No one expects the Inquistion! : An Inquisitorial Knights Army..

The Grand Inquisitor is wise, and realizes that there are times when it is just necessary to bring the Emperor’s Will directly to the enemy in the form of whirling blade-teeth of a Reaper chainsword or the pounding of titanic feet onto the skulls of the Heretic. To that end, he put out a call for the next recruit to the Inquisitorial Crusade. Answering the call is the pilot of the Knight Paladin “The Collector.” This ancient machine’s aesthetic bears a distinct Anubian influence.

As I mention in the ‘about this project’ summation, each Knight in these builds is a representative of a specific friend, and will have some unique aspects built into each one that is personalized to that individual. In this case: the Egyptian theme. I will follow through on the next couple of entries with the steps and methods I use to make the customizations on this model, in the hopes that it shows that it is somewhat simpler than it may seem, and also to answer some questions on the techniques I use.

To start with, I stumbled upon a shapeways offering of a Jackal head and that gave me the idea for this one. (Photos below) There is also a cartouche-shaped shield piece so I picked that up as well. The next thing I decided I wanted to do for customization was to change the Reaper chainsword to the shape of a khopesh, and that’s slightly more involved.

First I made an outline of the original, so I could sketch out a template to use. I’ve found that I tend to muck up ratios and dimensions at first, so doing the sketch helps me get it looking the way I want it before I start cutting. Next I trimmed off the original model’s blade part, and assembled the main housing and set it aside. Then I laid the template over some sheets of 1mm Sintra. (I love this stuff. I’ve got sheets of 1, 2, 3 and 6mm Sintra and I use it for all kinds of things, from things like this to building Mandalorian armor. But.. I digress…) The original sword blade part is about 4 mm thick when put together, so 3 layers of 1mm will work fine, especially once I add the details. I made two pieces the size of the template and one piece that was longer in the areas the teeth of the chainsword would be. I took that third piece and then began the somewhat careful process of just cutting out teeth for the blade. This wasn’t hard.. it just took patience.

Once I had that done, I sandwiched the layers together and glued them using a couple drops of CA. The next step was to make some of the details, like the framework around the blade. For this, I used my go-to material for photo-etch thickness plating on a model: old gaming playing cards. (In this case, cards from a StarTrek CCG). I have several boxes of old cards for various things laying around for just this purpose as well. They make great detail parts and I find them much easier to use than either photoetch or other plastics. I cut the sword template from one, and made two framework pieces. The original blade has a couple of detail flourishes in it, but I chose not to do that- I think they detract from the aesthetic I’m going for. I did put in panel-lines for the blades sides using a line-scriber and I feel that’s enough. Once the frames were cut out, I glued them on also using CA, put filler on the top edge to clean it up and glued it to the main sword housing with a small dab of green stuff and set it all aside to cure up.

The next day, I primed it to see what needs to be cleaned up.  The spine needs just a bit of sanding to clean up, but the plating needed a bit more of the GW-esque work. So, I added rivets.  This is an old trick I got from scratch building RC helicopters.  Take a bit of putty (in this case, Vallejo’s liquid putty) and dip a toothpick into it.  I tend to make it just a bit damp, running the toothpick through water first and stirring.  Then just dab on the spot you want a rivet.  When it dries.. there you go.  I’ll clean up the back spine and call the Chain-Khopesh done.

Then on to looking at the main model and thinking if I want to tackle trying to change the stance..  That’ll be a bit challenging.