My guard army list calls for a few plasma guns, and I thought i might try to make some of my own from some spare Bolters and plasma pistols i had lying around. I saw the tutorial over on The Bolter and Chainsword, but wanted something a little different. This is pretty much how they turned out, I've just got to fill all the gaps and do some little touch ups here and there.


You will need:

* Clippers
* Flat File
* Green Stuff (or whatever you use to fill gaps & make rivets)
* Plasticard / Sheet Styrene (I used .75mm sheet)
* Knife
* Pin Vice (if you want to drill out the barrel)
* A Bolter
* A Plasma Pistol



Step 1:

The first thing i did was clean up the Bolter, I removed all the details from the faces that Ithought necessary, and any icons. The front half of the Bolter will pretty much be gone, so I wasn't too worried about cleaning it perfectly. It's a good idea at this stage to clean all the flash off both the Bolter and the plasma pistol too.



Step 2:

Time to get the plasma pistol ready for mounting on the top of the Bolter.
To do this, you want to:

1. cut off the space marine hand
2. square up the round section adjacent to the trigger
3. remove the back section from the coils back.

Like This:

And it should end up like this:


Step 3:

Now the Bolter's clean, and your plasma pistol is pretty much ready, it's time to get the Bolter ready for the plasma pistol to sit on top.

To do this, you want to:

1. Remove the trigger and handle
2. Cut the top half of the front off. The important part here is to only cut back to about the second ridge on the front hand rest. (these things all have proper names I'm sure)
3. Clip off the cartridge.

Like This:

And it should end up like this (yours might be neater):


Step 4:

Now it's basically a matter of sticking the two pieces together. Take the remnants of the Plasma Pistol and Sit them on top of the Bolter. The plasma pistol will sit a little too high, so if you like you can file down the ridge underneath the plasma coils till it sits flush (I filed down a little too much and needed to put some plasticard in there to make it sit flush). If you like, at this stage you can clip back the section where the cartridge was until it's flush with the hand rest.

Once they're together, it should look something like this:


Step 5:
I had finished four of these off, and i looked at them, and something was missing. So, i added some little details that I think finished it off. This is detail stuff, so if you don't feel like doing more fiddly work, you can just leave them as is, if not this is what I did:

I cut up some small strips of plasticard, about 1.5mm wide, one about 4mm long, and the other roughly square and glued them to the top of the Bolter with some plastic glue.

Like This (cutting straight seemed to be out of my reach tonight):


To finish them off i cut some rivets from a roll of greenstuff I made up a few weeks ago for that purpose, and glued them to the top of the plasticard with some superglue:






All that's left to do now is fill all the gaps and do some cleaning. The rivets on the top look wonky as heck looking at that photo, so I filed them down so they were flat. If there's anything else anyone wants to know about this, or any ways you think i could make it better (i have 4 more to make) your ideas and comments are more than welcome!