40K Hobby: Pre-Heresy Librarian Conversion
MBG here with a feature on one of my favorite projects; a converted Librarian model. A little while ago I did a tutorial on my Pre-Heresy Imperial Fists Army, but I left one model out- my Librarian.
Today we’re going to take a look how I made him, and how you can make your own (as there is no model for the Power Armor Librarian right now- sad pandas).
Back in the day, I say that like I’m so old lols, the only Librarian models available were some old undersized 2nd Edition ones, that clearly weren’t customize-able or even good looking in general. So since I was doing a themed army, I needed something special!
How I Made It
The bits list for this guy is not extensive at all, most of the uniqueness to the model is the custom work.
So to start off, I dry fitted the force weapon arm to the model first so I could get an idea how the pose the torso onto the legs. Once I did that I just took a normal pair of Space Marine legs, and glued them to the Black Templar Tabard torso shown.
Then I went to work on the force weapon. Because there was no bits available at the time for such a weapon, besides the heavy Grey Knight arms- and that wasn’t going to work, I had to make the halberd from scratch pretty much. I think it turned out okay for the limited bits available back then.
I based the weapon off the Space Marine Command Squad Standard Bearer arm, and cut shaft off at the top of his hand (where you see the hint of green stuff to the far right above). Then I pinned an old power axe shaft with the blade cut off (the blade would have been facing downwards) to extend the shaft and make a mount for the blade’s power source.
Next in between the red lines I glued an old hand flamer bit, with the handle and nozzle cut off (the nozzle would have been facing downwards as well, and grip pointing out where the blade is now) to represent the power source for the blade and give me something to mount the blades themselves to.
Then I shaved down two close combat knives, mated them together, and glued them onto the top of the weapon itself. Last I just puttied up the joints in the blades, and slapped some purity seals on there to finish the force halberd.
Up next was some custom shoulder pads. So I just used my trusty hole punch to make some more studs, and fabricated up some shoulder pads like you see with the shrapnel guards.
To do this I just used a 1/16″ (basically that’s a quarter of a quarter of an inch) handheld hole punch for Michael’s Arts and Crafts to make the studs. Then I just used the tip of a hobby knife to lightly stab them, dip them in plastic glue, and affix them to the pad itself.
The shrapnel guard over the lip of the pad was also made from 1/32″ or 1/64″ thick plasticard, but to secure it I had to use super glue so they wouldn’t keep breaking off.
I also wanted to have some “fists” icons all over the models so I made a squish mold of a fist symbol off of a pewter shoulder pad.
Squish molds are easy to make, I just took a big blob of green stuff, and attached it to the end of a old paintbrush.
After adding a drop of two of water to the end, I stamped it onto the icon I wanted to duplicate.
After the mold dried, I just rolled out some small balls of green stuff in a row on some wax paper, and stamped them all into little fists. SQUISH! Then after they dried I cut them out and glued them to my models!
I saw this tip in an old White Dwarf from the Nineties. It’s a pretty sweet trick to make your models really stand out. I splashed these fists on my marine’s chests and some on their shoulder pads, but the possibilities are endless really with what you can do to a figure.
To make the Psychic Hood, I just shaved down a basic Space Marine Shoulder Pad Bit, into the approximate shape of the hood, and added a small Aquila icon from the commander kit on top. I also added studs down the back to tie it in with the rest of the model.
I used a Rocket launcher loading arm, that was cut and re-positioned at the wrist to show a sense of power coming from the Librarian.
Lastly I slapped on a backpack, and added the head looking in the direction of his arm. Then I went back and splashed some purity seals, and fists icons about to pull the model all together.
So that’s pretty much it. You may even recognize him from the old Battlewagon Bits website, as I used him extensively on there. I put a lot of work into this guy, and even still have him to this day!
Checkout the Three-Sixty below, and post if you have any questions/ comments!
So what do you think, does he convey the normal mix of awe and dread that a Librarian model should? -MBG
