In 40K power weapons come in a wide variety of forms, swords, axes, mauls, halberds, maces… In most instances we are spoiled for choice if you want to equip a space marine or eldar, but for larger models, the options are more limited.
When I decided to equip my Black Templar successor chapter Assault Centurions with more knight themed weapons instead of the wonky looking drills, I set myself the challenge of scratch building some power weapons and some shields.
I was inspired by the following image of knightly centurions:
I initially tried using Adeptus Custodes swords, but these proved too small, and looked like daggers in the hands of the centurions. Therefore I turned to styrene sheet, polystyrene sheet (1mm) thick, and two diameters of tubing to create a sword and then a halberd.
I scaled up the Custodes sword cut out the sword from the styrene sheet. I cut down the blade to make an edge but found it impossible to create a even edge with just the hobby knife. I used a emory file to sand down the blade edge and make an even flat surface. Fine grit sandpaper would work as well. The sword hilt was from the Custodes sword with the bolter clip cross guard removed and replaced with cylindrical cross beams taken from a vehicle smoke launcher.
Power weapons have the iconic wire and bulb running up each side of the weapon, presumably to power the blade. As in the case of the Custodes sword above it has two power lines on each side. I used about 1mm thick styrene tube about half the sword length. I then added a 2mm diameter cylinder to the top. I had to trim the top to make it more rounded and cut off the back so the whole thing sat flush with the sword blade.
Following this same procedure I made a glaive power weapons for another of the Centurions. The handle is aluminium tubing, the blade connector is the lascannon end from the Centurions devastator weapon option.
Hope this inspires you to scratch build some custom power weapons.
In my next post I will show how I created and painted large kite shields for the Centurions.
Gotrek Gaming 