Well it's been awhile, and with so many demands on my time as well as other distractions; I'm surprised that I got this much done.
I'll start with my aircraft again.
One of the aircraft I wanted to work on was a quick and easy one that I haven't ever had added to my collection before. This is the Hasegawa Japanese Val dive bomber that I'd started a bit before. It is almost a shelf queen, so it was time to try and move this forward.
I installed the bare cockpit inside the fuselage and closed it up. I then test fit the fuselage to the wings while keeping the back end clamped:
No worries about painting the interior. The top cover for the cockpit comes off:
Since I need to find out what color to paint that interior, I left this alone. Moving on, it was time to fix the A-400 Grizzly. Remember the big bumpy new nose I added with 2-part epoxy putty?
It was time to sand that down and try to shape it. After trying to manually sand that hard chunk of epoxy and getting nowhere, it was time to pull out the Dremel and add a sanding drum to it. Several minutes later, I had this:
From different angles, I can see the shape is off in places so this is going to take some time. I also noticed a few additional pockmarks and indentations I need to re-fill and sand some more:
Of course, in the process of doing this, some of the main landing gear wheels and the nose gear broke off. Fortunately, they should be fairly easy fixes:
Moving forward on something else, I added my first decal to the Antonov to see how Modelsvit decals work. I was pleasantly surprised that they went on quite well and are pretty robust for handling:
Don't worry about the wrinkles on the back. Solvaset took care of those and these decals handled the stuff well. Still, this was another one-step-forward-two-steps-backward situation: as I was adding the decals to the remaining engine nacelles, two of them decided to bake a break for it... literally:
Thank you JB Weld....
Anyway, at least I know how these decals work out. Now to find the instruction sheet and get more decals applied.
A friend then called and while we were chatting I did some "mindless" sanding on my Coke Delivery Van to knock down the roughness of the red paint. Some bare plastic started poking through, so this will get another possible coat of paint soon:
Just for fun I also pulled out a 1/35th Tamiya motorcycle a friend sent me that I was planning to add to my 1/35th scale Patton tank base. It was a pretty fun, if fiddly little beastie to build:
There is one piece missing from the engine area. It wasn't on the sprue so unless I find it, I'll be leaving it off. It is hardly noticeable.
After this, I also worked on my civilian British Type B Omnibus. After I removed the window masking and glued on the top level; I installed the rear stairwell leading to the upstairs level:
After that I finally added a lot of the additional detail parts that I expected would fall off if I'd added them earlier. In this pic, one has tilted out of position but I fixed that already. However, when it came time to add the starting crank, it broke into three pieces just trying to remove it from the two attachment points on the sprue...with a brand new Exacto blade! I even tried to remove the one from the OIe' Bill kit and the same thing happened. So, I had to scratch build a crank from a 1/72 scale pickaxe that came in the kit:
Later I found one crank that was in two pieces and glued them together to install on this bus in place of that poor scratchbuilt one. I do still have that scratchbuilt one just in case....
Speaking of Ole' Bill, I did manage to get his wheels on:
Later I glued the top deck on this one after removing the masking inside and then added the staircase too. You can see that here in this pic of Ole' Bill sitting next to the civilian bus after the rear staircases had been added:
Later Ole' Bill got the rest of the detail parts added along with another starting crank made from bent stretched sprue:
I get those parts painted and it'll be decal time....
After all this, I also added the final detail parts to the Japanese fuel truck. After painting them, I could just weather this and call it done:
Now it was time to move forward on some of these other vehicles that have been needing camouflage patterns painted.
The first one was the M109A2 Paladin, followed by the -A6 Paladin. I hand painted the pattern on this one and the -A6 one since I was too burnt out on using Silly Putty after adding it to all my British vehicles. I just wanted easy...
the -A2:
the -A6:
After that, I added the Silly Putty to the Chieftains and the FV-432. Then I shot the second color on each. Once dry, I peeled off the Silly Putty to get my final results:
Chieftain Mk.5:
Chieftain Mk.10:
Chieftain Mk.11:
And since I didn't get a pic of this shot with the second color with Silly Putty still on, here it is with the Silly Putty already peeled off after painting the second color:
Finally the British FV-432. First Silly Puttied, then painted, then peeled:
While I was using Silly Putty and painting, I figured out a way to use the Silly Putty to hold the skirts in place on my Nagmashot so I could paint them at the same time as I paint my vehicle. I should have done this with the Chieftains too...
You can see it peeking out under the skirts:
Then I shot the basecoat of Green Drab:
Afterward I added the Israeli Sand Grey:
I tried to go a bit light in places as I wanted to have some preshading come through a bit.
While that set aside to dry, I started another Israeli vehicle, the Centurion Shot Meteor. First, I noticed the heavy sink marks on the main gun and added the Mr. Surfacer 500 to fill them in:
While that was drying, I assembled the lower and upper hull, adding the start of the suspension on this:
Next I did a basic turret assembly:
Well, it's trying to look like a tank:
That does look like something that could be found rusting away in an abandoned tank factory.
Okay, that is all I have for now. Hopefully the next update will have some completed models to show.
Stay tuned, more to come.
Haaaaa! Quite a bit! 