Grand Master of the Order of the Fiery Heart conversion

Inspiration
I had been collecting and painting miniatures since around 1970.  I enjoyed the miniatures a great deal, but my collection was somewhat aimless.  When I saw a miniature that I liked, I bought it without thought as to where it might fit in my collection.  My habits changed greatly with the publication of Warhammer Armies in 1988.  There was a lot of useful information in the book and the visual aspects of it increased my hopes of having some really nice miniatures.  One of the first images that really made me think of the possibilities of conversion was the painting on page 55 in the Empire section.  I really liked the helmet of the Grand Master of the Order of the Fiery Heart, so I decided to try to make a conversion.  I am updating my conversion to make use of some of the newer plastic bits that were available.  I had already reconverted my original Grand Master by using a Bretonnian Knight head from the box of plastic knights which was previously available.  It really does improve the miniature.

Tools
The tools necessary to make the conversion are a modeling knife, a razor saw, some sand paper, a pin vice and drill bits, files, and a razor saw.

Materials
The materials you will need for this conversion are a Knight torso, a Rampant Lion Knight Head, some pinning wire, either some small aluminum tubing and some plastic card or the sun shield from Marauder, and some glue (the type of glue needed depends on the bits which you are using for your conversion.


The conversion

First, remove the lion crest and the plug on the underside of the head cloth from the Knight head.  Second, remove the head from the Knight from the torso.  Using the modeling knife, carve the bottom of the Knight helmet to fit the torso.  Drill pinning holes into the helmet and the torso and pin the head to the torso.  Cut your new crest to fit the top of the helmet and glue on.

                                              Note

If you absolutely can not acquire some of the materials necessary to make the conversion, you can check with me.  I can check for availability from my collection.  You would be far better off if you can acquire the parts from an acquaintance, from eBay, or from one of the sites such as TMP or Bartertown.  Also, the right arm which I used for my original conversion was removed from the Citadel mounted Emperor miniature which was available in the late 1980s and 90s.