This was a tiny quick build from Zvezda. I like their little kits as they are really handy for filling holes in your forces cheaply and quickly. Only a few bits but those bits are nicely detailed. This one only took me a few minutes to assemble. You need to leave the seated gunner off until everything is painted. I added an Esci spare officer i had pointing at something probably a badger appearing in the hedgerows. I put the whole thing on a small MDF base with some Value Gear sandbags. Here they are defending a ruined house with their tow and a Puma scuttling past in the background.
Plastic Models
Revell Sd Kfz 7/1 in 1/72 Scale
This is an armoured halftrack with a quadruple 20mm gun on the back. You can model the gun in firing position with the sides of the halftrack lowered into a flatbed or leave them up in travel mode. I left my sides up as if the vehicle was on the move.
The kits is very nicely moulded and has good detail. The tracks are particularly nice and although the instructions say put them in warm water before attaching to the wheels, i didnt need to. They are flexible plastic and in one piece, which again makes a change from nasty rubber or vinyl, or fiddly link and length.
I did have to drill a few holes for some the external details and you do have to drill a few holes in the back of the halftrack too. The trailer at the back is a nice easy build and i added a few bits of stowage on the top. Be really careful with the gun barrels as they are very delicate, you can probably get metal replacements somewhere.
Its a fun kit to build and would look excellent in firing position with some crew firing it.
German Motorbikes Zvezda and Italeri 1/72 Scale
It is always good to have some super speedy reconnaissance vehicles with machine guns. Like having sharks with laser beams attached to their heads. Also good. Zvezda produce a great little motorbike and sidecar for a few dollars. The kit is very simple and only a few parts, will go together in minutes. Just remember to keep the riders separate for painting as it is too tricky to paint them once they are glued in position. This does mean that you have to leave the front part of the sidecar off so you can fit the passenger in once he is painted. This was the only piece that was tricky to do and i had to do some surgery to get the last piece to fit in. I also dumped the plastic base it came with and made my own from MDF as usual. Great kit and great value. I might buy some more!
The Italeri kit comes in a larger pack with two single bikes and two motorbikes with sidecars. You get extra figures to make different options, with helmets or caps, and an LMG or SMG in the sidecar. So that’s nice you can vary how you build your bikes. Kits are again very simple and take minutes to put together. The only thing is i had to use super glue as the plastic rejected all my usual plastic cement. I also tossed the supplied bases away and made my own. Each passenger and rider has a bum toggle that i removed so positioning was easier. That way you are not trying to shove the toggle into the hole in the seat. Just glue the dudes on. Again another good kit and nice to have options. Great value as you get four bikes in each box.
I painted them all German grey and the figures field grey. Added some dust, but kept the process simple. I actually have the other two bikes from the Italeri kit I finished a few years back, and I may have to redo them in the same way.
US GMC Trucks In 1/72 Scale
I am slowly building up some US forces and I really like building trucks. Especially these super cool US GMC trucks. I cannot help myself as far as trucks and armoured cars go. These guys come from Heller (Airfix) and Hasegawa. The Heller kit has finer detail and is more delicate. It comes with an excellent gun ring on the roof, and its dimensions are longer and thinner than the Hasegawa kits. The Japanese kits are very solid and chunky and very quick to build. You can get them super cheap direct from Japan. They do have weird metal axels which need super gluing otherwise the wheels rotate. I added windshields with plastic and also added some thin chains on the front fender as i had seen photos of this somewhere. My drivers are all AB Figures as usual. They are such cool trucks. I have an IBG Diamond Cargo Truck just arrived in tbe post which I am now itching to make!
Hasegawa Daimler Mk II Armoured Car in 1/72 scale
Another great British Armoured Car I picked up from the best place for Hasegawa kits – my friends in Japan https://www.1999.co.jp/eng/plamo/
From Australia these Hasegawa kits only cost 810 yen which i think is about 7-8 USD, and postage for three kits is about the same. So a pretty good deal and way better value than buying these kits from any other retailer. I really liked the Humber Armoured Car kit they make, and needed a couple of Daimlers for sure. This kit is in the usual grey plastic which is really easy to work with. Not too many pieces either which always makes these Hasegawa kits perfect for an evening of easy model making. Most importantly for me is that everything fits together and instructions are clear and easy to follow. Plenty of good detail in this scale and easily enough for my purpose of putting them on my table top.
My Daimler had a couple of additions, including an aerial, a pickaxe on the front and a hatchet on the back. Also some stowage items added on the back and sides. He received an olive drab paint job as usual, but I don’t think I bothered with a brown wash this time. I do a gloss varnish coat where I am placing my decals and also use a decal softener which does help with blending the decals into the paint work. As with all my wheeled vehicles I like to base them on MDF bases to prevent any damage. Some European earth weathering powder makes Mr Daimler look well used. I still do not bother with any chipping or other effects on green vehicles as i am not sure it really adds much. I really enjoyed making this kit and next up have a Staghound Armoured Car from a company called RPM which is new to me. Hopefully it’s just as good!
Wrecked Tanks Terrain
I wanted to create some wrecked vehicle markers, both as nice looking scenery and bits of cover, as well as potentially actual wrecked tanks to replace vehicles destroyed during proceedings. I thought that having a few actual wrecked models would add to the variety rather than the usual plumes of cotton wool smoke.
These two are a Plastic Soldier Soldier Company Sherman and an Armourfast Jagdpanther. Neither model I was particularly impressed with. The Sherman was very big and chunky and I found many better offerings from Trumpeter, Esci, Dragon etc. Same for the Jagdpanther who was since replaced with much finer model kits from Zvezda and Trumpeter again. SO i got to it ripping off bits, hatches, tracks and punching holes in the hulls with pins and drills. I placed them on bases at funny angles which helps with the drunken wrecked look. I added lots of homemade rubble and stuff and other bits and pieces of debris. Always good to have an old oil drum kicking around. I used a heavy brown wash followed by lots of dust and dirt powders and some charcoal to show the burnt out bits. They look good just as extra scenery cover near some blown out buildings. I am looking forward to Christmas and hope to get some more work finished so I can post more pictures!
Greenstuff World Textured Rolling Pin
I have been struggling to make roads and town squares for a while using various different methods. Hand scribing cobble stones onto a thin layer of plaster on MDF looks great, but it is wildly time consuming. Textured card glued to MDF or wood also works, but looks a bit flat and a bit fake for my liking. The best method I have now settled on is a textured rolling pin from a company called Greenstuff World at www.greenstuffworld.com
They produce a big range of interesting things for the modeler. I picked up some of their textured rolling pins. I found the 28mm scale one of cobblestones which is about 25cm long works really well for 1/72 scale cobbled town squares and roads. The detail stands out better than the smaller roller means for 15mm scale. I decided that I wanted to just make larger cobbled squares and put them together to make a large town area. Then the buildings would stand on top of the town area and the cobbled roads would be formed in between the buildings. Using MDF i cut a roughly 25 x 25cm square and then rolled out DAS clay nice and thin to the same size with a bit of an overlap. You then carefully and firmly roll the textured rolling pin over the clay in one direction making an imprint. I left this to dry, glued it to the MDF and then trimmed the edges.
I gave it a base in a grey spray primer and then used some brown and black washes and a whole heap of dry brushing lighter shades of grey. Check them out. When I have made a few I will set up a town scene to show the effect.
Zvezda Panther Ausf. D in 1/72 Scale
I still needed a couple more panthers to get up to three troops of three tanks, so I picked up a Zvezda Panther on eBay. I have made one of these before and also a few of the Panzer IVs and also a Tiger so I know what I am in for. These kits are advertised as snap together which really only means some of it is snap together, but if you are like me you are going to be gluing it all together anyway. Zvezda kits are generally really good. The detail is excellent and parts go together very nicely. Also they are great value for money, especially if you buy them from Eastern Europe where they are made. I don’t think this cost me much more than $10–12AUD.
My only criticisms would be as follows. The hatches are all moulded shut, so if you like placing extra figures in the tank, like I do, you cannot, unless you are brave and feel like doing some surgery.
Due to the snap fit design some bits are tricky to get together, like the rear of the top hull fitting into the bottom. I had to cut off a couple of small lugs that were just bending rather than fitting. Also there was a gap at the front where the hulls meet and i had to do some filling and sanding with my magic putty.
The track design is great, you wrap around the flexible tracks and then fit them onto pegs in between the wheels. This can also get tricky as its a tight fit, and you need to be very careful not to apply too much force and break any of the sprocket wheels. I made this mistake before on the Tiger so I was extra cautious this time.
My paint job was a patchy camouflage scheme and some dark washes, plus plenty of dirt and dust to finish him off. I added an aerial and half destroyed the side skirts for some interest. I used some excellent decals from the Revell panther i finished next which gave more options than this kit.
Dragon Models Sd.Kfz.70 6 x 4 Personnel Carrier in 1/72 scale
Another great kit from Dragon Models. It is a Krupp six wheeled heavy car towing a Pak 36 anti tank gun. I really like Dragon Models, they make the best kits. Great detail, clear instructions, and everything fits together nicely. I particularly like building trucks and vehicles right now, and luckily my time period of World War Two is full of interesting transports.
I always base my wheeled vehicles, and this one also has some fiddly bits that definitely need a base you can pick the model up with, rather than risking big hand damage. I painted this one an early war German grey and then lightened it with a second coat with some white added. My only gripe was that the anti tank gun is really fiddly and I nearly threw my toys with the teeny tiny bits. Driving the truck is a man from AB Figures and in the back are some greatcoat wearing seated dudes from Caesar Miniatures. I bought a box of these guys who are really cheap and handy for the back of any your trucks. It made a nice change to do a grey vehicle rather than my usual dunkelb and camo.
Special Armour Sd.Kfz 11 LEICHTER ZUGKRAFTWAGEN HALFTRACK 1/72 Scale
So another German half track rolls off my painting (dining) table. This time from Special Armour, which is a company I have never built before. It’s a nice little half track mainly used for towing guns I think. Another eBay purchase that I found quite cheaply. The kit was quite a challenge with various small PE parts that raised my frustration levels a fair bit. I lost at least one door handle in the process. The worst thing though was the front engine and drivers compartment did not fit properly on to the chassis. So the front section was too high and there was a gap between the chassis and the engine, and the front suspension looks a bit high. I am not sure if it was my building that went wrong but I could not see how it was meant to be any different as the whole back section was correct and in line. Anyway I wont be buying one of these again. Luckily you cannot really see the problem.
I used the usual dunkelb dark yellow and did a fair amount of chipping with my sponge and added plenty of dirt and dust. The squad in the back and the driver and officer are all from AB figures. I tried out a new M44 camo scheme using an awesome set of paints I bought. Also threw in an old fuel barrel that I rusted up.
Colonel Mustard 