Dreadtober: Dreadnought Servo Arms

Hi folks,

Arguably the most iconic wargear of the Techmarine is his servo arms. This poses a challenge to people trying to kit bash a Techmarine from other parts and an even greater one for those attempting to construct a Techmarine Dreadnought. I would like to propose a solution.

Step one: get yourself a Killer Kan...

Killer Kan arms are fantastic material for making large servo arms. The pincers and saw can both be used with little modification, specifically the removal of everything remotely spiky or orky. Unfortunately, the one I had in my bitz box was missing these parts, so I had to improvise even further.

First I sawed off the arms leaving both the ball joint and a flat, smooth piece of plastic for attaching to the Dreadnought sarcophagus.

I removed the flamer to be replaced with a plasma weapon, as well as the gas tanks. This took some careful razor saw work. I also removed all of the spikes and filed them carefully. The twin plasma gun is from Victoria Miniatures though you could just as easily use another weapon from the GW range, or re-position the flamer nozzle that was just removed.

Before you ask, that was a Tamiya Clear Red spill form a while back, not Marc Clear Red.

I also added a Landraider sponson targetter for good measure. It makes it look more Imperial (Orks have no use for targetters). Voila, one Dreadnought-sized plasma cutter:

The claw posed a bigger problem. I took a close look at the rest of the Killer Kan and switched on my converter eyes, the ones that see what things could be, instead of what they are. I saw this:

I sawed carefully away at both legs to produce two parts for the claw of the servo arm. One facing of the claw had plenty of detail, which I would have facing forward on the Dreadnought. The other facing would require some more parts harvested from the rest of the legs.

I glued the two parts of the claw together then pinned the whole assembly to the servo arm to produce this:

So that was the two servo arms done! My last job for the night was to convert a conversion beamer. I used a 2nd Edition Dark Angels dreadnought twin-linked lascannon and a Space Crusade heavy conversion beamer. The targetter on the lascannons was making it hard to saw through the barrels, so I intentionally removed it to be replaced at the end. Here is the final product:

Phew! Kitbashing done, all I need to do now is bring all of the pieces together and give it a spray undercoat. Let's hope it isn't so windy tomorrow ;-)

See you across the table,

M4cr0