Customer: Federico Caravani

Project Outline: An Ork Deff Dread converted from a Witch Hunters Penitent Engine.

First up is the stock shot of a Penitent Engine from the GW website.

It's got pretty cool close combat arms with built-in flamers, which should make for good Deff Dread arms.

The pilot will be reworked into an ork hard-wired into the machine, and probably chained to it as well :-)

I'll also be bulking the whole thing up a bit by adding some armor plates,

The first thing I did was to build the chassis (minus the pilot) so I could see what I've got to work with before going to town on it.

I'd heard from a number of sources that these models are a bit 'tricky' to put together...

They weren't kidding.

The joints on this thing are poorly designed for a metal miniature. They would work alright if this were cast in plastic, but the metal components are just too heavy to hold together without pinning.

As you can see from the photo, I had to resort to 1/2" pan head screws just to get the legs to hold in place. It's a good thing they'll be covered up with up with orky armor plating.

All told there are 5 brass rods and 2 screws holding this thing together.

After fooling around with this thing for the better part of an evening, I think it's finally stable enough to start 'orkifying'.

Next up will probably be some armor plating. Stay tuned. :-)

I've started the armor plating on the legs, as well as the pilot.

There's still a bunch of detail work to be done, rivets, cables, glyphs and so forth, but you can see where I'm going with it.

Shot from the side.

The other side.

The pilot is chained to the machine with a 'mad scientist' type skullcap on. Once completed, it'll have wires and bolts sticking out if it to make him look like he's wired into the machine.

Instead of being encased in a sealed chamber of nutrient fluids like the pilot of a Space Marine Dreadnought, the meks just plopped this ork into a barrel of goo and plugged him in. :-)

Detailing is pretty largely complete at this stage.

You can see from this angle where I've added rivets to the armor plates, some detail work on the barrel and a grot rigger to the top.

Shot from the side.

Shot from the rear.

The stock exhaust pipe on this thing was waaaaay too weedy for an ork engine, so I replaced it with something 'proppa'.

Shot from the other side.

Close up of the pilot and grot.

I've added a bunch of wires to the helmet as well as some bolts to the temples, just to make sure the helmet stays on his head :-)

The arms are still romovable at this point, for posing and painting purposes.

Here's a bird's eye view showing the wires going into his helmet, sorry for the fuzzy picture.

The grot rigger is also romovable for painting purposes.

At the customer's request, I've changed the position of the grot rigger to give him a more "hangin' on for dear life" look.

I had the grot pinned to top of the model, but I've since plugged the hole with green stuff.

The hand has been glued to one of the cables on the back of the right arm of the penitent engine, one foot is connected to the upper part of one of the engine's legs, and I've added a spot of glue where the grot leans up against the exhaust pipe..

Since the grot is now attached to the arm, I've had to glue them in place on the model.

I was originally concerned that the grot might break off with any kind of rough handling since the arms of the grot are very small and thin.

Since I've positioned him so close to the main body of the penitent engine, with several points of contact on the model, this shouldn't be a problem.

The customer is going to paint this baby himself, so this thing is pretty much good to go.