From Black Reach to Venerable

Last time I showed you a quick teaser photo of my converted Assault on Black Reach dreanought. By using a few parts from my bits bin, I took this guy from plain to venerable. Never throw away your old bits! Clip them from their sprues and organize them in containers to use later. I personally use a set of bins designed to hold screws and bolts that I got from Lowe's or Home Depot for around $15.





To make this guy you'll need the following pieces:
1) A Black Reach Dreadnought or Standard Dreadnought
2) 2 Imperial Guard Lascannons from the heavy weapons squads
3) 2 of the side panels from the plastic Venerable Dreadnought
4) a few banners and scrolls from various imperial kits
5) A sharp x-acto knife
6) A hobby saw (optional but it will make it easier)
7) Plastic glue (with some of the cuts on the gun you want the strength that plastic glue will give you)

Start by cleaning the mold lines from the dreadnought parts and drilling the holes in the base that the dreadnought will stand on. Go ahead and assemble the torso, feet, and the two halves of the power fist. I chose to not glue the arms in place, but that is up to you. Once everything is dry, carefully shave off the detail on both sides of the sarcophagus including the little rivets. (I was able to trim off the skull detail in one piece, so I saved it and put it on the right shin guard!)



With the two side panels cleaned off, use the two panels from the Venerable Dreadnought kit and glue them onto the sides. There will be a small gap at the top that you can either finish off with a small amount of plastic card or you can leave it like I did. Set the whole thing aside to dry. With that part out of the way, get the multi-melta arm from the Black Reach Dreadnought and cut it just behind the barrel.





Now, take the Imperial Guard lascannons and cut them just behind the coils. On one of them you will also need to cut off the support bar that runs under the gun.



Once you make those cuts you'll glue them on top of each other. You'll have to trim to top barrel a little bit to make it sit flush with the bottom one. Let this subassembly dry fully and then trim or sand the back flat. Doing this will make sure that the lascannon barrels will sit nice and flat against the arm.



Now it's just a matter of gluing the new gun to the old arm! At this point if you want you could also magnetize the arm so that you could swap between the multi-melta and the lascannon.

And here is the completed Venerable Dreadnought. I need to go back and apply a small amount of greenstuff to the arm where the lascannon meets the multi-melta cable, but that can be taken care of before priming.