Okay, everyone strap in tight for this tour of my manufacturing plant; this is going to be a long update; and it will be all armor and vehicles again. For some reason I have quite a mojo boost to finish a bunch of these; especially since I started a few simple and fast ones for a Light Vehicles Group Build on the Missing Lynx Braille Scale Forums.
Okay, I'll start with this first one. I'm building the Pershing II on a trailer with the MAN cab tractor, but the only thing I did on that model so far was the Pershing missile. I figured I'd get that out of the way first:
That's all I did on that one so far. I'll get more done on the tractor and trailer later. First, I'll continue on and work on these other models. Like the other missile vehicle I have going...
On my German SAM-6 Gainful, I painted the missiles in a pale green:
I then mounted them on the launcher to see how they look after the paint was dry. I like it so far:
Later I masked and painted the white nosecones:
I then added the decals to the vehicle and later dullcoated it after these pics were taken. All that's left now is to weather it and then I can call it done:
Moving on, I did some more assembly on the little Toldi II. I had held off since the torsion arms were so fiddly which would make the wheels almost impossible to line up. Still, I did my best:
After this was sufficiently dry, but not too dry; I added the roadwheels to it and tried hard to line them up straight as best I could:
It won't be any contest winner with those wonky wheels, but they are at least on there and I can then add the tracks later when everything dries.
While that was dying, I finished adding all the fiddly bits to the upper hull, except for the tools. Later on, when everything was dry(er) I posed the upper hull and turret on this little tank to see how it looks:
Pretty cool! It's certainly a tiny thing too. Now all it needs is tracks and then I can paint this.
Speaking of painting a tank; as you all know I had painted the basecoat on the Chi Nu and then I masked it with Silly Putty. I finally got a dry enough day to spray so I shot the second color on it. Here it is sporting the darker green color now:
Later I added more Silly Putty for the final color, a lighter green:
That will be sprayed when I get more time for the airbrush booth. Meanwhile, as that was drying; I brush painted the various colors on the roadwheels and also detailed out the tracks a bit:
That's all I got done on that little beastie. Now for the work I did on some trucks and light vehicles.
As mentioned above, I started a Light Vehicles Group Build on the Missing Lynx Braille Scale Forums. I submitted four vehicles for it, three of which I started at Hobby Day. The first one of these was an ACE kit; the Italian Coloniale staff car. I did the chassis first; it only took abut three minutes which was so fast I also did the dash board with steering wheel:
Building it up from there was fairly simple and easy which is becoming more common now with the newer ACE kits. I commend Alexey for doing such a fantastic job improving his molds:
Later I decided to make this with the top up, so I assembled the canvas top and window frames:
A simple dry fit later shows some issues but they will be easy to take care of. This is a nice looking little car:
That's all I did on that one so far.
Moving on, I also started another ACE kit, which is another Italian vehicle. This is the ACE Italian Autoblinda Tratorre, and I started with the chassis again. Because of the way the front axles are mounted, I also assembled and installed the front hood for stability:
I then did the rear bed for this truck; also using it later to stabilize the rear wheel axles:
Later I started the cab, leaving off the roof so I could add the windows later:
Here's how it looks all together so far:
The last light vehicle I started for the Group Build was the new Airfix Airborne Vehicles set with the Jeep, trailer and 75mm pack howitzer. Again, I started with the chassis on the Jeep:
Two minutes later I assembled most of the upper body of this jeep:
I then added seats inside and dry fit the hood and body to the chassis. Looking good:
The instructions say this thing was air dropped from Halifax bombers so they had developed a sort of tray for this to help protect it when landing. This was included in the kit:
This is how it looks sans wheels so far:
Next up was the trailer which took all of four minutes to build:
...and finally, I assembled the pack howitzer. That took another five or six minutes:
It's a nice little gun, but I have to say the ACE pack howitzer is better detailed and a nicer looking model when finished. You'll also notice I left the wheels off all these so I could spray them separately and add them later after they are fully painted.
Here is the whole set assembled and ready for paint:
Now when I had painted my Chi Nu, I had also finished painting green on the two Russian tractors. Here's the first tractor:
And here is the second tractor:
Later on I painted the chassis and undersides a flat black as indicated in the instructions, next is to clear coat these for decals.
I also moved ahead on my Diamond T wrecker, first shooting all the cab parts still on the sprues. I also shot the wheel hubs:
While that was drying, I started the assembly on the two booms of the wrecker. After ten minutes, I finally got the first boom done. This simple boom had seven parts on it, and lining up the slightly curved outer parts was difficult beyond measure:
I took a short break from that and assembled the air compressor next:
Then I assembled the second boom seen here:
Thank God that was done! Next I painted Oily Black on the lower chassis of the Diamond T:
I then built this assembly, which holds the two booms:
And that's as far as I got on that. I need to do some painting before I move on here.
At about this time, my ACE Centurion had arrived and so I pulled it out and dug right in. I started with the lower hull:
The fit is great but there were some places it still acted like an ACE kit of the past! However, I was having a blast and continued on...
Next came the five pieces of the upper hull and the two fenders:
I then built up the turret while the hull was drying, here's the basic turret so far:
Naturally I had to test fit this all together to see how it looked:
It was at that time I discovered that the rear corners of the turret were rubbing on the raised engine deck. I carefully sanded these down a bit to make the turret's turning more fluid.
Okay, I hope you enjoyed your ride through Maddog Manufacturing today. I know it was a long trip but I hope it was fun nonetheless. Thank you all for looking in, comments are welcome.
