[juraigamer]

Hey everyone. I recently came across the notion that after all the leftover parts from my thousand sons boxes, I figured I could make a few melee weapon + pistol chaos marines, and from there worked out an idea to have models that could become either raptors or chosen with interchangeable weaponry!

For starters, all you need are the following parts per each model you want to make: Chaos marine legs, both torso pieces, any chaos marine head, and the base. You simply assemble this as you would normally, then move on the the fun part.

Those chainsword/pistol chaos marine sprues/sets/ect are all over ebay, and from this you can easily make two variants, melee weapon + pistol (for raptors) or with a little knife work you can change that chainsword into a power weapon for a chosen or raptor champion!

To actually get the jump packs, acquiring the regular space marine jump packs from GW's site or ebay is the cheapest way and you can always convert them a tad with green stuff. You will also want normal chaos marine backpacks, something easy to find in your bits box, ebay or even GW's site.

To get those other weapons you want, flamers, plasma, melta ect ect, check your bits box, friends, ebay or even GW's site. Your normal Chaos marine left and right empty hands can easily work for this

In short, do to the full conversion you will want to look for:
Space marine jump packs,
Chaos marine close combat weapon and pistol arm,
extra space marine empty hands, left and right, to hold the flamers, plasma, melta and so on,
and some magnets. I recommend rare earth ones so your models arms don't go flailing about as you move them.

Now to change chainsword to power weapon, simply take your exacto knife (or equivalent) and cut off all the little bits that make the chain, leaving a flat surface all around were the chain blades were. Then on the front of the sword, or the part that will be facing at your models enemies, slightly cut it at around a 30 to 45 degree angle up and down the one side of the blade, so it appears sharp. Don't cut it too much or you increase the chances the blade will break in the future.

The next step is to cut the part on the back of each marine were the backpack would normally go so it is flat, then find the appropriate area on the space marine backpack and flatten it, then add a magnet. To make this simple, use this backpack as a guide for every magnet, by letting this dry for at least 24 hours and using it to apply the magnet to each marines back. You simply just toss a single magnet to the backpack with magnet, then lay the marine down, add glue to the spot and place the pack with both magnets so the glue connects to the magnet. Be sure to not overload the glue or else you will have a mess of glued together magnets!

Note: The magnets will be very strong, expect to take some time leaving them to dry or you will be pulling them off as you try to magnetize other parts.

You more or less follow the same steps above for the normal chaos marine backpacks, placing the magnet in the recess were it would normally connect.

For the arms, simply magnetize the connections as described above for both arms and then glue the special weapon to both arms so it becomes a quick process to remove and you don't have to worry about mismatching hands and guns. Foll the same magnetizing steps for the close combat weapon and pistol arms and for any power weapons you have "made".

Sorry no pictures, I'm in the process of taking them! I'll help answer any questions you may have if you reply. Enjoy saving some money and having fun converting at the same time!

Edit: Of course I forget about this section of the forums... Thanks for moving it.

Update: Well the pictures from my phone's camera aren't better than looking at a fuzzy bunny, looking into borrowing a friends camera.