This last picture can be seen in bigger resolution by clicking it!
A terrible model from Caesar, lucky that I was more alert than usually otherwise it would have many errors, I cannot recommend anyone to build it. Figures are as always my loved AB Figures. Hope you like it
:-)
A quick glance at what I work on at the moment:
This is Sdkfz 10/4 from Caesar Minitatures gave me both joy and frustration to build. Most parts would fit together well but the building instruction was terrible and had several quite big errors, but was also far from precise. I wont say that the plastic is bad, but still quite a few pieces was destroyed when opened the box, worst was the gun that was broken in two, luckily the piece that was broken of was still in the box even though it could easily had been falling out. Other minor parts that was broken of was missing. By checking pictures of the vehicle I could put it together and make it look reasonable, in the it was a fun challenge, but in the future I prefer to choose when I want a challenge instead of getting it because of a bad model. I added the number plate and the tarpaulin on the windscreen, put some ammo boxes in the back to a figure to sit on and added stowage in the front. The figures are AB Figures.
This is my first Diecast models a Panhard 178 for my recce patrols and two Wespes, all from Altaya. There have been some fixing to do before I can paint them, the stowage on the Panhard was really ugly, and when removed they left big holes in the plastic. I have to paint them before I can say if the quality lives up to the rest of my plastic and metal vehicles. None of this vehicles are some that I need very soon, so maybe I only paint the Panhard (have always liked the design of this funny little car) and wait a while with the Wespes.
Behind the diecast models a Marder IIIM from MMS is being assembled, it seems to become a fine model.
Probably a very easy task to paint this 105mm guns from SHQ, but still I have struggled a bit with them, it took me some time to find the right color and the wash didn’t look good at all – so how far they are right now is hard to say, I guess I will give them a dull coat and try to pin wash them one more time, normally I would use satin or clear coat but by using dull coat the enamels will spread out a bit and hopefully I can give the color some depth in this way. After this I will add weathering with pigments.
It have been ages since I was active. The winter is coming (heard that quote before?) and the long rides on my bikes have been moved indoors and can be over with in an hour. All this newly won hours will hopefully be used behind the desk, painting and building stuff – and hey… we got new windows in our apartment and therefore I had to clean up in front of them, including my working desk – now it is shinning, a nice way to start up again.
First thing I will have to work on is my US infantry. I also have a project that I started before my absent, a Dodge Ambulance conversion to a WC54:
For some reason I really love those small Dodge trucks, I have several of them built already, just have to paint them.
EDIT: I forgot to mention that I also work on a tutorial on how to take good looking pictures of your models. I just have to make all the images that goes with the tutorial.
I don’t have that much time at the moment, but I do steal an hour from my family life once in a while. When working on my two Normandy armies I have always built what I felt for at the moment, and because of that I have finished lots of stuff but not necessary what I need most for getting started. I really have to be more organized, especially now when I have a small kid at home. I still have the urge to do some things more than others… so at the moment, when I’m not very much into painting I do lots of model building instead.
Here are some of the things I have worked on the last couple of weekends, models that I will need to be able to play the first couple of missions in the Kampfgruppe Normandy rulebook. The La Fière Bridge campaign which I am also preparing for, has to wait a while.
Two M10 Wolverines will be used in the Bridges at St. Jules mission, later on I will need six of them, I can as well build and paint them all at the same time. As the M10’s are Armourfast models, the level of details isn’t very high… I have tried do make them look a little bit more like “normandy” tanks. It is hard to find the balance though, suddenly you have used too much time adding details that it would be better off to just buy models that has more details. But in this case it is mostly stowage that I have added, and that I would have been doing regardless of which brand I had to choose. In most pictures I have seen, loose tarpaulin is covering parts of the tank… doing this on my tanks will help me hide that two of the tanks is missing their gun breeches (the old version of Armourfast’s M10 didn’t have them!?). I made the tarpaulins by using thin paper tissue soaked in white glue thinned with water and formed to look like the real deal. When dry it is hard and will look fairly realistic. When the models has been painted I will show more detailed pictures.
Those Hasegawa Stuarts has been painted a long time ago, recently I did fresh them up with my airbrush, after doing this I did add more stowage – some paint and this cute little tanks will be ready to go. They will also be used in the Bridges at St. Jules mission but later on I will need five in one mission. The other two I have bought already, but as this three are M3’s and I’m not even sure if there where any M3’s in Normandy, the new one’s are M5’s (from MMS). I have made “loose hanging” tarpaulin using the same technique as on the M10’s above – this is a cheap way to make stowage as the boxes underneath is just cardboard cut up in small pieces.
Three Schimmwagens from Academy and one from Hasegawa. Usually you have to buy a vehicle pack to get the schwimmwagen from Academy but I discovered that a few shops has them as single vehicle blisters. These are great models and I bought them to use for my recce units. I will not paint them right off as they won’t be needed for a while.
This US Howitzers will be used in the Night Combat mission. A game played with special night rules, where a US infantry platoon together with this four guns will defend themself against a nasty Fallschirmjägers elite platoon along with a FJ pioneer squad that brings a flamethrower – I can’t wait to play this mission!!! The models are from SHQ – quite nice, but it took some time removing flash and mould lines, especially the first one was a bugger, but I managed to get better speed on the next ones. All figs are AB Figures.
Some Armourfast Shermans along with a single Revell. They will get the same treatment as the M10’s – more stowage and maybe one or two of them will get a hedge cutter.
Next up will be six StuG’s and towing trucks for the howitzers.
Making a scratch built tarpaulin on my Kfz. 61 was so fun, that I wanted to try it on something different. I had this Italeri Dodge 3/4 that I bought with a 37mm gun attached to it. I rather use it as something that I can game with, which allow me to do a little conversion into a WC52 with tarpaulin. It has been lying around for a while, half painted, but with the lust to make more tarpaulins I took it up again. And then I also get to use my new airbrush on it!
Those bendt wires wouldn’t stand straight up when gluing them on to the truck, so I hang the truck downwards to let the gravity do the work. Leaving for a Mountainbike race in Sweden tomorrow, so will probably not be able to do the tarpaulin until monday…
I have built one of those trucks before: Look here!
My Kfz. 61 truck got a second place in the Quickbuild Contest on The Guild Wargamers Forum. Before me was two winners that split the first place, so in reallity a third place… This is something I am very proud of when seeing who I was up against. Check out this really beautiful pieces of art:
Michi’s “Resurrection of a long dead movie star”
What is so insanely cool about this entry is that Michi has scratch built the entire truck! So damn impressive! A well earned win!
See more pictures of this truck here: Resurrection of a long dead movie star
MacGal’s: “ZiL-131 civilian 6×6 truck”
The weathering on this truck is one of the best I’ve seen! Really amazing job! This truck got the as many votes as the one above so they two split the first place.
Panzerfaust200’s: “KGW – Mercedes L3000A & Steyr 1500A”
I have seen many other pictures of Panzerfaust’s Kampfgruppe, and they all look as good as this trucks… Incredible stuff! The weathering is extremly well done, check out the tarpaulin on the Mercedes! This trucks came in on a 3’rd place but if you ask me those are way better than mine.
See more pic’s here: KGW – Mercedes L3000A & Steyr 1500A
The Guild Forum (my preferred forum for wargaming) started a contest: Build and paint one or more trucks in two weeks! I decided to use the Kfz. 61 Einheitsdiesel from ZV Models for my Normandy germans – even though it is an early truck and that there was probably not many of them still around in 1944. (Sorry for the bad picture quality, most of them I took with my iPhone).
Most of the truck is built now, I am trying to fit the AB Figures into the cabin.
The model was really nice to build, everything just fitted so well together. The building instruction was not very good though and I was forced to use reference pictures to get everything right.
The truck is built and has just been spray painted. On this model I choose to paint it in two parts so that I could paint the interior before I glued them together.
The tarpaulin that comes with the set doesn’t look good at all. It looks more like a skibox than what it is supposed to be. So that goes out and I have to fix something myself.
On many pictures of the Einheitsdiesel I have seen a little rail on the roof. I decide to make one for my truck. It was harder than I had expected.
The result was ok, but not super. My hope was that a tarpaulin would hide the fact that it isn’t straight all the way around.
Here I have started converting the figure in the passenger seat. The head will be chopped off.
Here the head has been removed and refitted looking the other way. After this I added a bandage to his right eye using Milliput (I can’t understand how people prefer green stuff over Milliput…).
I have never tried to do my own tarpaulins, so I needed to do a test first in case it all went wrong and I destroyed my painted truck. But it was really easy to do. I cut some pieces of thick cardboard, glued them together as if they where boxes lying in a pile. Then I took some thin tissue paper (it was hard to find some that didn’t have patterns in it). The tissue paper I soaked with white glue that was mixed with a bit of water. I put it over the boxes, moved it around a bit until it folded the way I wanted it to, and then I let it dry. I even painted my tarpaulin test to make sure that the acrylic colours didn’t mess it all up.
Next up I had to paint the interior of the truck. I didn’t use very much time to make this beautiful as I knew that there would be glasses in every window. In the end I found out that even this low level of details was overkill.
The cabin painted.
The truck gets the first layer of camo. I wanted to do this with airbrush, but at this moment I hadn’t any (it is ordered and will be received any day now).
This is the second layer of camo. I added this layer, and the one before, with a colour mixed with a fair amount of water. This I did so that I could blend it to make it look like it was airbrushed on.
Here I have been giving the truck a wash of Armypainter’s Quickshade. This stuff has a very low surface density and will therefore float down in every depression on the model and make details stand out – the picture don’t show this very well, but it makes a huge difference on the model. After this I gave it several layers of pin washes to highlight details even more. For this I used more of the Armypainter varnish but also GW’s washes (which I think stinks). I don’t have any pictures showing the next few steps adding weathering. I started with chipping the model, then I added variations in the colour of the truck using oil paints. As the last thing I added pigments to give it a dusty look.
The two figures to sit in the cabin are finished.
There is a reason to why I made the bandage around this figures head…
The eyes look very dark, and they are… but do remember that this is only 20mm figures and when holding the model in the hand it looks ok.
I was not sure if I was going for a figure without the steering wheel and use the one that comes with the set, but I figured that it would be hard to fit the figure with the steering wheel as this sits on the other part of the truck. In the end I cut out the steering wheel and used a figure that was moulded with one.
This is the final model. Notice the bullet hole in the wind screen. This is why the passenger has a bandage to his eye – he dodged the bullet but was hit by the splinters…
I added some Armypainter Quickshade to the windows to make them look dirty. While it was drying I scratched in the varnish to give it the right look.
In this picture the middle wheels are above the surface. It isn’t bad modelling by me, it is actually the surface that bends – the quality of the set is so good that you can’t make that kind of mistakes.
I am quit happy with my home-made tarpaulin. It doesn’t blend perfect together with the one from Goffy in the front, maybe I am just too picky…
I also added some extra jerry cans and a wooden box. This stuff should have been made so it looked like it was fixed to the roof with rope, but I didn’t have the time to do this before I went on holiday with my family.
Close up of the driver.
Close up of the poor wounded soldier. The hole in the windscreen was easy to do. First I browsed for pictures on what those look like, then it was no problems to scratch the crack into the plastic with a scalpel and after that drill the hole. I did do some tests before doing the final one, though.
It is from this picture I got the idea with the bullethole and the wounded soldier. Notice the hole where the AT grenade has hit the tank.
[This article was updated March 16]
Renault R35. Crew: Driver and Commander. Commander is both gunner and loader.
When reading that I was going to need four R35 tanks in a Normandy scenario I thought “No way – that’s never gonna happen!”. I was thinking that I could use Panzer III’s instead, but the differences between a Panzer III and a R35 was too big. There wasn’t any way around it – I had to buy, build and paint that crap. And the fact that they was quit expensive, didn’t make me feel better. I could have got 6 Dragon Jagdtigers for the same price – but as I didn’t know what to do with that many Jagdtigers I just bought those stupid mini tanks.
This are my first product from the polish company RPM. I didn’t have very high expectations that they would be of high quality – but this would be proved wrong. Actually there’s only three things I can complain about: the plastic is a little bit too soft, the tracks aren’t detailed on the surface pointing outwards and the turret dosn’t have any fitting to make it stay on the tank as most models have. But the plastic that is a little bit soft, as I said, is instead very easy to work with so if you just take care this isn’t a very big problem. I can’t remember building a model where the pieces fits together as good as on this model (here Italeri could really learn something). The model is richly detailed and quit fun to build.
I have built the first one now, and will build the rest at the same time now when I know which steps I can skip. But first I have to fix my problems with not having any details on the tracks and the turret that can’t be fixed to the tank. Funny but right now I think this stupid little tank is very cool – I can’t wait to paint them and to see the faces of the guys that gonna have to play german in this scenario! :)
Here is some pictures:
You could easily put 25 of those tanks into one box when they are built.
It is a mystery why they made the tracks like this…
I let my new and lovely Dremel fix the problem for me. It didn’t take many minutes to do.
Putting some Tamiya Texture Paint onto the tracks will hopefully make them look nice and muddy, while I hide the details that isn’t there.
This is how the turret looks like, I guess that the meaning is to glue it onto the tank… I will try to fix this.
This is not a very big tank, haha… The AB figure looks like a giant next to it.
This is compared to a Sdkfz. 251… crazy!
[Update] All four are built now – next will be to “dunkelgelb” them.
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[Update – 2010-03-16]
It have been I while since I have posted anything concerning my modelbuilding projects, to be honest I have been a little bit tired of all building and had the need to be together with my girlfriend, watch some soccer on the telly and use some time on another interest of mine – photography.
On this little project with my R35’s all I have done has been to start painting them (first a dunkelgelb cote sprayed on to the models and then using the dipping technique on them, but instead of literally “dipping” them I did add the stain with a brush).
Before that I tried to make some research on how this tanks, used by germans in Normandy, was painted and which style they used for the turret numbers. I was lucky to find a webpage where a guy that have made some really detailed research on the subject, wrote about exactly the same tanks that I am building for this scenario, tanks from the Panzer Ersatz und Ausbildungs Abteilung 100. So by reading his reseach on the matter I now know that my 4 tanks shall all be painted in typical german dunkelgelb. The turret numbers shall be white with black outline, and the numbers shall be 522, 523 and 532. The last tank, probably a command tank will not have any turret numbers but instead have a inverted Balkenkreuz, a white cross with black outlines – quit special. The tank with the number 532 are going to have an ordinary Balkenkreuz on the hull. If you are interested in this tanks that fought in the La Fiere battle you have to read this articles:
First article (by Niels Henkemans)
Second article
Third article
Another thing I have been doing on this tanks have been to fix the problem with the turrets that didn’t have any way to be fixed to the hull and still be able to rotate, which aren’t very smart when using them for wargaming. I made a quit time consuming fix for this which can be seen on the image below:
Fixing the turret for Wargaming…
But Luis, a fellow wargamer wrote a comment and later sendt me an email expaining and showing how he did solve the same problem. I think that Luis way to fix it is by far the best. He simply glued a washer in the hull (the word “washer” confused me, hehe, didn’t know that it is a flat metal ring) and a piece of magnet sheet in the turret. Thank you very much for this tip Luis! :-)
Next step will be to paint details on the tanks, make the mud look more realistic and then add the decals that I had to order from Archers Fine Transfers.
This two Panzers I finished today. I’m quit satisfied with result, especially as they are the cheep fast assembly one’s from Italeri.
They are painted using two different techniques to achieve the weathering effect. On the Panzer III Ausf. J I used the Hairspray technique and on the PzBeobWg III i just used a thin brush to paint chips on to the vehicle. Both models has been washed with Army Painter’s Quickshade, and after that got a drybrush.
The PzBeobWg conversion was quit easy to do, using some plastic and Milliput. The antenna I’m not very happy with, I will try to make a new one later…
Read more about the painting and conversion of this tanks here!
Panzer III Ausf. J
PzBeobWg III
I will need some Panzer III’s in my Sicily campaign. A couple with 50mm gun, one with the short barreled 7.5 cm gun and a PzBeobWg III.
I bought two boxes of Italeri’s splendid “fast assembly 2in1 box” models, the only negative thing I can say about them is that the tracks aren’t very detailed, but I guess that this can’t be different when using that few parts on a model. Two of the tanks was not converted, the third that will be converted into the PzBebWg, and the last I will convert to a Flammpanzer (to my Normandy project). Beside the fast assembly tanks I bought one more Panzer III from Italeri (the Pz.Kpfw. III Ausf. M/N). This is a great model because it comes with both the short barrel and the long one, but also a Flammethrower barrel which I will need to my Flammpanzer!
On two of the Panzers I have done some experimenting – I used both the hairspray technique and the dipping methode (but with a brush). This is how it looks right now, still need to give them some drybrushing, and cover the ugly tracks with dust or something… I’m happy with the result, but have been through too many steps to get this far… so I don’t think I will use the hairspray technique too often in the future. The dip on vehicles seems to be a succes so that I for sure will do again.
Panzer III with 50mm gun
PzBeobWg III with dummy gun
I didn’t need to do that much converting to make a PzBeobWg III. Carve some holes, sand a little bit and use some Milliput. The dummy barrel I made out of one of the spare barrels that came in the box. The antenna I will make out of a guitar string.
The two lower pieces are the converted one’s, this plus adding a little piece in the back (the cylindric looking piece in back of the tank, that can be seen on the two pictures above this) where the antenna is going to be, is what I had to change to make the conversion.
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[Update] I had to deal with the tracks that isn’t very detailed. I used an old trick that most of you probably already know – super glue and baking soda, it gives a nice sand/dusty look and is supposed to cover up the details that isn’t there…
This post will be updated as soon as the vehicles is done.
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