Midsummer's winter

Miniart's diorama base is quite OK, lots of sanding and filling but hey, life ain't easy (... for a boy named Sue as Johnny Cash sang). But the door was definitely ugly so I decided to replace it with some DIY wood. The raw material was from the local McDonalds.

Glued with Superglue and sanded a little bit. Later some left-over PE material was also used...

The latch was soldered from brass rod (the only difficulty level of soldering I can cope with...) and starts to look like a real door...

Weathering was done with gouache paints (mostly browns and some black plus light greenish wash on the underside). The strap was "rusted" with Model Color paints.


As I plan a woman standing in the door what else could be more useful to put next to it than a broom? Made of toothpick and hair of painting brush.

And finally that's where the project stands now (some more snow applied with vegetation and slush on the roadside):

And for the next few spare hours...

The Magic-tracks were from the Panzerjäger I Ausf. B kit because the kit's original tracks (on sprue) took not less than 8 hours last time to cut & sand before gluing together. I'm not a time-millionaire...

Getting dirty...

After using a wide range of browns and some gloss cote to achieve wet look the underside of the hull looks this way:
Not much will be visible, and more gloss cote will be sprayed when the wheels and track will be assembled.
The uppe structure was washed with very light browns, also treated with ProModeller's weathering wash (Dark Dirt), and when dirty enough, I made streaks of pure white and so on. I don't really remember to the steps as this was made in my free 10-minutes in the evenings in random style :) The spare track on the front was painted brown (Vallejo German Camo. Blackbrown) as a base and different Mig pigments and chalk powders were used as rust. The muffler was an other experiment with Panzer Aces rust colors and light orange - I was also satisfied with the result. Still lots of tiny steps to achieve the final stage. And still lots to do on the dio base which still stands on my shelf painted with the black primer...

A white lady

Little time in the evenings and the vehicle starts to look like a whitewashed something. I applied the decals from the leftover-stock and the unit sign (towed gun battery of the 14th Panzer Division - only a fictional vehicle but who cares? I'm not a history expert with tenthousands of original wartime photos. Unfortunately.) from Mig's dry transfer set. First of all I used gloss cote and then the decals and when dried a light gloss cote again to seal them. There was no real need of Mr Mark Softer but I used it... just in case.


Then I hairsprayed the model lightly (this time only once) and waited 20 to let it dry. After that I sadly realised that my Gunze flat white bottle is almost empty so changed to Vallejo Model Air white. It tends to clog the airbrush so I often washed the needle-tip with a brush damped in alcohol. The white was sprayed unevenly and unfortunately on one place a bit too thick layer. It's a proof: I must practice much more.

And now the fun part. Using a stiff brush, the scalpel blade, a toothbrush and my fingernails the chipping started. Smaller, bigger chips unevenly trying to do it on places where the whitewash is logical to be more worn... First stage:

Some drybrushing with Humbrol dark grey:

At some places the base grey was toooooo dark so I filtered and washed the whole model with diluted white oil paint. And the even-more-fun part... Mixing the "pasta" to begin the heavy weathering of the lower parts.

This pasta is to give the "thickness" and not to give the color - that will be build up in several steps. Now we are here and waiting for the next weekend... brown wash, rust, dust, mud-splatters, and so on... There is still so much to do.

Whitewash

I tested the hairspray method and it worket quite well. Two layers of hairspray went on the wheels leaving 20 minutes of drying between. Though I think it was equivalent of three layers as I sprayed it from a short distance...

Then Gunze Flat White followed...

When the white has dried (30 minutes) I scrubbed the wheels with a short-bristle brush and the result was satisfying.

At some point I scrubbed it too strong and the primer became visible but as the wheels will be heavily weathered that won't be a problem. To avoid it on the vehicle I used gloss cote (that is also good for the markings...) to seal the base color. And also will use less hairspray and lighter coat of white as can be seen in the discussion here. By the way the base color was lightened a bit with panzergrey + sand + white (well... I think it's absolutely not visible on the photo.) Not too much. But feels better now :)



Next will be the markings and the hairspray method on the vehicle. Maybe next weekend...

Priming, mess and hairspray...

Months passing by and I'm slower (in modeling) than ever. Though my new workbench is still beautiful, huge and messy with plenty of place to store my things and if the bench was not enough than I could put everything on the shelves... as seen below:

This weekend seems quiet (I've been waiting for a weekend like this for such a long time...) and finally I could do some modelling. I continued the Panzerbefehlswagen IB as it is quite close to finishing and I need the sweet taste of finishing a project. :) I primed the model well before we've moved to our new house...


Now I painted it to panzergrey (used Gunze's No401 paint without any lightening as I plan to paint a heavily whitewashed vehicle so this grey will be hardly visible). I love the tone and texture of Gunze paints by the way. Or have I mentioned that yet?

Of course the wheels and other small, later-to-attach stuff was painted as well. Next will be some gloss cote and than the hairspray + whitewash. Though I'm bit afraid of that as I've never tried and the timing will be also interesting as I would need at least 2-3 undisturbed hours to complete the hairspray + white + washing back procedure.
The base is also in construction. I glued the Miniart base together (quite fair amount of sanding was needed but it'll worth I think) and primed with Vallejo black primer.

I'll do the door from wood just for the sake of mimicking reality. I'm in trouble with the "meaning" or the "message" of the dio as it is quite small and I'm quite without fantasy (this time). The vehicle will be one of the Pz's used on the back lines for command tasks. Maybe an artillery unit commander's wagen? 1942-43? I have the figure into the turret:

I plan to cut the radio stuff from it and would put binoculars in his hand with a map. Absolutely flat and "fantasy-less" idea. Maybe a guy in greatcoat beside the vehicle pointing somewhere with his fingers? Ehh... I don't mind if it will be unimaginative. I would like to finish it professionally. To learn how to do whitewash. And snow. And ice. And cold on a 20x20 cm dio.

And not to forget the pre-christmas period when I was waiting for my wife in a huge toy-store (she was buying presents for the kids in the family) - and bought two oldie but interesting kits. Pretending I'm a time-millionaire... This kit was bought because of my wife. REALLY. :) She saw a 250/1 in a documentary film and said that it was a nice vehicle, why I hadn't built that before?

And this was bought just for fun and because it was very cheap...

That's all for today. I hope tomorrow I can try the hairspray technique on the wheels.

Weekend session

This weekend I almost finished the Pzbefehlswagen. I'm not really satisfied with the results, first of all the fenders are far behind my expectations. Not only the quality of soldering (next time I'll try to solder with higher temperature) but the fit of the parts was questionable and I don't really know was it my mistake or Lion Roar's. Some strange solutions were experienced. Little holes on bending lines, lots of parts without any mentioning on the assembly instructions, etched parts tendency to break, etc... I don't say that it's a bad kit but it's definitely not for beginners like me. As it is said in my other hobby, archery: never blame the bow if you miss the target. That's it in modelling as well so I blame only myself - I have lots to learn especially soldering :)
Some pictures. The back and the right fender, almost the best part of the vehicle:


The front, upgraded with MIG Productions Notek lamp and Aber's old MG34 barrel. Not the nicest barrel ever but works OK for this model I think. Wiring is self made and the lamp on the right fender is made from sprue parts because Dragon's original was far bigger than the original seen on wartime photos.

And the famous left fender. The ugly soldering is not really visible but the fender flap is... eer... not so nice. The jack-block is self made from balsa wood - looks cool now.

The tracks will be from other kit (Magic Track... I don't want to use the expensive Modelkasten track for this kit...) and I'll start to examine how others do snowy - muddy painting as next step is painting.

Few weeks and ready...

Two more hours spent assembling the Panzerbefehlswagen and now it starts to get shape. It needed lots of filling and sanding but went OK. I started to use superglue instead of soldering because I was not happy with the results of my soldering "sessions" - see the left fender below - and I need some time for mental regeneration before I try to solder again...



The jack is ready - please do not recognize the seam line on the arm of the jack... I sanded down the original weld bead and replaced "home-made" welding (ultra thin styrene rod glued, than a little more ultrathin Tamiya cement on it and do the "pattern" with the tip of the scalpel blade).

I hope I can finish this little vehicle with 10 more working hours - that means about 5-6 weeks... The paint will be an experiment, panzer grey with white camo, trying the hairspray technic...

30 minutes a week...

Don't think that I stopped modelling. Just the speed changed to even slower than before :) On the other hand having so little free time teaches me to use it more efficiently. I plan my weekly progress and try to use my time well. I switched to the Kleiner Panzerbefehlswagen I Ausf. B. project instead of the GAZ - it promises some result earlier and I really need the taste of finishing something looking like a 1:35 model :) Later I'll post some pictures as soon as I do some.

Tricky

Bár makettezni nincs időm, eszembe jutott, hogy van nekem egy félbemaradt projektem, amiről még nem értekeztem, úgyhogy amolyan pótcselekvésképpen következzék a néhány hónapja elkezdett, jelenleg dobozban, félkészen pihenő Pz I-es parancsnoki változata, a Dragon 6222-es számú készlete. Hozzá a Lion Roar LE35057-es maratás-szettje. A terv az volt, hogy bátorságomat összeszedve megtanuljak végre forrasztani, az első lépések pedig egészen biztatóan sikerültek, bár igen messze vagyok még attól a szinttől, amit magam elé cél gyanánt kitűztem. De például még egyszer sem égettem meg magam a forrasztópákával, ez is elég jó, nem? :)

No time for modeling (boring thing to always repeat myself...) I decided to publish my pending Kleine Panzerbefehlswagen (Dragon 6222) build started a few months ago. The plan was to learn&practice soldering so I bought LionRoar's etch set (LE35057) to the kit and was myself surprised on the result. Not bad for first try though still far from my dreams :) BUT no injury caused by the hot stuff yet - that's also a good point, isn't it?

A LionMarc Panzer I B-hez gyártott műgyanta láncfeszítőkerekét is megvettem annak idején, mert jó ötletnek tűnt, és mindössze valami 4$ volt az ára. A készletben azonban gyakorlatilag egyenértékű minőségű, ha nem jobb az érintett kerék (a 6218-as készletben még a "régi", cserélendő fajta van, úgy tudom), így a műgyanta darab megy vissza a dobozba, későbbi szíves felhaszálásig.
I bought LionMarch idler wheels but will not use as the kit's piece has the same level of detail. No problem, it was cheap and... good for the spares-box.

A parancsnoki torony ajtajával kezdtem, réz + némi epoxigyanta.
First I upgraded the main hatch of the commander's cupola. Used some epoxy putty to simulate the pads. Aztán bele a lecsóba: a szellőzőrács cseréje. A darab összeforrasztásába rendesen megizzadtam, nem is lett 100%-os, de ennek ellenére elégedett voltam vele. Aztán "természetesen" eltörtem a műanyag darabot az eredeti rács eltávolítása közben - szerencsére a Dragon 6230-as Panzerjäger I-es készletébe az új mellett még a régi hátsó traktus is a dobozba került, így volt honnan pótolni.
Soldered the grille. And broke the plastic part while trying to cut out the original. But I had one spare piece from Dragon 6230 kit, so no disaster happened at all.

És a finomságok, apró izék, kallantyúk és fityuszok, forrasztva, gúvadó szemmel, csorgó verítékkel.
The juicy bits: that was not easy to solder. Believe me.


Ha elég bátor leszek, majd levágom a műanyag sárhányót, és tulajdonképpen a nehezén túl is leszek. De egyelőre inkább aludni szeretnék egyben, megszakítás nélkül mondjuk 6-8 órát. Vágyaim netovábbja :)
I'll cut the plastic fender and replace it with the etched one - when I'll be brave enough. But first of all I would like to sleep 6-8 hours in one turn. That's my dream :)