I’m a big fan of Pig Iron Productions miniatures, which are still available thanks to the new business owners. Pig Iron figures are cast in pewter, which means they’re an excellent base for scratch building.
Here’s a couple of figures I scratched up recently for my This is Not a Test Peacekeeper warband. First is a flame thrower unit, because nothing keeps the peace like the threat of being swiftly barbecued. He’s made from a mix of Pig Iron Kolony Militia and Kolony Rebel parts. The flamethrower tanks are from a Games Workshop Cadian sprue, with the garish skull and crossbones carefully trimmed off both tanks. Fortunately the back armor of Kolony figures works well with the GW Cadian parts, and they fit nicely together with some minor filing to remove some detail from the Pig Iron figure. A bit of greenstuff piping, a paperclip and a small length of aluminium rod make up the rest of the flamethrower. The plan is to paint that last couple of mm of the paperclip as an ignition flame. I might put a small band of greenstuff around the end of the paperclip to indicate the pipe end as well.
The second scratch build, is your typical dirty sniper figure. The base is a Pig Iron figure who was holding a futuristic SMG weapon at a jaunty angle. There were only two simple bits of work required to convert him into a sniper. The gun scope is built from a bit of garden wire and two bits of carefully filed aluminium pipe. The SMG barrel was extended and silenced with a bit of paperclip and another piece of aluminium tube. Paperclips are excellent for this sort of work as the wire they’re made from is very robust, and won’t bend easily during handling.