The thought of hacking up a precious pewter figure can be intimidating. I know it was for me when I first began converting. Fortunately, one thing that GW does very well is plastics. Their wide variety of highly detailed multi-part plastics provides plenty of opportunity to create unique, personalized figures. And besides, some of us just have issues painting stock figures. It's a sickness really...
I'll be building a Space Wolves scout here. I'll be using parts from the Space Marine, Space Wolves, Chaos Marauder, and Kroot sprues. The feral marauder imagery fits in well with the space wolves, but when building scouts for other chapters, the Cadian and Catachan sprues fill in just as well. The Catachan sprue by the way, is a great source of plastic heads.
The first step is to figure out what you want to do. You can go about this in two ways. One way is to decide on a pose and then try to find parts that best match your idea. This can sometimes result in a little more work when parts don't exactly match what you have in mind. The second method is to take a look at what you have available and go from there. As you can see in the picture to the left, I usually end up getting out twice as many parts as I need. It's good to have options and you may find something better than your original plans.
I recommend
tacking parts together first, before you do any pinning, gluing, or any other type of work on the figure. Creating a rough mock-up can help to eliminate problems you may have otherwise missed until too late. It'll save you time, work and frustration.
Rackham does wolf scouts?
It's always a good idea to begin working with the legs first. They provide the foundation for your figure and will give you a stable base for the later work. I'm using marauder and space marine legs. They will both be cut above the knees and the space marine lower legs will be attached to the marauder upper legs. It's a good idea to pin these parts. If there isn't much surface contact between the pieces, you may want to double pin the legs to prevent them from rotating. Once the legs are connected, you can glue them down to a base, but you may want to hold off, depending on the level of painting you'll be doing. The base can sometimes get in the way of painting or gap-filling. For my scout, I'm pinning him to the base, but he won't be glued down until I've finished painting him.
There are going to be gaps around the knees that need to be filled. No way around that when you're combining sets of legs unfortunately. It's a little extra work, but still a step I recommend. Slapping a space marine torso on a pair of IG legs will make your scouts appear top-heavy and badly proportioned. You can do the sculpting work at this point, but I waited until the figure was assembled.
Alternately, instead of combining two pairs of legs, you can try whittling down the upper legs of a space marine and sculpting over that.
Next comes the upper body. A standard space marine torso will do. With a little filing, a chaos marine or khorne berzerker torso can fill in and provide a unique look. Once the two halves have been glued together and dried, file down the circles where the arms attach and, with an exacto, trim the rim around the back of the neck. Again these steps will help counter balance the top-heaviness of the model. You will also want to trim the ball on the back.
The underneath of the space marine torso is rounded and the top of the legs you are using is most likely flat. Not a problem. Limited contact area means you will have to pin the two parts. I recommend double pinning. The plastic is soft and it shouldn't take too much time, but will greatly increase the durability of the figure. There may be a small gap where the two pieces meet. This is a good thing. For some reason GW has convinced its sculptors that the pelvis connects directly to the rib cage. The gap will help correct the proportions and will be easily covered by the various packs,pouches, holsters, and scabbards that your scout will be laden down with.
For arms, fantasy chaos marauders are your best bet. Catachan arms are just too short. If the arm has an existing weapon, clip it off and pin the new weapons to the hands. If you're a gamer, go ahead and attach the arms. If you're a painter, pin them, but don't glue them until after the body is painted. Slap on a pair of kroot shoulder pads and you're almost finished. Make sure the pads are the same type, there are two different kinds (the straps are in different positions). As an alternative, you can use a normal marine shoulder pad as a mold for a smaller pad. Stick a blob of green stuff on the shoulder, wet the inside of the pad with water or Vaseline, and stick it over the shoulder. When the green stuff cures, trim it with an exacto. Clean it with soap, warm water, and an old toothbrush if you used Vaseline, otherwise paint won't stick to it.
Now you need a head. You can skip this step if you like, but a headless model just doesn't have quite the same effect. If you use a normal marine head, just glue it in and you're good to go. If you'd rather use an alternate head (catachan, marauder,etc), you'll need to do a little more work. You'll have to create a small piece to lift the head slightly. The marine heads have a ball on the bottom of them. Other heads don't. If you don't add anything before sticking the head on, you're figure will look like he's peeking out of armor that's ten sizes too big. And that would just be silly.
Once again there are a couple different ways to go about this, but this is what I recommend. Drill holes into the head and torso for pinning and test fit them. Take a small amount of green stuff and roll it into a ball. You probably need less than you think. Stick it on the bottom of the head and attach the head and body. As you push the head down, it will flatten the green stuff out and form the "collar' you need to make the head fit correctly. A little touch-up with a sculpting tool and your all set.
Here you see the completed figure minus putty work and accessories, with the arms and head pinned in place. You may have noticed that the head and arms of this model have magically changed! After I started this figure, I worked out the poses for the rest of the squad too and decided to change this one up slightly. The first head and arms will be used on another scout.
And here are those aforementioned accessories. These are taken from a variety of ranges (mordheim, marine, space wolves, kroot, khorne berzerker). Pretty much anything will do. You can find appropriate parts in the IG and ork sprues too, for example. Pictured below is the figure with all pieces attached. All done except for the sculpting. Putty work still needs to be done on the knees, right wrist, neck, and head, but that is an article for another day...
