How To: DIY Mechandrites for Your Warpsmith and a Look at my Perturabo!

 Old School here with a little DIY mechandrite tutorial and also to show off my Perturabo for the Iron Warriors. Perturabo is the primarch of the Iron Warriors, for those of you who don't know, but he will likely fill the role of a Terminator Lord in my forces or maybe even Abbadon. Why the Mechandrites then? Why not!
Want to make a Warpsmith (or even a Warsmith, haha) without buying the new model? Love Mechandrites with creepy heads or that Doc Oc look? I do. So I set out with the Tentacle Maker to add some to my Perturabo. I chose to do them here since the model really looked loyalist with the exception of the one Chaos Symbol on the hammer. I also wanted to make my model stand out from any others out there. Also, it gives me something to count as different options I may take on my Lord without having to get too literal.

Here is what you need: the model, green stuff, the Tentacle Maker (preferably SAW-050), a pin vice, a sculpting tool ... and that's it.

Roll out some tentacles in the TM, then bend them into some interesting shapes and let them dry. Once dry, you can drill holes into each end of the tentacle with a pin vice. If the ends aren't flat, cut them flat before drilling.

Then drill the areas on a model where you want the Mechandrites. I chose the waistband as an interesting area. If you are working with a 25mm based model, like a warpsmith conversion, then a backpack with the vents cut off would work well. Just drill where the vents would be cut off and that is where the mechandrites will go.

Once you have the holes, use a little brass rod, or if you are a baller like me, a paper clip (HA!) and place the pins into the holes in the model. This will allow you to put the mechandrites on and if the pins are too long you can just push down and the pin will lodge itself into the green stuff for a firmer hold.

Once the mechandrites are glued into place, you have to find some tools for them. You could make little servo clamps or add the flamer or melta weapons. I prefer the little evil heads for this conversion. If you need a reference, check out the GW model:

To do this, you could use the little gargoyle heads that come with the Chaos Rhino kit ... or you could cut down some tyranid warrior mouths (which are pretty cheap on ebay). 

That is what I did. I then drilled them and pinned them to the mechandrite. Once that was in place, I stuck on a wad of green stuff and smoothed it out with a sculpting too to give me a good shape to work with later.

Now you could leave the model alone at this point.

If there are no fingerprints in the GS, you could walk away and be pretty proud of yourself.

That's not how I roll, so I decided I would sculpt them up once the initial layer dried and try to make a somewhat nasty little dragon head.

The once on the GW Warpsmith have multiple eyes, so I decided mine would have two sets and a crested head.

I mimicked that to a degree and then called it a day. I am sure once they paint up, they will look great.

So that's it. If you are interested in the original model featured here, I did a walkthrough of it pretty recently here. If you are interested in the Tentacle Maker from Green Stuff industries, check them out here.

That's all for now. I expect this model to paint up rather quickly since I hate having unpainted HQs. Let's hear what you think about either Perturabo or the Mechandrite conversion method. I would love to hear what you think.