Box Dread—Build

The box dreadnought is one of my favorite 40K models, brutal and goofy in equal measure. I knew when building this redemptor for my small, converted Charnel Guard army that I'd build it to look closer to the classic box dread. I planned to do the standard conversion, just leave off the hinged front armor and call it a day. But once I started fitting the sub assemblies together,  I realized I wouldn’t need to do much work to push it closer to the classic box dreadnought look. That became my goal with this conversion, to convert a redemptor into a box dread, with minimal effort and minimal additional parts.

The rest of this post is written as a bit of guide, both for myself to remember what I did, and so anyone else could replicate this conversion. The actual process of doing the conversion was much more free form, basically I extended the front armor inward, push fit the subassemblies together,  then just looked around the model, and I anything I thought I might be able to cut off I did cut off. 

Body

The body is where the main conversion work was done, everything else was just my own preference. 

I removed the rings that hold the original body mounted weapons and used putty to fill the small remaining ring shape. I also removed the hinge piece that attaches the bottom hinged armor and replaced it with a piece of plastic card. Additionally I cut down other pieces near the bottom of the sarcophagus mount to reveal more of the detail there.  

With all the cuts made here, I tried to line them up with existing contours of the model, to help it seem seamless and also make them easier to execute. 

The main change to the body was adding plasticard to extend the front armor inwards. Normally a redemptor dreadnought with the hinged front armor removed has about a 3mm gap between the main armor pieces and the tubing leading to the sarcophagus. I used 4mm wide strips of 1mm thick plasticard to extend the main body armor inward to cover this gap. The existing armor is a little over 2mm thick, so I laid two strips on top of each other, and glued them to each other and the armor with spruegoo. Then I used apoxie sculpt to fill the rough interior edges and make everything flush with the existing armor. I cut off the inner rivets on the existing armor plates so I could flatten the putty by just running an old card along the existing plates. 

When the armor plates are extended inward, they prevent the rounded top armor from the kit from attaching, as it sits too high. This had to go anyway, as this high, rounded center point doesn’t match with the silhouette of an old box dread. I cut off the lights on the side of the front piece that makes up the top of the sarcophagus holder and added some plasticard to extend it back. I also added a small sheet of plasticard as a new backing to the sarcophagus tubes. Then I cut off the top of the rounded top armor and sand it down flat until it could accommodate the main torso armor extending inward over it. I filled the holes left from cutting that piece in half with putty. I also covered up the hole where the top missile launcher is normally placed with a a rounded gas tank cover from a model tank kit. 

Additional body details 

I added an old dreadnought searchlight to the top and used another search light from an old space marine devastator backpack for the sensor in the torso. I also added a pintle mounted weapon in the other hole that was taken from the kataphron kit (I did magnetize this weapon but ultimately didn't bother to paint the alternative).

Sarcophagus Plate

I don’t want iron crosses on my space marines and I felt the dreadnought looked more imposing and brutalist with a fully flat sarcophagus plate. The easiest way I found to remove the sculpted detail is to first cut off two sides of the riveted trim, to get it out of the way. With the trim removed on two sides, it was much easier to cut away the detail on the sarcophagus with a hobby knife and sand it flat, because I could actually have the knife and sandpaper flat against the surface. Once the removal was done I glued the trim back in place. 

Legs 

For the legs the only converting I did was to replace the normal back leg armor with two cutoff bic pen tips. Inspired by hekatonchieres’s awesome spacewolf dreadnought, I also left off the thigh and pelvis armor to reveal more of the metal skeleton. 

Missile Launcher

I also did not like the look of the top mounted missile launcher on the original kit, the fact its centered and so high up breaks up the boxy silhouette. I built my own that fit more with the old school box dread vibe and mounted it on one side and hidden in the back. It is a space marine tactical squad missile launcher attached with an arm made out of two suspension arms from a 1/48 scale model tank kit attached to one of the extra pieces I removed from the bottom of the sarcophagus holder. 

Gatling Cannon

I really don’t like the look of gatling guns in 40k either. They feel too tactical or modern to me. Instead I converted the gatling cannon to make it look like a water or bellows-cooled machine gun from WWI, a look that feels suitably odd and anachronistic for the 41st millennium. I made the barrel shroud by filling in the top barrel section of the cannon with putty and then cutting a notch out of the rings holding the barrels on the bottom half to accommodate thin sheets of plastic card on either side without adding any width to the barrel. I did end up having to cut these plastic card pieces where they met the weird u-shaped bar on the original weapon as that piece was too tight to fit the modified barrel.

Base

The base of the model has sandbags taken from the old imperial guard heavy weapons team and more bags sculpted from greenstuff to match. The concrete fortification is made from cork sheets with the diagonal sections sculpted from a very old and crusty epoxy putty that isn’t usable for any actual sculpting.  I covered the structure in wood filler putty smoothed with a pallet knife to make the concrete texture. 

Armor Texture and Bonding studs

Once everything was done, I made a last minute decision to add armor texture and bonding studs to the model. The armor texture was done with tamiya basic putty thinned with extra thin cement. The bonding studs were made from rounded pieces of sprue from different model kit which I cut and sanded clean to get a dome shape.

Right before I went to prime the model, I saw actualecho’s far more in-depth dreadnought conversion and remembered to add those 3 little rectangles on the front armor. I think these rectangles really completed the look.

Thanks for reading. The next post will be the box dread painted.