On the Workbench [October] - DreadTober 2019 project!

On the workbench this month is the build for my DreadTober project, the new Dark Angels Legion Contemptor Dreadnought from Forge World.  Here's what I'm starting with, the base dreadnought body and four arm options.

The body and arm weapons will be magnetized to make it easy to reconfigure the dreadnought in any given game.  I have a relic contemptor with dual heavy bolters already build and magnetized as well, so all of the arm options will be designed to fit equally on either dreadnought. I originally planned to magnetize the palm weapons for the fists, but after reviewing how they assemble, I decided that just wasn't going to be worth the effort.  For the two or three games these dreads may actually see, I'm not going to worry about it.

A DreadTober project should be special so I wanted to do something interesting with the base without sabotaging my chances of completing the project within the month.  Further, these Forge World Contemptors are quite articulated and pretty much require a ground up build to avoid going completely mad in the process. I chose a left over weapon arm to sacrifice to the base. It'll either get painted up in Nightlord's colors for the fluff or Thousand Sons colors to match the buddy I play Horus Heresy games with currently.

I used a heat gun to soften the weapon's barrel before literally stamping down on it with the contemptor's foot.  The shoulder armor was cut apart and placed strategically to sell the vision of the contemptor stamping down and shattering the armor.  The basing material and feet were all glued down using 5-minute epoxy before continuing on with the build.  This provided a solid anchor point for the fun posing work to come...

Here's how things stood after I got the legs and hips assembled,also using epoxy.  The shin armor posed some interesting challenges as is sits low on the feet and impacted the bits being stamped on such that I couldn't seat the armor on the feet correctly.  Some additional heating allowed me to software and further stamp things down to fit. :)

 Here's how the pose looks form the rear.  The ball join on the hips illustrated the scoring I use to help strengthen the epoxy bonds on the otherwise smooth resin surfaces.  Simple knife scoring in a hash patterns works, no reason to get all technical, just rough things up.  Fine sandpaper or a file could be used to similar effect, no doubt.

Next I assembled the rest of the body and finalized the pose. Just a simple, purposeful striding pose for this guy. He's stomping through whatever is in his way and bringing the Emperor's wrath to the enemies of the Imperium.

My primary goal was to insure the glue set with the model in a proper upright striding pose with no slumping one way or another.  With epoxy, this is tougher than it sounds as it has some give for a while, even past 5-minutes if there is sufficient weight applying force to the bonds.  The ball joins allow for some movement in these conditions if one isn't careful.  Once fully cured, however, this is not an issue.

Next it was time to complete the basing.  A little wood glue and my usual tub of railroad ballast put paid to that score.

Looking fierce, but wait, you're arms off! No it isn't...well what's that then?  Time to build some weapons.  I began with the chainfist. I feel I've blogged enough about gluing in magnets so I am not going to go into that in detail here.  For these dreadnoughts, I am drilling holes for magnets in the shoulders and in the upper arm pieces that attach to them.  It is too bad these parts don't come socketed in advance.  I used a weapon arm from my other contemptor to help keep the magnet polarities straight so that I can safely switch all arms with both dreadnoughts at will.

Here is the chainfist with graviton gun assembled and attached to the dreadnought with magnets. Next I chose to build the heavy plasma cannon arm. 

Now he has two arms!  I stopped there as it was getting late by this point. I have two additional close combat fists to build if time permits for the project, but I want to be sure I get a completed Dreadnought for the month even if I don't finish all the options.

Here is where things stand now, ready for priming.  The head is left off as usual to allow it to be properly painted before getting glued into its place on the body.  Here's a shot of the companion dread I keep talking about during the post.

I'll prime both and as a stretch goal possibly get some painting on the second dread before the month is out?  Probably not, but we'll see! It's early days.  Regardless, I now have something to actually  paint for DreadTober.  Let the priming begin!

I look forward to seeing week one progress from the rest of the crew this year.  How is your project going?

Cheers and Happy Gaming!