An alternate Dreadnought CC arm

[Iacton Qruze]

I've gotten several PMs from people asking about my Dreadnought arm, so here's a tutorial of sorts. :)

List of materials:

Sheet Styrene

Tube Styrene (optional)

Guitar String

A standard Dreadnought CC Arm, with Hand

Glass Micro Beads

Green Stuff

Your Assortment of modeling and sculpting tools and a pin vice with the smallest bit (1/32)

The Procedure

I don’t really know when I’ll make another one, and I didn’t get WIP shots of this one, so rather than a step by step, this will be the finished shots with an explanation on how I did it. Hopefully it makes enough sense.

The first thing I did was to put the arm together, and clean any mold lines. I then cut that nub off the end of the “wrist” when the “hand” normally goes. Use either the Hvy. Flamer or the SB, whichever you want, but leave it off for the time being.

Next, Take the hand, and a razor saw if you have it, an exacto knife if you don’t, and cut it into 2 pieces, each with 2 fingers. Assuming you’re building a LH Arm, you’ll take one half, and cut off the rest of the ring that was holding all the fingers, until you have the 2 fingers connected by one piece between them. Make sure that when you hold this piece to the dread’s wrist, that the right-most finger is on top and resembles a thumb, with the other finger like an index finger. If this doesn’t make sense, look at my first pic, and rotate it in your head 90 degrees counter clockwise, and you’ll see what I mean.

From here, take the other pair of fingers, and cut off that entire ring from the original piece, until you just have the 2 fingers as separate pieces. If you look at pic 1 again, you’ll get an idea of where I’m going with this. You’re going to take a finger and glue it at the bottom to the bottom of your “index finger”, and then take the last finger and glue it to the middle finger in the same way, maintaining an arcing path throughout the process.

I use a spray called insta set to make this whole project go faster. In case you’re not familiar, it’s like zip kicker and other similar products. Don’t get glue on your hand and then hit it with the insta-set; you will pray for death.

From here, to can attach the hand to the wrist at the rotation and angle of your choice, based on obvious limitations that you’ll find when you try it yourself. Pic 2 shows the angle I chose, and pic 1 more or less shows the rotation.

From here, you’ll see the hand basically just hanging there however you glued it; There will be some gaps to fill. I’ll take you through what I did, but most of the rest of this project is really up to you and your tastes or modeling skills. If you’re afraid of green stuff, limit or rule out its use and substitute with plasticard or guitar string. A lot of mistakes are hidden in these pictures.

If you look closely in pic 3, under the wrist plate, there’s some ribbing. I just made that out of green stuff, sculpted it in and filled the gap between the fingers and the end of the wrist. I made some simple little pistons out of 2 sizes of plastic tube and glued them in.

Back in Pic 1, you can see how I cleaned up and filled in the inside of the fist. It’s basically a half-hearted attempt at the palm of a terminator power fist, with some cables added and a little bit of ribbing to match what I sculpted on the other side. You can do whatever you think looks good for your own, though.

The plate at the back of the palm is just a piece of thick plasticard (1/32 thick, I believe)

I cut it to a general size, and drilled 2 holes where the cables could slot into place, and then filed it down until it fit flush. I then filed the top down until it looked good, and drilled some dents to put in my micro beads.

For the wrist plate, I took a piece of thin plasticard (1/2 the thickness of the thicker plasticard, it’s more like a thick sheet of paper) and cut it to a certain length and width, which you can see the start point of in pic 2, and the end point in pic 4. Make sure one side is straight and runs parallel to the first joint of the fingers, like in pic 5, and that you keep it a little bit wider than you want in the end. Then, start gluing it to the fingers, starting with the middle, then to the last finger, then up to the index. Don’t glue it to the thumb yet, as you’ll first need to mark, cut and file the jog seen in pic 2. The Insta Set really was helpful here, and it was $5 for a bottle, so I really recommend it.

After that, File the back of the wrist plate down to make it both straight and a width that you like, taking care to make sure your secondary weapon will fit and not be pointing up under the wrist plate! At this point you can drill your divots for microbeads in the wrist plate. I did one line at the front of the plate and one at the back, and lined them up with the fingers, except for the thumb which looked better just moving that line to the end (see pic 2)

Last, I used a scribing tool to accentuate the grooves in each finger (they aren’t readily visible on the stock model) and then used pieces of my thicker plasticard for the talon extensions. You can make them as long or short as you want (I’d do them really long on a Chaos Dread if the rules for one didn’t suck so bad, but I’m might work something in for my defilers)

I just cut pieces out making sure the width of the piece was good, glued it into place and made sure it was well set, and then lightly filed away until it was the shape and length I liked. I purposely left a talon off the thumb out of personal choice.

After that, I took a little bit of green stuff and sculpted little rounded extensions from the tip of the original dread fingers, to represent little joints on the talons. You can see what I mean in pics 4 and 5.

And that’s pretty much it!

If you have any questions, let me know, and I'd love to see how others' turn out, especially if you elaborate on mine and make something even better. :D

[Glaeken Templaris]

Awesome job mate. might have to have a crack and make one for me templar dread

[cathar the great]

Looks really great! I have to try something similar with my next dreads! Thanks for the tutorial.

[Taerij]

I like it!

 

May have to try this out for my Lamenter dread and take some WIP shots for you.

[Skoby]

Wow great tutorial, just what I want for my Iron Hands dreads. I've seen similar done before but these look just right.

[Terminatorinhell]

Thanks for the tutorial i'm gonna have a shot at this now :)

[Loken86]

thanks for posting brother il try it out for my chaos dread :D

[commander alexander]

Thanks for putting up the tut Iacton, but make sure to add WIP shots if you make another. :)

[Brother Martemis]

oh yes, now i can do my psychic power blasting dreadnought (counts as plasma cannon)

[Oldenhaller]

Cheers for this Iacaton...very cool

 

~O

[aneato]

sweet i can try this on my furioso so i dont have to buy forgeworld arms.

[secondsonn]

Outstanding job! Your idea is very original and must say, the best Dread CC weapon i've seen yet. Well done :-D ^_^