Thursday, November 30, 2006

One Firefly down - much to go!


Well I took the Firefly to IPMS-Ipswich on Tuesday. I spent a long time on the diorama part of it - well, 5 minutes.
A piece of plastic card with some grass paper and some model railway hedging stuck down with Elmers! I did spend a minute or so on the caption. Look at the picture and
see what you think. I bet I don't get any votes :-)

I spent a few seconds rubbing some MIG Russian Earth along the grass where the tracks would have been on the basis they would have torn up the grass. Unfortunately, you can't see that!

I have weathered the LCM - photo tomorrow evening if I can get away from the shop before 9pm! I used Lifecolor Tensechrom filters and I think I get on quite well with them. Rust and smoke placed in strategic areas plus some oil washed all over - makes it look quite hardworking. I can't do ay more with that until I make the beach - I am ordering the Polymorph tomorrow.

Now to the next kit. I have started the P51. It comes with moulded on tail
wheel doors so they have had to come off. I am conscious that noone will see the underneath so I am taking a few liberties - maybe I shouldn't tell everyone all of this. The main gear doors don't fit too well so I have had to do a bit of work on them. The fun is that it needs a pilot. At the moment I have chopped up one of the Italeri British Officers. How much that can be seen isn't known at the moment but I am expecting just to get the colours close and hope the canopy covers the rest of the ills.

A bottle of wine and the last hour of A Bridge Too Far beckons so that's all for tonight.



Monday, November 27, 2006

Land Sea and Air - the start


Well as you can see from the photo, the LCM is painted - at least in its overall colours. Its had a few coats of varnish so is ready for weathering. I am ordering some crew tomorrow. The Firefly is ready and will be coming with me to the Ipswich club tomorrow night. Quite how a 1/72nd Armourfast Firefly will sit on the table with all of the top class stuff I am not sure but I have made it so it goes with me. At least it keeps up my target of always taking something new each month.

I did plan to keep the Firefly quite clean as I think that it would not have had much chance to get too dirty on its way to the landing craft but the decals glared out too much so I have dusted it down with some MIG earth. These little Armourfast tanks actually come up quite well - not up to Dragon standards but then you get 2 for £5.50.

Back to the LCM. I have done it as a RN boat which was good news as it meant I could skip the PE machine guns. Even so had to use some brass - but we can't be lucky all the time. On this occasion, I didn't do too badly with it. Next it needs a good going over with the Lifecolor Tensicrom weathering filters with lots of rust along the seams and gunge coming out of the bilges.

I am getting a 2Kg bag of Polymorph in so that I can have a go at the beach with it. Currently I have a vision of a Sherman up the beach - the Firefly coming off the LCM and a line of infantry laying down needing the tanks to get them on the move again. I also want to try to mould the Sherman tracks into the beach so that it looks like it really ran up there. We shall see!

Thursday, November 23, 2006

STUG on hold and other things

Well the STUG is on hold - see later - but a silly thing happened before I did that. Paul (Casson - same name as the guy that shot down Douglas Bader) came in the shop and I was telling him about how my wife Valerie was telling me to add an aluminium barrel. He pointed out that there was one in the shop and I had forgotten - well no surprise there. It was a Hot Barrel version that comes with a resin mantlet. I took it home only to find that it was for an earlier version and didn't fit mine - so we both got it a bit wrong :-( Still this isn't important because I have suddenly found an urgent project - even the BR-52 will struggle to get on its wheels in time for Ipswich club next Tuesday.

First, the BR-52. I am finding this a bit of a trial because of the huge number of sprues. Also, because of how I was going to paint it originally, I skipped some steps. Its proving difficult to find out what I skipped. Still there aren't many BR-52 experts out there so I might get away with missing somethings. It is also difficult manipulating something as big as this and I am constantly worried about breaking something. I will keep going though!

Back to the urgent project. Colchester have a Land, Sea and Air competition every December meeting. I was planning a 1/35th Vietnam trio using the Tamiya Pibber but it never got off the ground, as it were. At the Colchester club night on Monday I realised that I really wanted to do something so I am working on a British D-Day diorama. A Trumpeter LCT landing a Sherman and a Firefly - both Armourfast - on the beach plus a Hobby Boss P-51D in D-Day stripes on a pole coming in to strafe behind the beach. 1/72nd of course. I have all the kits and am half way through the LCT. Nothing clever here - just clean modelling and a bit of 'artistry' - ha ha. I intend to use Polymorph mouldable thermoplastic as a beach base - which will teach me how to use that - Polymorph courtesy of Aaron Spilling - thanks Aaron.

I rung one of our customers who is a Sherman expert to ask about colours as I wasn't sure if the Sherman would be in Olive Drab and the Firefly in British colours. He started discussing the problem as if it was one of his own - where he can spend upwards of 200 hours on a single Sherman, until I pointed out I had 4 weeks for the whole thing! His advice is that both would have been repainted in a slightly different drab - khaki drab with a blue tinge is how he described it. I may go for just khaki drab and take umbrage if anyone criticises (ask me about a great story regarding 'umbrage'). More follows...

STUG on hold and other things

Well the STUG is on hold - see later - but a silly thing happened before I did that. Paul (Casson - same name as the guy that shot down Douglas Bader) came in the shop and I was telling him about how my wife Valerie was telling me to add an aluminium barrel. He pointed out that there was one in the shop and I had forgotten - well no surprise there. It was a Hot Barrel version that comes with a resin mantlet. I took it home only to find that it was for an earlier version and didn't fit mine - so we both got it a bit wrong :-( Still this isn't important because I have suddenly found an urgent project - even the BR-52 will struggle to get on its wheels in time for Ipswich club next Tuesday.

First, the BR-52. I am finding this a bit of a trial because of the huge number of sprues. Also, because of how I was going to paint it originally, I skipped some steps. Its proving difficult to find out what I skipped. Still there aren't many BR-52 experts out there so I might get away with missing somethings. It is also difficult manipulating something as big as this and I am constantly worried about breaking something. I will keep going though!

Back to the urgent project. Colchester have a Land, Sea and Air competition every December meeting. I was planning a 1/35th Vietnam trio using the Tamiya Pibber but t neer got off the ground, as it were. At the Colchester club night on Monday I realised that I really wanted to do something so I am working on a Briish D-Day diorama. One Trumpeter LCT landing a Sherman and a Firefly - both Armourfast - on the beach plus a Hobby Boss P-51d in D-Day stripes on a pole coming in to strafe behind the beach. 1/72nd of course. I have all the kits and am half way through the LCT. Nothing clever here - just clean modelling and a bit of 'artistry' - ha ha. I intend to use Polymorph mouldable thermoplastic as a beach base - which will teach me how to use that - Polymorph courtesy of Aaron Spilling - thanks Aaron.

I rung one of our customers who is a Sherman expert to ask about colours as I wasn't sure if the Sherman would be in Olive Drab and the Firefly in British colours. He started discussing the problem as if it was one of his own - where he can spend upwards of 200 hours on a single Sherman, until I pointed out I had 4 weeks for the whole thing! His advice is that both would have been repainted in a slightly different drab - khaki drab with a blue tinge is how he described it. I may go for just khaki drab and take umbrage if anyone criticises (ask me about a great story regarding 'umbrage'. More follows...

Saturday, November 11, 2006

Slow mover

Well, I started the STUG. True to form, I have already made my first mistake. I have followed the instructions like a good little boy and thus have put all of the wheels together. Before fitting them I notice that there was an area on the side of the tub that was showing as having an operation with a knife. Now on the recent JagdPanzer, Dragon wanted you to cut some holes in the sides of the tub. So, thinks I, this is what they want me to do here, so I drill out and make a tidy job of removing an area about 10mm x 5mm in one side. I then go to bed. Next morning am looking at my work and wondering what goes in this hole - surprise - NOTHING! What I should have done is to scrape away a moulded line around the area - not cut it out.

Talking to Alex in the shop (Alex is a regular from Colchester - Hi Alex!) he, who knows much more than me about these things, says that a standard Panzer III has escape hatches in this area and in the Dragon PzKpfw III there is a moulding that gets fitted here for that hatch. Stugs don't have the hatch, so you must remove the moulded line. Logical, but there again, what do I know...

Out comes the plastic card tonight to refill and hopefully a good application of MIG Russian Earth will cover up much of the damage:-)

Mind you, not much modelling tonight as there is an Ipswich IPMS 'Subby' - Sub-committee meeting tonight at Ransomes so much sitting around and drinking beer. The subby is ostensibly to finalise the arrangements for Telford but as I am not going - got a shop to run :-( - I will be mostly drinking and poking fun.

Monday, November 06, 2006

Then a change of heart

Valerie (my wife) keeps telling me to make Armour whilst I keep trying to stay true to my roots with aircraft. However, there is a conspiracy out there...

I brought home the recently re-released Dragon Black Widow. I even got hold of the canopy masks. Having struggled with the kit - my fault, and spent two evenings masking up the canopy, I sprayed the first coat of primer - white Lifecolor primer - so now I have white canopy interior framing. I should have painted the canopy Interior Green BEFORE the primer! I then found that my joint around the nose was not the best. Valerie is on one of her 'told you so' trips - grin. The Black Widow is to go back to the shop and be given, in its current state, to anyone who wants it (call if you really want it bad!).

I now have a Dragon STUG III which I am going to use to recreate a picture in a new book we have in the shop (name to follow) which shows a Stug pulling a Wermacht T-34 out of the mud. The German T-34 arrives tomorrow. Valerie is now trying to get me to use some brass on it - breaking one of my 'gentle modelling' rules. I am however, going for a brass barrel.

More on this later.