Italeri Sd.Kfz10/4 Flak 30 and Horch Kfz 15 staff car

The kits

 

Both kits are very basic by modern standards and the detail is not great. There are injector pin marks everywhere and the fold down tarp on the Horch is terrible! As this was a painting exercise no PE or aftermarket was used, although I did thin a few parts and replace the kit's windscreens in both for a better scale appearance

June 2016
 
Work has began at long last and both have been primered. This will be my first use with the airbrush in sometime so these are perfect guinea pigs. Both models have received a black pre-shade and then a light undercoat of chocolate brown. Both are to be finished in a scruffy late war appearance.

Base and highlight coat down with hairspray in between. Details painted by brush

  

Sub assemblies painted, added and pinwash down

Flak receives a filter

July 2017

Running gear receives some pigments

Some final weathering

Next stage are oils to finish

Back in the room !

So the mancave is finished and the new spray booth is ordered. All I need to do is find a drill bit to make a hole for the spray booth and hope I don't balls it up ! Once that is taken care off I can crack on and its just a matter of choosing a one of the many shelf queens to start on!  It has been a long time since I sat at at my bench and this has left a huge number of kits in varying stages of build! These will need addressing first. 

A count has revealed TWENTY FOUR kits (far too many I know!) of which five have sat as fully built for over three years! Finishing these before starting anything elsa is to be my priority for 2017. 

A Cunning Plan

The plan is to get two kits completed simultaneously. If I can make a large dent in the kits below before the year is up I will be well chuffed

• So to set the ball rolling I will start with the oldest builds in terms of when I started them. This means the first up are two ancient Italeri kits. An Sd.Kfz10/4 Flak and a Horch Kfz 15 staff car. Both these are almost built so hopefully it wont take to long before the airbrush gets me up to speed again.

• Next will be two builds already in paint. Trumpeter's . KV-1s/85 and Tamiya's Mobilwagen.

• The next two will be Trumpeter's Sd.Kfz7 Flak 43 and their Sd.Kfz8 B10 Gepanzerte. I have already devoted a lot of effort into both of these kits and am pleased at progress so far. Both have their drive trains and suspension completed and just require their bodywork to be finished.

• Next up are Dragon's Jagdtiger and Tamiya's late Jagdpanther. Building is almost complete on both and so the majority of work will involve the airbrush.

• Following on we have two AFV Club kits. Their Sd.Kfz251 Ausf D Pakwagen and the Sd.Kfz11 Zugkraftwagen

• Big cat time and its Dragon's Panther A late and their Tiger 1 mid production

• Soft skin time for ICM's Lastkraftwagen and a 'Neuer Art' mid version Ford V3000 (metal cab but with flat front fenders, small headlights and no rear fenders)

• Then there's Takom's VW T3 Transporter double cab and Tamiya's Sherman M4A3 75mm

• Prime mover time with Tamiya's Sd.Kfz7 8 ton prime mover and Dragon's Sd.Kfz7 late version

• Two unusual subjects in the form of Riich model's Skoda Radschlepper and Roden's Opel Omnibus

• Next up two part scratch built kits. ICM's Ford V3000 maultier  Flak 38 with a 'late cab cut'  and a kitbashed ICM Ford 3000/ Italeri ambulance with Dnepro model's Einheitskabine

• That will leave Dragon's Ferdinand Kursk premium kit which still needs photo etch work and Cyber Hobby's Jagdpanzer 1V 

2015-2016 House move and keeping busy......

Productivity away from the bench 2015-2016

So it turns out I was quite busy for short periods at the (temporary) workstation's I resided on during our prolonged house move!  No painting but under the circumstances quite productive!  I started building the Dragon Ferdinand premium kit, an ICM Renault AHN (Lastkraftwagen), Riich models Skoda RSO Radschlepper, the ancient Tamiya Sd.Kfz.7 primemover, Roden’s Opel Omnibus, Tamiya's Tiger I mid production, a Takom Type 2.5 VW crew cab and lastly a kit bashed soft skin build. This comprised an Italeri ambulance, a Ford V300 chassis together with Dnepro Model's resin fenders and Einsheitskabine (wooden cab)

 

For the life of me I don't recall getting any of the stuff below but photographic evidence proves this was all purchased at SMC Telford 2015!

My model making journey 2010 to 2011

Its late 2010. After starting the Tamiya Steyr kit I found a bunch of old modelling stuff at my parents. These included some quite well preserved figures, paints and even the old but battered 1970's Tamiya Tiger 1. What surprised me most of all though was that some of the Tamiya paint's were still usable!

I figured the Tiger 1 would be a great guinea pig so I set about trying out some of the latest techniques. One thing that I picked up early on is that the large Tamiya spray tins are not really suitable for 1/35 scale kits and I would have to get my hands on an airbrush. I did some research and soon acquired an Iwata HP-C-Plus airbrush and compressor.

The Panzerwreck books really appealed to me so from the very start I was attempting to convey some wrecks. Scratchmod's site was a great inspiration and I soon set about destroying brand new (cheapo) kits in my attempt to display wrecked vehicles.

 
 
                                                Tamiya's ubiquitous Opel Blitz gets the scalpel treatment.

 



Then painted in Vallejo acrylics
 






AFV Club's Sd.Kfz 11 early production got the same treatment

 

 




Around this time I started photographing my creations and it was apparent both my building and paint application needed drastically improving. I experimented with different techniques and different paints and realised that my airbrush much preferred Tamiya over Vallejo and that mix ratios and air pressures really were the key. I stopped using the salt technique and finessed the application of hairspray in between subsequent layers of paint to minutely chip and distress the surface to reveal underling primers and even bare metal. It was clear that to display scale realism in this department less was most definitely more. I often attained good results with one medium only to cock it up with another. I also started experimenting with pigments and oils and a huge number of kits were started and never finished such was my appetite and impatience .

 

 
Zvezda's Mercedes L4500 was used to test the many variations of Dunkelgelb acrylic paints on the market and whether different brands could be combined. 

I really liked Vallejo's light and dark rubber acrylics for tyres and this model also had many different kinds of pin washes tested on it

 

Cyber Hobby Sd.Kfz 251 Ausf C with the Verlinden engine and interior set. I used Friulmodel tracks for the first time. They made the model extremely heavy and looked to my eye a little bulky but they were excellent to work with and gave the track sag a much more realistic look. 


 

The kit's lower and upper hull fit was not good so I ended up butchering one side to depict a round had hit one side.





I learned a great deal making this kit and thoroughly enjoyed my time with it. I see so many issues with it now but what I gleaned from making those errors has given me a much better understanding of what constitutes a well finished and realistic scale model

My last model of 2011 was Trumpeter's Sd.Kfz.7 KM M11. It has undergone a few changes over the years and has been used as a guinea pig several times to work with new mediums and ideas  

 

   
    Completed in 2011  





 


 
       Stripped in 2012 




 


  

   


Distressed in 2013 





 


 




Left out to pasture in 2015




So as 2011 came and went I was relatively pleased with progress. My next goal was to get to grips with improving my finish with the airbrush and even attempt a resin kit !