The previous dreadnought I built was pretty much straight up from the Drednoyt III Patoroch template, and it worked out pretty well: I even made a garage mold from the parts and successfully did a cast too (primed model here). However I have a specific project for the master, and got back to working on it recently.
To my dismay I discovered that the master has lots of little bits of silicone stuck to it, which is a pain to remove. I think it happened because I didn't (a) coat the master properly with a varnish and (b) didn't use enough mold release. Thus the surface of the master is quite rough in places, allowing the silicone to stick to it and tear off the mold. Keep in mind this is caulking silicone, thinned (ie. weakened) with naptha, so it doesn't have a high tear strength.
So having learned from my previous attempt I set out to rebuild the dreadnought, starting with the main body. However this time I knew what I was aiming for, so I pretty much started scratchbuilding right away. I borrowed some bits from the template I had used before.
The main thing I did different was to make the parting line between the bottom and top half way more interesting, with a circular cut on the sides, and indented cuts at the front and back. I also (at the last minute) decided to use the mouth/teeth shapes of the dreadnought as a kind of interlocking mechanism when the body is closed.
This should make for an interesting look when the model is posed with the "cockpit" open: the dready should look like a gaping jaw that is about to swallow the pilot (or what's left of the pilot, dreads being walking tombs for slain warriors).
I'm pretty excited about this; I plan to scratchbuild the legs and weapons as well, and only re-use the shoulders and waist from the Patoroch template. If I get around to it I might publish the modified template too.
Enough talk, let's have some pictures:
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