Behold the Yellow Thunder!
Oh man, this thing was a blast - start to finish. Despite playing 40k for a few years now this is actually the first Land Raider that I put together myself. A while back I did convert/paint up a Land Raider that I traded off of Jester, but he had already assembled it.
As Jester and I have been talking about my tournament list for the upcoming year it was decided that I needed a Land Raider Redeemer. Most people rail against the Redeemer for it's short range - but this suits me just fine. The job of my Land Raider is to deliver it's payload - a unit of Thunder Hammer/Storm Shield Assault Marines. Since it should be moving as fast as it can for the first two turns it's short range weapons won't be as big of a drawback for the way I plan on running my army.
The assembly on this model was actually fun. It was basically like putting together a bigger Rhino without the part I hate the worst on a Rhino - the fiddly tracks. On a Land Raider the tracks are thick and meaty - they fit where they are supposed to and are hard to mess up.
I assembled the model in a few 'chunks' - the hull was one chunk, the sponsons a second, the frag launchers and top turrets the third and fourth. This allowed me to prime them different colors to speed up painting. The Frag Launchers, sponsons, and small top hatch were primed black - the rest was primed white and then base coated yellow.
From there I dry brushed to black parts with Boltgun Metal and then picked out a few details. For the yellow I picked out a few bits in black and painted up the Multimelta/Marine using my standard technique.
Since I am dipping this model I had to figure out how to get the stain on this model without actually dipping the whole model in a can of stain - I didn't have a big enough can. The solution was to brush on the stain as evenly as I could. As you can see it didn't turn out as smooth as the models that I have dipped but it is definitely acceptable. There is one spot on top of the model that bugs me a bit so I think I will glue on a extra bit or something to cover it up.
Once I had brushed the wash on the whole model I was a bit confused on how to let it dry. My solution was to hang it from the ceiling in my garage - this way the tracts didn't sit on the ground and collect the stain. I did this by using a coat hanger and running it through the missing hatch holes on top of the Land Raider and then hanging it from my garage door opener. I used the same method for the turret gunner as you can see in the pic below.
I didn't dip the black pieces - the sponsons, frag launchers, and small hatch. I applied a heavy wash to them instead.
Once everything had dried- a few days in this weather - I glued it all together and then hit it with the dull coat. Everything turned out nice and neat and I am now frothing at the chance to field it.