USARF Conversions Part 4 - Grunts with Heavy Flamers

I chose to do this article last because one of these Grunts was the most complicated conversion of this series. The other one was very easy.

Part 1 - Marauders
Part 2 - Foxtrots
Part 3 - Girl Grunts
Part 4 - Grunts with Heavy Flamers

Grunts with Heavy Flamers

These Grunts are one of my favourite units in USARF and I wanted more than one of them. I had two stater sets to decided to convert two Grunts from the box. I have used no additional bits on these, the heavy flamers were from the Marauders I have also converted (see link above). As mentioned earlier, the Grunt on the left was very easy. All I did was glue the arms on and then the flamer where his rifle used to be. I ended up with only a small gap to fill. Also what isn't very visible on the photo, I added a little connection under his right hand to match the Marauder Heavy Flamer handle.

The girl Grunt on other hand, was bit of a pain. The original model holds her rifle upwards so to be able to connect of her arms to the Heavy Flamer I had to get it go across her body. Problem was her chest was in the way. So I had to cut down her right breast to make the flamer fit, and then re-sculpt the top of the chest and match it to the original as best as I could.

The next problem was that the left arm did not match up that well because of the angle. What I ended up doing is cutting it at the elbow with clippers. The cut wasn't very clean but it allowed me to connect the forearm properly. I then had to sculpt around the elbow to make it look complete again.

The last thing was same as with most of these, green-stuffing the back of shoulders because they were not fully connected to the body. In the end I think it was worth it, gave me two more unique Grunts but I wouldn't do the Girl Grunt again.

I hope this series helps you with your conversions too. The USARF is a fun army but because it is so new (at the time of these articles), so many weapon options have no models yet.

USARF Conversions Part 3 - Girl Grunts

In this third article about USARF conversion I'll talk about female Grunts. Reason for making these was that I wanted five female Grunts to make girl power Link Team but all in different poses.

Part 1 - Marauders
Part 2 - Foxtrots
Part 3 - Girl Grunts
Part 4 - Grunts with Heavy Flamers

Girl Grunts

These twos gals are Sniper and Paramedic (she can also be any generic Grunt with a Rifle). I liked how on the Grunts from SWC Boxset they have an extra pocket (or pouch) on the back, which the Grunts from Starter Set do not have. I thought it would make a great item for painting Red Cross on it to make it stand out as a Paramedic.

Bits used:
- Ariadna Sniper Rifle

Everything else in this conversion is a straight arm swap. As you can see on the photos below, the Grunt on the right has arms and weapon from the Grunt on the left. The arm with the gun fit easy and didn't need any greenstuff later. The other arm with the ammo clip I wanted to be close to the gun so there was a gap to fill afterwards like with most of these USARF conversions.

The Sniper Girl was bit more tricky. The arms are from the Grunt on the right, originally she was holding Rifle with Light Grenade Launcher. First I changed the Rifle for the old Ariadna Sniper. I thought I could see the whole rifle stock but I had to cut most of it off to make it fit, the Grunt's breasts were in the way. After that, first time I glued the arms on, I made the Sniper to be on the side, facing forward from the hip and the other arm was also on her hip. Then I realized I could put the second arm onto to the scope.

It did require lots of greenstuff afterwards. The arms were glued on just by sides so lots of shoulder space to fill and then I also greenstuffed top of the stock so it was visible. Heads were kept the same for both, no swaps there.

USARF Conversions Part 2 - Foxtrots

This article will cover my conversions of the Foxtrots. To see other articles in this series, click on the links below:

Part 1 - Marauders
Part 2 - Foxtrots
Part 3 - Girl Grunts
Part 4 - Grunts with Heavy Flamers

Foxtrots

You'll notice two of the Foxtrots are actually Ariadna Scouts bodies. This is because I had them left over from another conversion I was doing for my Caledonia army and had no other use for them. They do not have the Foxtrot hat but I think they work just as well.

Bits used:
- Ariadna Scout bodies
- Shotgun and Rifle arms from 45th Highlander

The one thing that all of these guys shared were gaps between shoulder and body. Because the miniatures are metal I didn't want to spend too much time re-positioning the arms, so they were glued to look right and the gaps were filled with greenstuff. The gaps are more obvious from behind.

Going from left to right, the first model was the most straight forward. I gave him arms from the Foxtrot that comes in the USARF starter box. The second miniature was also fairly easy, main difficulty was that I couldn't get his left arm connect so it required the most greenstuff.

The hardest was the third miniature. The rifle is very close to his chest and to make it fit I had to cut off some of the breast pockets but the arms still didn't connect well. Though I was able to glue them on in a decent place and greenstuff concealed the gaps well.

It might have been easier to give this guy the shotgun but I quite liked the pose with the rifle. 

USARF Conversions Part 1 - Marauders

Recently I have expanded my USAriadna collection by dozen models or so and as the range for USA models isnt that big yet, all of those were duplicate of models I already had. Personally I dont like to play two models that look identical so I have decided to do several weapon swap.

In this series of articles I will talk about the conversion I have done and do my best to describe how I have done it so if you are looking to do weapon swaps yourself, you can use this as a guide.

Part 1 - Marauders
Part 2 - Foxtrots
Part 3 - Girl Grunts
Part 4 - Grunts with Heavy Flamers

There will be some sculpting involved but I don't think any of these were complicated, myself I have only basic sculpting skills and all I used were mostly "standard" tools. So without further ago, lets get started.

Marauders 

This unit has the option to form Haris Link Team so I wanted to have three guys with different weapons; Heavy Flamer, Shotgun and Rifle to be specific. The current only available model comes with the Heavy Flamer and fortunately is in a such a position where weapon swapping is relatively easy. Basically all I had to do was cut away the flamer and then attach a new gun.

Bits used:
- Shotgun from 45th Highlanders
- Rifle from USA Grunt

First off, you want to cut away the Heavy Flamer carefully so you can use it later but if you dont care about it, you can just chop it off. But if you do want to use it later, first make sure to use your clippers to cut the bottom handle but leave enough under the hand so you can tell he is holding something.

Then I have used a small saw, but a knife/scalpel should work too, to cut the weapon in half. You don't have to cut all the way through, you can just cut in a bit and then gently bend the weapon few times and it should "snap" where you made the cut. If you have a small filer, I recommend smoothing the cut. On the image below I have cut where the red lines are:

Then you'll need to cut the weapons you are swapping. It doesn't matter as much where you cut them, the goal is to cut away the back part with the handle and arm. In my case, I was able to cut the rifle and have enough left it connected straight to the remains of the flamer but the shotgun wasn't long enough.

I did not do any positioning of the Marauder's left arm but if you want to spend more time on it, you easily could get the shotgun connect. 

 

I solved the gap by placing a small rectangle of plastic (cut away from a left over sprue) in there and then filling the whole gap with greenstuff. You could probably do it with greenstuff straight away. 

The same thing was done on the rifle as well, but there was barely any gap to fill. If you want you can also add some small details with the greenstuff to make it less obvious the weapon was swapped.

The gap filling is the only use of greenstuff on these guys. This is my end result:

 

All three of them are in the same position but I don't mind, its a very action front line pose and I like that.