Are the guns each scratch built with plastic card & rod? Or are you casting some of it?
The guns are plastic card/rod/tubing (the white parts), and the grey parts are from empire kits with a few 40k items thrown in for good measure. None of it is cast, but that's not a bad idea.
Very nice conversions but the wheels in galloper guns are too big IMO.
I don't really think the wheels are too big at all. Considering that most cannons are usually moved at a slow pace, they can stand to have smaller wheels. When you are going to be running at full speed with this attached to a horse or two, you need bigger wheels or they will break more easily.
If you'd read the text next to the pix you'd see that I intend to replace the hefty empire artillery wheels with smooth chariot wheels (the sort on Elf Chariots). These are the sort of wheels on the GW galloper guns and they're much less in-your-face than the iron-shod wheels I have on them now.
The Artillery wheels from the canon/mortar kit seem intended to keep the guns from moving under recoil. The galloper guns need smooth wheels to zip around at 16 inches a turn. I'll have to make a parts order from GW but I've been lazy about it (and broke to boot... I'll have $$$ shortly though so it may get done sooner than later).
It's also worth noting that thse guns are the same size as the GW models. I actually used an old GW catalogue that had full scale pix of the galloper guns bitz, and I copied them as exactly as I could with plastic card and rod. So with the new wheels they'll look *very* close to the real deal. In fact once they're painted most people probably won't even blink when they see them on the table. Of course, the feather weight is a dead giveaway!
The Galloper Guns are way cool! Looking forward to see the finished article. What kind of look are you going for, for the crew?
Bronzino will be built from the new pistolier models with lots of kitbashed components for a unique feel. I'm not sure about the crew though. Although I like the look of the Tilean guys in the original model, I think I'll go for something more Empirish. It will definately fit in with my army, and the crew will definately have a motif (I'm trying to give every unit it's own distinct visual feel... I just haven't figured it out yet for the galloper gun crews yet). One more nugget of info you guys will like... the cannonballs for the galloper guns are bird shot from a shotgun shell I cut open.
The one thing I'm not looking forward to is the carriage for the horses. That's going to be a pain in the ass, and will probably require green stuff, which i'm not great at. Right now I just use a riderless horse for gameplay.
You have a very good start on using styrene! Do you use super glue or solvent?
I use solvent for some areas but it's a bit messy. What I primarily use is plastic glue with a needle applicator. Comes in a little black bottle, and allows you to use *tiny* drops of glue for precision work. Solvent is good in areas where you need a light touch, though, so I use both as necessary. I *hate* superglue. Plastic glue is far superior for any plastic to plastic bond (well polystyrene anyway. That's what model plastic is made from). I reserve super glue only when plastic glue will not suffice (usually for metal parts, and somethine si use epoxy for it's superior strength).
