Another staple of the Aliens film is the flame unit, which is a rifle-sized weapon with an attached fuel canister, so we gotta have at least a couple. This conversion is a slightly modified version of the flamer in Stupid Bitz Tricks #5. At that time, the flamer I found in my bitz box had already been converted to use the muzzle from a Cadian flamer.

This time, we’re keeping the original Space Marine flamer’s muzzle. We’re doing this conversion now because it uses another leftover bit from the Sentry Gun conversion.

Anatomy of a Flame Unit

The Cadian box comes with a delightfully retro-looking flamer that has large backpack fuel tanks and a massive wand, which isn’t quite going to fit in with the rest of the Aliensy stuff we’re doing. So, we’re going for something closer to the movie weapon in look and feel, and we’ll be doing this by shortening and trimming down a standard Space Marine flamer. The Space Marine flamer already has a reasonably close form factor, that being a rifle-sized weapon with an attached fuel canister.

Required Parts

The photo below illustrates the parts needed for this conversion. When only a small portion of a part is required, the important piece is highlighted in red. (Save the leftover pieces! They’ll come in handy later.)

Configuration

The photos below show how all the parts listed above go together to assemble a flame unit.

Assembly

1. Slice the muzzle off the flamer.
2. Slice off the remaining barrel stubs on the flamer so that the muzzle will fit flush with the front handguard.
3. Slice off the “hook” on top of the flamer.
4. Slice off the entire grip assembly on the flamer, using the front of the flamer’s trigger guard as the guide.
5. Glue the flamer body to the front of the grenade launcher grip on the right arm.
6. Glue the flamer muzzle to the front of the flamer body.
7. Carefully slice the open left hand off at the wrist, and do the same for the closed fist on the Cadian flamer left arm.
8. Glue the open left hand to the wrist of the Cadian flamer left arm.
9. You may have to goosh the arms around a little bit to get a nice angle on the flame unit, and you might also need to tweak the left hand a little so the flame unit sits in it nicely. When you glue the arms into place, consult the photo below to see how the arms should be positioned.

You’re done! Repeat this one more time, and you’ll have a pair of flame units.

In the next article, we’ll make a pair of autoloading mortars.