Flunkin' Design School...

Hi, All!

War Flunk - ready for crew... and battle!

I've had a few days off work this week, and in preparation for the big walker project I announced a little while ago, I thought I should try to get a few odds and ends finished and out of the way.

It turns out that I have been suffering from a bout of Modellers' Disease - the main symptom of which is the habitual buildup of unfinished ideas, each one abandoned in favour of a newer and more interesting one, until the workload becomes unmanagable...

Sound familiar to any of  you?

Anyway, I had let the Flunks I started some time ago languish on my shelf. "Enough!" I cried. Inwardly. And I set about finishing the big bull.

Stubby little horns are replaced with nice spiky ones...

Firstly: I wasn't happy with the stubby little horns around the 'fan' this big fellow displays. I wanted something far more impressive. Browsing my Big Box O' Bits, I found GW Elven archers sprues held the answer - nice ornate, pointy bows... Making sure I had enough identical ones, I cut these into halves, carefully removed the horns I had sculpted onto the Flunk and replaced them.

"Nice one," I cryeth. Inwardly.

A sheet of plastic board is textured as planking.

And then it was on to the howdah...

I might previously have made this from balsa, but for strength, I decided to use plastic. Using a sheet of 1mm thick styreme, I was able to get a wood grain effect by scraping the sheet all in one direction with very coarse sandpaper. Following this, I scored 4mm wide planks using the point of a sharp knife, dragged sideways. This created grooves without leaving an upward-turned edge.

A frame is constructed for the howdah.

Next, I built a frame for the howdah across the back of the Flunk. At this stage, the frame was removable.

Planking is applied.

Planking completed the basic shape and the howdah began to take form.

Balsa corners and brass reinforcings are added. The front gantry will eventually house the driver.

Now the structure of the howdah was reinforced with brass sheet, studded with rivets. Square panels were also added, by way of providing armour and decoration.

Two storeys high... with a rifleman for scale.

I wanted the structure to have two storeys. A tower was built for the centre and surrounded with a curtain of brass sheet to add a little more decoration and colour to the model.

The basic howdah, as the paint goes on. I opted for copper for the reinforcing. It's bright and colourful - as suits the Wutha F'Kahwi tribe.

And so began the painting...

Copper adorns the creature's horns and the howdah.

Once the planking and armour were painted, I glued the howdah in place and gave some thought to further detailing. The straps beneath the howdah were not enough on their own, so I added chains as well. This was a very fiddly process, but well worth the effort. You may recall I did something very similar for the swing-bridge in the neck of HMSW Gargantua.

Chains and rings... Time consuming and fiddly stuff.

The chains are glued in place.

...and painted.

It wasn't helpful to discover that somehow my pliers have become magnetised... The chain kept moving of its own accord...

Flunkee, undercoated.

With the howdah in place, I turned my attention to the means of steering the beast. A driver - or Flunkee, to give him his correct title - was put together and painted, and shackles and reins constructed around the Flunk's great horns.

Flunkee, in place - and in control!

The reins were made from brass foil, as with my earlier dinosaur cavalry. The shackles around the horns are also brass foil, but with the edges folded in to give a greater thickness.

The finished model.

A Hydrothermicopter's-eye view...

Finally, the reins et al were painted. And hey presto! A completed Flunk! Now all that remains is to provide a crew...

All in all, pretty good. One more project ticked off the list.

The great war-flunk thunders on...

That's all for now!

All the Best!