A while ago, I managed to snag myself three Forge World grot tank turrets from eBay for a bargain price, which put me in the unfortunate situation of having two grotzooka turrets and a twin-linked rokkit launcha turret and nothing to mount them on. My first thought was to order another four grot tanks from Forge World, but this would still leave me with the wrong numbers in my turret to tank ratio (however, it would give me another four of the awesome little buggers to play with), after a while I decided to scratchbuild the rest of the tanks to give me something usable. Remembering that I had a batch of polyurethane resin and silicone slowly expiring in my shed and a degree partially in mould making and casting (although, this degree was attained over ten years ago now, and I haven't really practised my skills between now and then) I decided to mould and cast as much of the tanks as I could.
A few weeks of slowly building the masters for the tank chassis and the treads, mould making and casting, and I nearly have enough bits to cobble together the first tank. To give you a little peak at the progress so far, here's a shot of some treads, fresh out of the mould and uncleaned- next to some Games Workshop treads for scale, and the original sculpts.
The resin itself is a pretty unphotogenic off-white, but hopefully you can make out the details (and bubbles) well enough. Each tread is a separate cast and there are seven different ones, which should be enough to not get too repetitive. By my best guess, I'll probably need 70 treads per tank, so I need to double what you see above, but that shouldn't cause any problems really.
Anyway, back to the casting and scratchbuilding- some sort of bogie mount is next in line I think.
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