Maddog Manufacturing Now Open for 2022!

[RLFoster]

Another wonderful tour of the assembly line! Looks like you're nearly back to 100% production after the reduced operations.

Always a pleasure to see what's being added to your list of completed models. Everything looks great.

Here's to continued production and sustained excellence in the coming months.

[Dukemaddog]

Thank you Robert! Yes, it sure feels great being back to full production again. I appreciate you stopping in my friend!

[ogrejohn]

Loving that Russki armor Mark! Nice work indeed! 

[Dukemaddog]

Thank you John! I'm trying hard to get them all built so I can make room after tossing all the boxes.

[gloobombking]

I went through this whole thread looking at the stuff you been glooin and dooin and durn near fell outta my chair!  You make me dizzy boy!    If I didn't know better, I would think you been sniffin too much Tenax 7R but there ain't any no more.  You keep building all those kits and you're gonna need a warehouse to put em all in and if you are a married type guy, you must be the greatest liar known to man------or you're married to a blind gal.    Now you got me wanting to build one of those tri-motor aircraft.  I think I have an old Monogram kit around here somewhere...................

[Dukemaddog]

GBKing, I thank you very much for your kind comments and compliments. You are right about needing a warehouse for all these, but unfortunately I haven't the connections or funds or both. As it is, I already need a warehouse; the majority of my small scale armor is still in the tubs I used to transport them all to three different IPMS Nationals. Then there's the rest of my finished models.... (I have 1620 completed models of all types)

Yes, my wife is actually legally blind without her glasses. I tell everyone that is why we are still married for 30 years... she can't see me! She gave me one room of our two-bedroom condo and said "Just keep the door shut, I don't want to see them."

I say go for it on the Trimotor. I've actually completed six of them: three Italian bombers, a German Ju-52, the Ford Trimotor and now this Southern Cross. They are definitely cool aircraft. I do want to see yours someday.


Thanks again for all the awesome comments!

[Dukemaddog]

Well, here it is almost a week later and we have a lot to show in this latest tour. The trams are coming around now, so when they are ready, feel free to climb aboard for another Maddog Manufacturing tour.

We did get back to the Russian tanks as mentioned above, but more on that later. Our tour starts in the Hangar.

There's not much progress at all to show here. We had intended to apply decals to all the Cobras, but two of the decal sheets needed liquid decal film so they were coated and set aside to dry. Then we got ready to do the decals for the Zulu Cobra; but then I saw the photo etch fret inside with all the screens for this model. So, we added all the screens to this and set it aside to dry. It'll need paint again:




Moving on to the Shipyards, we've got a good bit more to show. While some work was done on the Enterprise, not enough was done to show any measurable progress. On the next slip over, the Indianapolis got all her superstructure built up:



Since we've been working on all these ships; I figured it was time to return to the USS Sacramento which had been languishing for months a couple slips over. After checking it out, we went to work adding on all these greeblies onto the upper deck of the superstructure. This was quite the challenge as the instructions were as clear as mud as to where they went. Hopefully, they are all in the proper places:



That's only half of them too. We still have a good bit to go. Here is a shot of the superstructure dry fit to the hull:



I'm still trying to figure out when to paint this before finishing all the rest of the detail parts. I think that's why she was left alone for so long.

Finally, we dropped the keep on another ship; this time one I'd never built before. This is the hull and decks of the Italian battleship Vittorio Venetto:



I've always loved Italian battleships; the Italians sure built them pretty back in WWII. It's about time I added one to the navy. I also have the Roma somewhere that I need to find and build along with the Venetto.



Moving on now to the Motor Pool, there's considerably more to see as was mentioned at the beginning of this tour. I was so close to finishing so many models that we marathoned these to see how far we could get. First off, I found the decals and photo etch for the Swedish M-34 Assault gun so we went to work on that straight away. The most important part was the gun muzzle. We first annealed the photo etch before removing the muzzle part to roll. Here it is partially rolled on the instruction sheet showing what needs to be done:



Yes, it's tiny; probably only 2mm long if that. I started with cementing the partially rolled muzzle brake onto the end of the gun:



Later we finished rolling it and cemented the remainder of the part down:



It may look like there's a gap at the bottom but that was a a part that folded under that I needed to unfold. You can also see in the pic that the decals had been applied.

Next, I had to fix one of the broken arms of the Australian Bushmaster since; like the SAS one, it broke off and disappeared. So, a bit of stretched sprue bent just so and Bob's your uncle:



As that was drying, we took a shot at painting the spare tire cover with a representation of the hex-patterned camouflage. Why Dragon didn't include that I'll never know since they did include a dusty windshield decal for the SAS one. It ain't perfect, but close enough from three feet away:




Moving on from there we have a lot to show of the progress made on all my Russian tanks and truck.

Let's start with the truck...

This is the CLUB M coastal defense missile system truck that I've had sitting for a bit. Here you can see the decals have been applied (very hard to see but they are there) and the wheels have been added:



They were tough; the wheels would not stay lined up and the rubber part kept slipping off the hubs. What a pain!

Next up are all the tanks, starting with the most difficult one: the T-64AV. First we added all the photo-etch plate to the forward deck and the screens to the engine deck:



Here's where we checked it to see that nothing interfered with the turret turning. It's good:



Next was the part I'd said "never again", but here I am: adding the side skirts to this thing by attaching it to the P/E brackets, just like on my T-64 BV I'd built some years before. Yes, I checked it to be sure I wasn't building two of the same tank. I don't know what the differences are but the instructions say this is an -AV while the one I built before was a -BV. I'd compare the two, but the T-64 BV is still packed in the tub.

Anyway, enough idle chatter, the first thing that was needed was something to hold the skirt at the proper height. After checking a bunch of clamps, clips, props and all I finally hit on the idea of using the Silly Putty. We pulled a good amount off, rolled it a bit and then added the skirt. We then placed the tank next to it, adjusted the brackets as best we could without breaking them (one did break but was fixed) and then we added the glue:



Once it was dry, we repeated the process on the other side:



This was shot after the first skirt was dry to see how successful we were. It shows that the process worked:



I had enough of that so we moved on...

The next tough one was the T-80 which, because it was part of the tank transporter set, did not have the photo etch that it was supposed to have. Maybe I put it away after finishing the truck half of the kit; that seems to be the most logical result. Anyway, to save time, I pulled out some sheet styrene and cut the flat pieces out that would replace the missing photo etch:



It's kind of hard to see in that pic, but I replaced the shelf holding the ammo can and the plate and bracket for the small light next to the machine gun. Here they are in place:



And the glamour shot of the whole thing put together:



The T-72 Rogatka had some photo etch and the fuel drums added:



Later it was painted and cleared for decals:



The T-64 Mod 1981 was cleared for decals:



The decals were applied and the machine gun gun accessories were added:



The T-64 BM-2 had decals added and the photo etch added to the turret as well as the hull:





Well, that was a lot. We worked on these assembling them in an assembly line manner to try and bring them over the finish line at about the same time.


That concludes our tour of the latest work achieved at Maddog Manufacturing. Thank you all for taking the tour and always remember comment are welcome.

[ogrejohn]

Looks like you got it going on there Mark! Indy is shaping up nicely. 

[Dukemaddog]

Thank you John! Yeah, things are moving along fast. I do have more to post, I'm just having difficulty finding time to edit my pics for posting. Indy is looking good indeed.

[Dukemaddog]

Wow, I didn’t realize it had been so long since the last tour went through. I had thought that I’d hosted a tour previously, it apparently didn’t happen. Now since I have so much progress to show, I realize this will have to be a two-part tour. The first tour will depart for the Hangar and Shipyards first, then we will return to board the trams for the tour to the Motor Pool. The reason for this is I was so busy with so much other stuff in between bench sessions, much of it was preparations for the San Diego Comicon, among other things. I just kept on building, getting carried away. And then I contracted Covid. When that happened, I just kept on building and painting since that was about all I felt like doing when I wasn’t resting.

So, without further ado, the first trams are here. All aboard!

Here in the Hanger, work progressed on the helicopters, starting with the two AH-1 Cobras.

The early Cobra got the decals applied. I applied four or five applications of decal solvent to the Decal on the boom:

Later the dullcoat went on:

That’s when I noticed the decals on the tail boom again. I’ll never understand why every time I build one of the AH-1 Cobras from any company; the “United States Army” decals always silver on the boom! Never fails! After four more rounds of puncturing the decals and applying more solvent under them; watching it leech underneath from capillary action; we finally got them un-silvered.

The same happened with the Cobra Late, decals on after the gloss:

Followed by the dull coat again:

You can see we had the same issue on the boom, only this time not as bad. Still, further continuous attempts with sharp Exacto blades and solvent finally fixed it….so far

On another day, I was cleaning up and reorganizing the Hobby Room and came across several old kits that had been stashed out of sight. This Stormovik was in a broken-up box with a few loose parts inside. So, after checking to see everything was there, to keep from loosing any of the parts I decided we should start it:

After doing the “cockpit”, we got ready to close the fuselage. That’s when I found one piece had gone missing: the rear seat gunner. So, when this gets posed, I’ll just explain that the pilot is waiting for the gunner to return from his bathroom break…

The instructions tell you that this can be built with retracting and extending landing gear. Maybe at one time, but this kit did everything it could to insure that glue got in all the places it wasn’t supposed to go; so everything was glued in the extended position after we assembled the wings:

The fuselage and wings were then assembled:

The tail feathers are only dry fit on, I forgot to take them off for the pic. The clamp is because I found a gap that I added extra Tamiya Thin to so it would seal closed.

That was enough on that one. This last one was re-shot with a Flanker Blue Grey, which is darker than the original coat I gave it. This way I can mask off the darker parts with Silly Putty and then shoot the lighter Russian Topside Grey:

Now we can mover on to the Shipyards where the ship builders have been working very hard.

Let’s stop at this first slip where the USS Sacramento had been sitting for awhile before work resumed. There are a ton of tiny greeblies that go on the upper deck of the superstructure and so we started on the first ones:

These were difficult to get right since the instructions were as clear as mud as to where everything was supposed to go among the forest of holes on top. Fortunately, we were able to figure them out. This looks pretty good on the hull:

Next came the second round of details on this upper deck. There were a lot more:

She was then staged again, this time with the lower hull which we will be adding to the top hull. She’s looking more impressive:

Once they were all dry, we placed the superstructure on the hull and then shot a gunship grey over the decks:

The color schematic calls for a light grey, so I found my Testor’s Model Master Light Grey and we proceeded to start painting the sides of the superstructure. This ain’t so easy to do:

The superstructure is just sitting on the hull; it’s much easier to paint without it being attached.

The view from the stern:

I’ll be painting the hangar doors a different grey. Probably Dark Gull or Neutral. We’ll see.

Another ship we started to paint was the USS Indianapolis in the next slip. We started with the lower color, a Navy Blue Grey:

I used the Federal Standard color. Later we taped this off to paint the upper part of the hull:

That hasn’t happened yet, but I did get a supply of the correct deck color. Hopefully soon…

In this third slip, we did some refinements on the island of the USS Enterprise:

The side decks under the island were installed next:

And on the other side, additional deck parts and sponsons were also installed:

This hull is about ready for paint. Only a few more details to add. Meanwhile, we did shoot paint on the flight deck. It didn’t turn out a swell as I expected, so we’ll be trying again soon:

In this fourth slip, more progress was made on the Italian battleship Vittorio Veneto. Her superstructure was built up with the basic parts first:

I then had the upper hull, lower hull and superstructure dry fit to see how this was developing:

After that I decided to cement the upper hull to the lower hull:

Once we finished that, we added additional parts to the superstructure to finish the basic assembly:

Now the only thing that is left to add to that are the guns, boats, gun directors, spotlights and other miscellaneous details.


That completes this tour of the Hangar and Shipyards. Now we’ll make our way back to the main entrance again so you can board the next trams for the Motor Pool.

[Dukemaddog]

Welcome back to the main boarding area. The trams are ready to go to the Motor Pool. All aboard!

The first project we have going is a new Japanese vehicle, the AAVP-7A2. I started it for a group build elsewhere. The first thing done was to build the interior:



After that we assembled the roadwheels so they’d be ready for installation later on:



More interior work was done, and then we painted the interior with the closest thing I could find to “seafoam green”:



After more details are painted, we’ll be able to build this up.

After all that work, especially the work in the shipyards, I wanted something simple and easy so I checked the stash. This Geschutzwagen popped right up so into a bay it went. First assembly was the wheels and lower hull:



Next was the easy turret:



There was all of four or five parts in that. Now the upper hull was finished with several detail parts and then cemented to the lower hull:



There are still a few fine details to add but they will go on later since they are easily broken. This little car is now ready for paint:



Moving on, my Russian tank buildup continues.

In this bay, we find the first step completed, the T-54B roadwheels are all assembled and ready for installation:



We then assembled the upper hull, adding all the stowage boxes and tanks etc.:



The turret was built next, all but the most delicate parts:



We tested the turret on the hull, it fits and turns well:



Time to install the roadwheels. They were devilishly hard to get straight! You can see here we still didn’t quite succeed, pretty shameful for a Takom kit:


However, Takom redeems themselves with this handy jig, just like all their other 1/72 scale tracked vehicles. This is one of the best track solutions I’ve seen on any kit:



While the tracks were drying, we added the ditching log and the fuel tanks to the rear of the lower hull. You can see that the brackets for holding the fuel tanks are far too small. I don’t know how they could have missed this:



If it isn’t hidden by some aspect of the upper hull overhanging that part of the rear, we can always toss a tarp over it. Gotta love armor modeling!
Finally, we added the drive sprocket and idler, thus also adding the upper track run. Then we connected it all together with the lower track run:


Now additional detail parts are added to the turret and the upper and lower hull are cemented together. This one is ready for paint:


In this next bay, we started the T-55 AM, starting with the lower hull:



There wasn’t much to add, but it was a start. Next, we assembled all the roadwheels:



As you saw above, Revell did an unusual and interesting thing molding half the fuel tanks and the brackets to the lower hull rear plate already:



Building these tanks was simple:



Upper hull details and side skirts were next, everything went on well:




We built the turret while that was drying:



Wow, after building all those T-64’s, T-72’s and the T-80; the turrets for the T-54 and T-55 are so bare. I almost feel like these turrets are incomplete…but they aren’t!

Anyway, the turret was tested on the upper hull. Great fit and movement:



Roadwheels and tracks were next, completing the lower hull. Then we attached the upper hull to it:



This is another tank ready for paint:



In this next bay, Another T-80 was started. This was an “N-in-one” kit, meaning all the parts were there to build one of five variants. I checked my collection list and saw that I had four of the five variants already built; the only one I didn’t have was the T-80UE. Basic turret assembly was first:



Additional external details were added:



While that was drying, we added torsion bars and suspension to the lower hull:



Since the previous details were dry, we finished off the turret…at least with all the plastic parts. Additional photo-etch parts are needed:



Upper and lower hull went together next, followed by roadwheels and sprockets:






We then tested the turret on the hull. It turns and fits well, thank goodness:



And that completes this latest tour of my facilities. Since I have to remain quarantined for some days more, I hope to move forward and get some of these even closer to being finished.

Thank you all for your patience enduring these long tours; I hope you weren’t too bored. If you were, I hope you had a great nap. As always, comments are welcome.

[JCON]

Lots of diversity!!!! Whoo hoo!!! Keep rolling fella and hope you are feeling better!!!

[RLFoster]

Wow!!! What an expansive update. You've really outdone yourself, Mark. Keep up the great work!

[JED]

If there was an Olympic games for kit building my money would be on you for gold all day long!!

[Dukemaddog]

Thank you Joe! Doing my best, but this is really kicking me in the teeth.

Thank you Robert! It is quite expansive isn't it?

Thank you Jed! That would be cool.

[JCON]

Sorry to hear that it is rough for you Mark... I have a coworker that also has it bad... 2 weeks and sounds like death warmed over... nasty cough and sore throat still.

[Dukemaddog]

Thank you Joe. I've been fortunate in that I haven't had much in the way of sore throat or cough. Mine just feels like a stuffiness inside my head, and an occasional flare up of fever. Makes me tired a lot. Today is one of the first days I actually feel awake. I might even try to get something done today.

[Dukemaddog]

Wow, I finally found a couple free hours to get this latest tour ready to go! So, let's climb aboard the trams and get this party started!


The Hangar has been idle for awhile, so we'll head to the Shipyards straightaway. Quite a bit has been happening there.


First up, we tried to get a more even coat of grey on the massive Enterprise flight deck. That still eludes us:





Not much else was attempted on that. However, we did get a lot done on the USS Indianapolis. First, we masked off as much of the deck as possible after masking the lower sides of the hull:





Grey paint was shot on hull and superstructure, aiming slightly upward to help keep as much overspray off the decks as possible:





I still had some overspray, but it was easy to touch up. After that dried, the masks came off. Now this was ready for more progress to be done:





Moving on to one of our smaller slips, we took the time to mask off the upper cabin works and shoot grey paint on the hull of the Swift Boat. Here it is after the masks had been removed:





Next we sprayed the cabin exterior while they were still on the sprues, as well as other exterior accessories. This was done before the windows were put in. I remembered to take this pic only after having added the windows to the front of the cabin:





And the cabin is built! All the side walls were installed and adjusted as best as possible, but there are still a few discrepancies:





Later we dry-fit the cabin roof to see what fit issues we'd have to deal with. The top gunner's position was also completed, which included the mast already molded to one part of it:





I'm glad we completed the interior and tried to keep the windows as clear as possible. It doesn't show well in these pics, but you can see a lot of the interior through these big windows:








That completes our tour of the Shipyards, let's check in to the Motor Pool...




Here in the Motor Pool, we've been at least as busy as the shipyards were.


The first thing we did was to shoot some base paint on the Geschutzwagen:





Now to figure out the camouflage....


Meanwhile, we tried getting further ahead on the Rolls Royce armored car. We had shot a gloss on this car to prepare for decals. When I looked at the roundel decals that go on top of the turret, I noticed they did not print any white! So, we taped off the sides as best we could and shot some white on top of the turret:





Yeah, parts of it are pretty rough; but after some sanding to smooth it out, it won't be seen under the decal.


While that was drying, we added the markings to the rest of the car:





When the top of the turret was dry, we added the roundel to the top of the turret. In this pic it is still wet with the Solvaset:





Here it is all mocked up. There's going to be a bit of touch up to do:





Another thing we did was to paint the underside details with Oily Black just for fun:






Moving on, my Russian tank buildup is moving quite well so far. We'll be showcasing the next three by the steps we took.


First thing was the application of a basecoat of green...


T-54B:





T-55AM:





...and the T-80 UE:





Next step involved coating each of these with gloss for decals and a wash...


T-54B:





T-55AM:





T-80UE:





You can see we had a bit of trouble with the black paint on the photo-etch flaps.


Because the green was not quite the shade of green I wanted; we have added an overall wash of medium dark brown over the whole tank to act as a filter and wash...


T-54B:





T-55AM:





T-80UE:





That looked much better in my eyes. so, moving on from here we added the decal markings. So many of these were ridiculously easy. These tanks also all got dusted first before we could take the pics. I think the crews got over eager and took them out for test drives early...


T-54B:





T-55AM:





T-80UE:





Finally, the last breakable detail parts were added to these tanks...


T-54B:





T-55AM:





T-80UE:





After some detail painting and extra touch ups and enhancements, these beasties will be done!


The last projects on this tour of the Motor Pool are the final two Russian tanks I had in my stash. These are both ACE kits; the early ones before they went with the digital design. This first one is the Russian T-62 and we started on the lower hull tub:





Next we added the upper hull to this to hold everything together:





We then assembled the basic turret and used it to be sure the thing turns on the hull before adding any easily breaklable parts to it. After sanding the hull and turret a number of times, we had great movement:





Later we added the containers and boxes to the upper hull and installed the main gun on the turret:





Once that was done, the torsion bars went on:





It took some doing, but I believe we have all of them lined up well enough so all the wheels will touch the ground and they will all look straight once they get installed:





This last one is a unique tank that I'd never heard of before ACE brought it out. This is the Drakon IT-1 missile tank. Instead of a standard turret, they took a T-55 and gave it a smaller turret with a missile launching arm on it. After firing the missile, a hatch would open on the top of the turret, the launching arm would tilt up and drop into the turret where another missile would be loaded and the arm would swing back up to level again and fire it off. The Russians built some 100 of these before stopping production to focus on newer tank designs.


As before, the lower hull tub was assembled:





The basic turret was assembled and tested on the upper hull to make sure it turned well too. As before, it took a few sanding sessions to get it to turn smoothly:





As on the T-62, one of the torsion arms is supposed to be reversed, but the peg on the torsion arm would not allow the arm to fit properly in the hole on the tub. Thus on both tanks, we had to do the following adjustment so it would sit right:





The upper hull was then finished off:





We then added the hatches and the launching arm to the turret:





Here is everything mocked up again to see if the turret turned without interference from the cleaning rod holder. The missile it fires is sitting next to this:





The turret is completed and is shown here in the hull:





All that's left for these last two tanks is to add the wheels and tracks before we can slap paint on them.



That concludes this tour of the facilities, thank you all for taking the time to tour us here and remember comments are welcome.

[JCON]

Don't worry about the Enterprise deck... they were streaking from all the planes and weather effects... couldn't keep it a uniform color...

[JED]

Duke I doff my cap to you. Your work is just fast and furious and covers a great range