This week I won an auction for a bits lot that included a spare set of Broadside metal bits (minus the back jet covers) and a full Sniper Drone team. Two of the snipers were complete, save for the top antenna, but one of the drones was missing a key bit:

Shy one fin.

Unfortunately, it’s rather hard to get a single left-hand Sniper Drone fin, so my options were limited. I could either run a crippled drone, buy another drone set to cannibalize (and have the same problem over again), run fewer drones… or I could rebuild the drone myself. Fortunately, along with the metal bits came some plastic bits, including a set of sensor spines, a spare battlesuit burst cannon, and a fusion blaster. I looked at the shapes, and this gave me an idea. I dug through my bits and spare sprues, and got out a matching set of pieces.

Bits arrayed for surgery.

I started by doing some trimming. First, I cut the ammo drums off of the burst cannons. Next, I cut off the smallest antenna from each sensor spine. To further clean them up, I trimmed off the small round bit on the end.

Trimming, part 1

Next, I took the fusion blasters and separated the barrel from the body of the gun. I also removed the ammo canister, leaving only the roughly-triangular body remaining. This was to become the rear part of the fin assembly.

Trimming, part 2.

Now that I had my parts, it was time to start assembling them. There’s a square peg on the sniper drone’s rail rifle where the fin assembly attaches, so I needed my parts to account for that. Breaking out my square diamond file, I filed a deep groove in each burst cannon drum to accommodate the peg. Grooves in place, I glued the drums to the rail rifle body.

Assembly, part 1.

Next, I filed a curve into the front of the fusion blaster bodies to fit the curve of the ammo drum, and glued one to the back of each drum.

Assembly, part 2.

Finally, I took the antenna bits from the sensor spines, filed the thinner end on each to an angle, and glued one to each ammo drum to form the fin.

Assembly, step 3.

Here’s a side-by-side to compare an official sniper drone with my kit-bashed version:

Original on the left, mine on the right.

Not too bad for an evening’s work, I think. It’s not perfect; one of the rear assemblies is a little crooked, but I don’t know if I want to break and reglue it. Still, on the tabletop, it’ll be recognizable as a sniper drone, and it won’t look too odd side-to-side with its brothers. This was my first attempt at a bits-based repair like this, and it came out well enough to encourage me to do more!