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Ok, so I have a small conversion job I am doing for a friend in my local club and I thought I would post it up so that I can get tips/ideas/thoughts..don’t hold back people!
So the aim is to build a Librarian Dreadnaught arm with some form of sword/halberd/close combat blade not sure what yet so I figured I will build the right arm first and see where inspiration takes me, it’s a blood angels libby by the way.

Step 1 – I had two arms to start with, the two dread arms from an AOBR dread, being a multimelta and a CCW arm



Step 2 – Started by cutting away the stormbolter, I kept the ammo belt as I use this later on to add some bulk to the arm.



Step 3 – Cut off the arm, making sure to preserve the small flap that sits above the elbow joint as I wanted to use this as well as the arm itself.



Step 4 – This should be what you are left with at this point.



Step 5 – Next cut the multimelta head away from the right shoulder and try to keep the hoses intact as again they can be used to add extra gubbins to the arm.



Step 6 – At thispoint is time to get cutting, Carving off the melta tanks is a B&^ch and I cut away too much in the end, try to compare the right shoulder with the left over left shoulder to keep from going to far, like this



Step 7 – you will need to clean up the front of the shoulder with some GS and if you are a heavy handed cutter like me you will need to clean up most of the edges with GS/epoxy and plasticard.



Step 8 – Now you have your two shoulders you will need some bits to build the elbow out of, I ended up with an old sentinel leg, the hoses from a sentinel plasma cannon and the fairing from the multimelta arm that I had just cut off



Step 9 – This is where I was cutting the sentinel leg to pieces and slipped and stabbed my thumb with a hobby knife *THIS STEP IS OPTIONAL*



Step 10 – This is the Ice block I ate while waiting for my thumb to stop hurting *THIS STEP IS NOT OPTIONAL*



Step 11 – Next I fitted the elbow on to the dread hand, cut of the original arm hose and drilledou the socket.



Step 12 – I then glued on the flap to the right shoulder and added some sockets made out of plastic tube to the hand and shoulder…you will see why.



Step 13 – See! A bit of guitar string and we have our first bit of pipe.



Step 14 – I then added another socket made of plastic tube to the back of the shoulder and mounted one of the tubes from the plasma cannon.



Step 15 – Last big piece is the hose from the multi melta, didn’t fit as nicely as I had hoped but still gave the arm a decent amount of bulk to represent the energy cabling needed to
power a Librarian weapon…whatever it turns out to be.



And here is what I have so far, added the stormbolter ammo belt to the inner arm and some more plastic rod to try and fill in the gaps in the arm and make it look more solid but I think I will need to do some GS work to fill in all the gaps.





Well that was a pretty big nights work so I am going to bed, feel free to suggest some ideas for the weapon or the arm once I hit inspiration for the weapon I will post up the remainder of the tutorial

Cheers

BLACKHAND

I think it will be useful.

Great tutorial, even I will try to avoid Step 9

Thanks Joe, I knew I wouldn't be able to get an exact match to the left arm but as it will be wielding a force weapon I figured the extra cabling would look ok.

And yes, try avoid step 9, the plaster makes holding onto bits quite difficult!

Nice work...love the optional step...think I will opt out

Well... I'm confused.
I thought that step 10 needs to have a prerequisite of step 9?


Are you gonna do anything with the 'fingers'?

Yep, I will be forming them around a sword hilt or halberd shaft or turning the hand itself into a halberd..the guy I am building it for hasn't decided yet. He has given me free range to do what ever I want so I am open to suggestion.

This was just a handy place to stop in the process, I figured some people would be able to use it to make furioso dreads or something.

Sweet Blackhand, there's nothing like heavy cabling to make a figure look wonderfully grimdark!

Amazing job on the reconstruction. Did you have that all planned out or just make it up as you went?

Thanks Gits,

I had a think about it for a hour or so then started cutting, had no idea what I was going to use as an elbow till I had it all in pieces and remembered I had the spare sentinel legs tho!

more usefull as another fist conversion but its really good as I blood angle player in need of right sided arms, I salute you

Really good tutorial. I have to sve up for a dread though

Step 9 – This is where I was cutting the sentinel leg to pieces and slipped and stabbed my thumb with a hobby knife *THIS STEP IS OPTIONAL*

Step 10 – This is the Ice block I ate while waiting for my thumb to stop hurting *THIS STEP IS NOT OPTIONAL*

You gotta love this guy, sarcasm FTW!!!

Hey Torin.... love the avatar! LOL!

Thanks, i play SW and heard of a comic strip that inspired it, allow me to elaborate:

1.Crazed CSM charged Long Fang with no weapons...

2.Long fang thows stick at confused CSM

3.Long fang casually says "fetch"

4.CSM ripped apart by blood claws...

Sorry for stealing the thread there for a bit

Thanks for all the comments guys, I 'm glad the tutorial might help someone

So the guy I’m building the Libby dread arm for has had a look at the pics of the arm and has decided that keeping the hand as is will allow him to run the dread as a Furioso if needed. So the plan is now to build a sword or halberd that can be magnetized to the hand …. Not as easy as I thought it was going to be. I have followed the design of a GK halberd as it is the only 40k halberd I had handy but I am not to sure, I hope some BA players will post up some ideas on how to Angel it up.

I will show you the steps I went through to build the helmet and then explain my thinking about why I will probably scrap it

Step 1 – Took a piece of 3mm plasticard and shaped a simple blade. Above it you will see the ork choppa I am going to use the engine off.



Step 2 – I cut a notch in a piece of plasticard tube to fit the blade into and form a cuff.



Step 3 – I then took some 1mm plasticard and shaped a raised area around the cuff, I figured this would be a decent place to add some GS detail later on.



Step 4 – Next I added the Choppa engine and a small ring of plastcard tube to the cuff.



Step 5 – A bit of a jump ahead I am afraid , here I have drilled a hole in a piece of plasticard and glued just below the head of the halberd shaft, I then glued another smaller ring of tube on to the leading edge of the piece. A bent piece of guitar string fits between the two rings to look like power cabling. I have also added a spike to the back of the halberd blade like the ones on the GK halberds.



Step 6 – Here is the finished halberd..kind of. I found it far too long and went back and shortened both the lade and the shaft.



Step 7 – Here it is with the dread



So here are my problems with the halberd.

1, Its still seems too big an unwieldy even for a dread.
2, I think it may be too GK as opposed to BA
3, Thanks to the position of the fingers the halberd will not
stand straight but will cross over the body or point outwards, neither of which are quite what I was looking for.

One way to fix the fingers is to cut off the hand at the wrist and rotate it so the halberd will be gripped straight, I figure that if I go that route I may as well build an entire “swordhand” that can be attached when needed. That will allow the dread arm to be used on a furioso and a Libby with just a simple switch.

What do you all think?

Cheers

BLACKHAND

amazingggg workkkk

I think that rotating the hand at the wrists should work well. The blade part itself looks far too big and it also looks like it has lost the point at the end. I am sure. Most conversions use the hand from the venerable dred kit or just attach the blade straight onto the wrist joint, good luck!

Thanks guys,

The reason the blade looks like the end is missing is I compromised between the angled GK halberd and more curved look.

I think I will end up doing both versions and seeing what goes down best, I will definitely have to do some more research into the look of the BA power weapons


Automatically Appended Next Post:
So unhappy with the Halberd I have had a go at a power blade directly attached to the arm..I know, I know its what everyone has done but that may be because it’s the best solution. I followed the design of a Sanguinary Guard power sword I found online, I think I got it pretty BA looking....I will let you decide after checking out the pics.

Step 1 – I carefully cut the hand off, above the segmented wrist bit. I then filled the forearm with quick drying epoxy and drilled a hole for the wrist pegs to go into.



Step 2 – This is the propeller hub from a old plane kit I had lying around, it was the right diameter so I went with it. This is just a pic of the notch I cut to firt the blade into.



Step 3 – S I forgot to take pics of the process I used to shape the blade..it was pretty boring anyway..here is blade fitted into to the base. I built te power chord channel things out of paperclips and GS, I know on normal power weapons end in a circle but on the Sanguinary Guard power weapons they end in blood drops so I tried to get that look..it may need some more sanding.



Step 4 – A couple of pics of the test fit after I had attached the wrist peg, it was a little bland…..





Step 5 - …..so I added some more detail, wings, an extra set of blood drops and a rim of plasticard, the flat blood drops will get a secondary rounded blood drop on them.



So there it is, the (nearly) finished product! Once again C&C is welcome!

Cheers,

BLACKHAND

As always, your work is amazing. Keep it up and keep us posted!

Not too sure about this new sword arm, CAnt see it actually being able to fight with that... maybe a poke here and there

Thats actually pretty badass.

I like it.

Thanks guys, I had some mixed feedback about the arm and a real lack of feedback from the guy I am building it for. My thought was that like a dreads leg, their arms have a lack of articulation and the sword as it is can stab, be hacked down or rotated 90 degrees and slashed side to side. After seeing him hold a halberd I realized they could never wield one effectively and if I am asked to go the hand holding a weapon route then I will probably go for a sword, if the client ever contacts me

that sword arm looks awesome, but it is WAY too big for me. maybe that's just the pictures, but I think it really needs to be either smaller or placed into another angle so that it doesn't look so silly and out of place.

It looks good, just kinda silly since it is so large in those pics.

Part of it may be the angle I have taken the pics, but yeah I can see your point. I have the distinct feeling that the silence from the client on my local clubs message board is an indication that he doesn't like it either. I may have to track down another dread hand, cut it up and build a new sword for it to hold...if he wants it all!

Two things I think you could do to make it look much better are (a) make the blade smaller, and (b) rotate the blade some. Having it straight verticle fails to convey any sense of rotational movement, which would be the only way that design could practically work.

Luckily the wrist is pegged so I can rotate it any way I want it to go, the size of the blade is an issue and will probably need a rebuild

Take a look @ the FW Halberd blade for a good idea for a blad size weapon for a dread: I think they nailed the Halberd for the GK dread.

http://www.forgeworld.co.uk/Warhammer-40000/Daemonhunters_/GREY-KNIGHT-DREADNOUGHT-CLOSE-COMBAT-ARM.html

If your client doesn't contact you about the sword arm I'm sure there are many people here who would want it (cough cough). It looks great.

Ok so in the hope of getting my client to contact me I have had another try at the blade hand for the Dread, tried to document it as much as possible, was watching movies while I did it though so was slightly distracted...

Step 1 - Found a lager than normal hobby knife handle



Step 2 - Disassembled it to retrieve the plastic part that grips the blade.



Step 3 - Carved a new blade from plasticard and fitted it into the plastic grip, which I had also cut down and added a stub of plastic rod so that it will fit into the arm like the other hand and blade.



Step 4 - Added the heat sink and cable from a rhino hunter-killer missile to show the blade's powered status.I also added a plasticard cuff around the base of the "hand" to bulk it up.



Step 5 - A bit of GS cleanup and it is ready for detailing.



So what do you think? I know it needs more work but I have to wait for the GS to dry, now is the time for suggestions!

Cheers

BLACKHAND

Ok.

That looks badass. Still just a touch long IMHO, but workable now.

Love the serrated blade. VERY nice.

I know, I tried to keep it smaller but my love of big knives and big guns shone through