove the ammo drum from the burst cannon, and the fuel tank and button from the flamer. Lastly cut off the antenna where it mounts to the head.


Here are the stock parts we will be using to assemble the rail gun.


To make the rails, cut two 1” long pieces of .080 x .125 styrene.


I then drilled holes in the rails, body and muzzle of the fusion blaster to pin them together for extra strength.



I marked a line ¼” from behind the muzzle for the rail support.


I used the .020 x .125 styrene strip to make a ring around the two rails. I started with the vertical strip using the lines I marked as a guide. The two short horizontal strips were next, then trimmed to allow the final vertical strip to be glued in place. I then trimmed any excess material and used a file to round off the corners to match the body and muzzle.


I then took the .020 x .125 styrene strip and cut two pieces 1/8” long and two pieces 1/16” long. The pieces were glued on the sides of the rails for extra detail. The 1/8” pieces in front of the gun body and the 1/16” pieces behind the muzzle.



I cut two 3/8” pieces of .020 x.125 styrene and drew some designs on them. I then cut out the design with my X-acto knife and used a file to clean the edges.


These details were then glued to the sides of the rail gun connecting the body and rails together.

The reversed side.


To make the new emitter, I cut the .030 x .080 styrene into four 1/8” long pieces. I glued them together and made a rectangular box. I clipped off the excess and glued it to the muzzle. I then used a file to round off the corners.




I removed the peg from the bottom of the gun body and added a strip of .030 x .080 styrene. The cylinder from the fusion blaster and button from the flamer was assembled and attached to the bottom of the gun. If you wish to mount the rail gun on the Broadside’s shoulder, skip this step.

I then pinned and glued the flamer fuel tank to the rear of the gun body.


To mount the ammo drum, remove the peg on the opposite side of where the rail gun is to be mounted. The ammo drum was pinned and glued in place.


The antenna is the last part to be glued in place. I did not have a drill bit small enough for pinning, so the antenna was just glued in place.


Here is the completed rail gun.


Here are some pictures of the first set of rail guns I built.





Thanks for taking the time to read my tutorial. I hope it is helpful in building this version of the rail gun, or even inspires someone to build a variant.

This is awesome!
Thank you for taking the time and making a tutorial for those sweet Railguns.

i agree with minamoto

this is awesome stuff, thanks jerseydevil

Excellent work, jerseydevil. Stickied.

E.

That is so good its unfair.

Keep it up.

G'dang

Very informative tutorial. Keep up the good work!

Sinc.
Wodai

Great tutorial! It's a simple but great idea, thank you mate, I'll try to do my own Railguns with you method!.

Sam

Thanks everyone. Sorry it has taken so long to post but my computer has been giving me trouble and I have been playing Gears of War 2. I really enjoyed making the tutorial and I hope everyone else enjoys it and finds it useful. Thanks again. Now lets see some of those railguns.

Dammit Jersey, that's some fine work and beat me to the punch. I do have a variant I wanted to post, but now I'm a little outclassed by how fine your railgun turned out.

I really like how much more *stock* your railgun turned out. I can always submit mine as an X-weapon Particle accelerator or something.

feel free to browse my Plastic broadside gallery.
http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v298/Jux2p0ze/Tau/Broadside/

very nice and clean. much better then I did here:
viewtopic.php?f=35&t=10003

Good job....

Great work, Jersey. I am glad E decided to sticky it as well, considering the massive cost of a broadside, guide like this can help both beginners and vets build competitive armies for less money ... if they magnetize this design, they could really save money switching from XV8 to XV88. In any case, it is a very good example of modelling at it's finest.

Thanks. Jux2p0ze and Dr._O'DeepView, really cool railgun conversions.

Many thanks Jerseydevil - I am now on my way to more broadsides than you can shake a stick at...

Here's my take on jerseydevil's railguns, with a few slight modifications of my own:



I thought it might be good to give people an idea of the size of the guns!

The best compliment you can give is to show you've used another person's ideas successfully! Mal'caor, that Broadside is really good. I also very much like the use of the Landspeeder Typhoon missile pods - at least, I assume that's what they are?

This is pushing me more and more towards making a custom-built Broadside myself. Mind if I copy your ideas?

E.

They are indeed Typhoon missile pods (in this case from the Ravenwing vehicle sprue). I would really encourage you to go for it and make one (or several...) broadsides. It's a great way to get more railguns on to the field, and allows you to have something individual to you (well, at your LGS at least). If you want to copy my stuff, feel free; after all, if I don't want people using some of my ideas, I would never post anything.


Edit: You probably can't see it too well, but I have added some hydraulics to the back of the legs to represent the ASS. If you like, I can try to get a better pic of them, as one of the legs is not actually glued in yet!

This is great stuff! I personally prefer Broadsides over Hammerheads so finding a way to cheaply make more is great! However, there are two areas that are a must for something to be a Broadside in my opinion: big chunky feet to support it and the heat sinks on the back. Any ideas on how to make those?

I quite like the normal feet (the one I posted is magnetised, so I want to be able to use it as a normal suit as well), but if you really want nice chunky feet, you could have a go at the ones using a stealthsuit head. Unfortunately, I can't find that thread at the moment.
For the power pack/vents, have a look at the BRB p 225 for a nice alternate take on "the standard jetpack is removed". If that doesn't take your fancy, I would just go for cutting off the jet exhausts and covering that part with plasticard, and some sort of detailing. If you are feeling really fancy, you could go for some heat dissipation 'fins' in place of the jets, a la Xeones' Piranha.

I really like how they turned out.

Are you planning to make a muzzle? I think it would add a whole lot to an already very good looking gun.
I used a similar muzzle on my broadsides and made the hole with a dremel. (image in my signature - Star Wars WIP)

Hmm, that's an interesting idea. I think the one part of jerseydevil's guns I was a bit unsure of was the muzzle bit, but I like the way you have done yours, speedfreek. I think I will give it a go with one of my spare fusion blasters and see what happens; unfortunately I lack a dremmel so it should be interesting!

Depending on your skill with a pin vice, you could try drilling a couple of holes in a row or a square, and the use a file and a knife to make one big hole out of it.
I would probably drill two holes, one above the other, and then use a knife to join them.

An alternative method could be to make a large hole and fill it with greenstuff, then shape the soft greenstuff the way you want your muzzle.