I had purchased 3 sets of the turrets from chapterhouse to use on my razorbacks for the Indy GT. I decided to buy the Storm Raven turret set because it had the weapon options I needed, but was a few bucks cheaper.
I've looked at some of their stuff before, but this is the first major purchase I've made from them. Within a week of placing the order, I had received the package, so kudos on shipping. Everything was there and was well padded so nothing bad yet. As I inspected the pieces though, I was a little leery. It seems a couple of the injection sites are either on or very close to crucial pieces like pegs or holes.
I started clipping pieces off, and cleaning them. Files some down and cutting at others. When I went to assembly, is where I came upon the worst of my problems. They were missing an important part of the standard razorback turret, the little section where either gun attaches to each other on the turret. So instead each gun was loose and separate, and made it very hard to glue them together. This was further compounded by the cover not fitting into the slots properly. After a lot of struggling, I figured out why. It seems the guns weren't even/aligned on the base and so had trouble fitting into the cover.
On the second one I figured I'd glue them to the cover piece first, and hopefully that will make it easier. It did not. After a good amount of gluing and cursing I had two turrets finished. Setting them up to look at them it seems I have lazy turret syndrome. I realize it wasn't just me, the pegs that hold the guns are not aligned correctly, which doesn't allow the cover to be put on properly, thus warping the entire structure. So I have two that are tilting to the side, and one of them that is pointing down into my tank.
The third one I completely cut off the pegs, and just glued everything together and gave up on the actual means with having it move. This one is nice and flat and even. This is not counting the magnetic holes, of which about half of them I needed to drill out do to flash and injection sites. A couple of them were not deep enough to hold the magnets. They were also just a little off so I had to put some green stuff in/around to help hold them in place.
After everything dried I put the weapons on the mounts. Due to the unevenness of the mount, and the rebuilding of some of the pegs, I had guns that were firing into every direction. Small amounts of Liquid green stuff helped build up even layers that I used to prop the weapons in the correct direction.
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| You can't really tell how bad they are from a distance. Just like the rest of my army :/ haha |
Over all they look fine now, but I had to almost rebuild each part at some point, and it took almost as much effort as scratch building them. For around $15 a piece I expected much better.
The other items I got were great, and I know many people who have ordered other items from them. For these turrets I'd give them 4/10. I'll probably order from chapter house again, but never these turrets.
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| The holes still need cleaning. |
Bugger.
ReplyDeleteI was planning on picking up several of these but your review has convinced me not to.
Too much money! I can almost buy a razorback for that. Sadly I'll have to scratch build whenever i get around to running razorbacks in my list.
ReplyDeleteI personally love Chapterhouse stuff,but there should be a massive caveat on the website,something along the lines of 'Not for the feint hearted or shaky handed'.Bought the Tru-Scale kit for the Stormraven and those were absolute bitches to fit,but damn do they look good once built.Also bought some of their Lightning/Power claws they released recently,yet again an absolute bitch to build (on the site it looks like they're a single cast,not true,its actually the 2 fists,4 claws and 2 power cables per sprue) but the finished effect looks amazing on my Deathwing. Think I will still purchase one or two of these kits though at a later date,but I'm sorry you had to be a guinea pig dude.
ReplyDeleteHaving gone through the effort now, I know what needs to be done and I don't think any more would be as bad. I truly recommend anyone who gets them to not even try with the pegs and don't expect it to pivot up and down.
ReplyDelete@oktane; I was looking at getting some of those power claw sets. I can see them taking a bit of work but well worth it in the end.
@TheGraveMind-I highly recommend them,my only gripe with them is they could've used a denser resin for the blades.Apart from that they went together fairly easily,they are extremely fiddly though when you go to clean them up,I cleaned mine up on the sprue if its any help.Terminator shoulder pads fit perfectly without needing to add greenstuff or cutting it down to size.Also they do look okay on regular power armour if you weren't sure.
ReplyDeleteIn all fairness to CH, I've had a lot of trouble with Forge World vehicle add-ons too. At least your pieces don't look too warped. I've had simple Chimera door swaps require that I cut off interior details in order to get them to fit properly, and even then they didn't line up squarely with the hull.
ReplyDeletePart and parcel of buying resin I think. :)