Featured Content: Jan's Guide to Scratchbuilding a Razorwing

After taking my time to let some of the approaches out there inspire me I finally began work on my own Razorwing.


Games-Workshop decided to give most of the Dark Eldar units new german names instead of translating or keeping the english versions. So they called the Razorwing "Sichelflügel-Jäger" which translates to "Sicklewing-Fighter". (If you are interested of what else they came up with follow this link). That name is one of the reasons for my design approach as I was pleased with the idea of wings that look like a sickle. I knew that I wanted to make use of the Eldar Fireprism turret simply because it is a perfect start as  a cockpit and after some discussions with friends I decided to build the rest of the plane form scratch. So with a clear vision in my head I started work.

What you need: Fireprism turret sprue, Dark Eldar weaponary and some spikey bits were taken from two raider kits, styrne (1mm thick), Epoxy putty, Missile racks from a Lanspeeder Typhoon launcher (can be done with tooth picks as well)

Image taken form www.games-workshop.com

 Image taken form www.games-workshop.com

 

Drawing the outlines of the wingdesing on the styrene with a pencil- this is also my sketching as you can see.

Here I cut out the first wing and refined it until it fitted my perception.

 The second wing was simply a reproduction of the first one.

 I took the hatch door of the Fire prism kit and cut out the energy cores and by glueing them on the lower side of the wings created my weapon mounts. Also notice the small parts of sprue that I used to create the link with the fireprism cockpit.

I used one of the star engines as a single-turbine- two were just too dominant. I also took one of the Nightspinner gun covers as an air inlet.

I had to carve the engine quite a bit to make it fit in and as you can see there are still big gaps at the air inlet.

The wings still looked too naked so I took two of the fins from the Raider sprue to make for some decoration. I aligned and cut them a little bit so that they fit smoothly.

Greenstuff time. It took a little effort to clean things up.

And I didn't suceeed a 100%. It would have been better to mix in some miliput because that can be sanded. 

Small detail: The Eldar pilot head is replaced by a Dark Eldar baldy.

Disintegrator cannons are glued to the gun mounts and I prepared a flyer base. Now you can guess the dimensions already.

The missiles: Why bother modeling and attachig them when you can simply represent them in their housing? It is one Typhoon launcher cut down boldly. WYSIWYG at it's best.

This is were they go...

A little more to the rear. Notice the Splintercannon gun mount in the air intake. I later threw this idea over board in favour of a more spikey look.

Put the round antenna-egg things on the top of the wings to bring in some Eldar feeling and added a small fin to the rear/side of the cockpit.

Not a lot to shoot at when it comes as you.

Put some bits on the wings and greenstuffed the seems to the cockpit. Fireprism spikes as fins and the weapon mount for the Splintercannon/rifle made form the Webber. 

Almost done...

 ...and that's it- Splinterrifles mounted. Time for a Nespresso- George?

This is what he looks like for the side- I love the look of the weapons array. Reminds me of Babylon 5 antenna arrays.

Better picture after making room on the desk. From the top.

And from the side.

Primed and ready to go. 

Many thanks to Jan for submiting this great article. Jan has his own blog which I can thoroughly recommend subscribing to, it's called 'Path of the Outcast' and you can find it here. If you have a Dark Eldar article that you think our readers would enjoy then you can email me at: cuchulain84@gmail.com . Happy Raiding!