April 3, 2010

Scratchbuilt Handlebars
For the Pegasus T34/85


The T34/85 made by Pegasus with some handlebars added. They are made from plastic bristles of a broom. These are easy to bend and gluable with any polystyrene modelling glue,at least the ones I got.
It took about 20 minutes to equip four tanks with these bars.

March 23, 2010

More Painted
1:72 Soviet Infantry

I continued the work on my Soviet Infantry forces. The colors are still the same that I showed in this post with one little addition. My local toy store has now the Revell Aquacolors in its sortiment.
For the officer's hats, their jackets and the rolled coats of the normal infanterists I used Revell Aquacolor Dark Earth (# 36182).



One of my six mortar crews.
From left to right:
converted officer (
see here), a Revell figure with a Preiser (?) crate and the Italeri mortar gunner with a new head.



From left to right:
Airfix officer with the head of the Pegasus Russian Summer infantry, Revell LMG soldier with a new head and new legs, Revell grenade thrower with the arm/rifle of the Italeri Soviet grenade thrower and the sniper of the Revell Soviet infantry box.



From left to right:
converted officer (
see here), Dimestore binocular officer, Airfix Soviet grenade thrower with new head and new grenade from his Italeri comrade and a Pegasus Summer Soviet with a new head.

This is what I already finished.


This is what I still have to paint.


I am waiting for some more figures that I ordered but his will take two weeks until they arrive. And off course I am still waiting for the new Soviet infantry figures of The Plastic Soldier Company that will appear on the market in the next weeks.

Italeri 1:72
JS-2 Tank

I just finished my first batch of Soviet hardware. The upper picture shows 2,5 of the tanks of the Italeri fast-build kit of the JS-2 tank, which contains 2 easy to build models. I found them at MACO Modellbau for a great price.
In the background you can the the AER model of the T34/85 with che commander cupola of the Pegasus T34/85 and an Aber Aluminium barrel. That kit is a mean bitch which needs a lot of putty to fill all gaps on it. More on this kit soon when it's finished.


The colors I used were Revell Aquacolor Sea Green (#36148) for the upper structure followed by a black wash. The tracks were painted with Tamiya Metallic Grey (XF-56), then I used a selfmade wash (made of Revell Aquacolor Rust (#36183), GW Chaos Black (# 61-51) and, of course, water) on them.


I did only two minor modifications on it, the first was to drill the muzzle of the barrel. The second modification was that I made three handbars of 0,5 mm steelwire on the tower.
All tanks were sealed with a coat of Revell Aquacolor Clear Matt color (# 36102).


In the next days I will order these decals at
Peddinghaus that will be applied to them.

March 10, 2010

1:72 Toolset
by MACO Modellbau

A closer look at a great addition for models which comes from MACO Modellbau. MACO Modellbau offers this toolset on the picture above as a limited edition. It contains an axe, a shovel, a boltcutter and a pickaxe.

The tools are a great addition to the simple wargamer kits of HÄT and Italeri, and the price is not to beat. You will get 10 sprues of the toolset for only 2 Euros. If you want to buy them you have to be fast because it is a limited edition.

Check out the website of MACO where you will find all other excellent model kits made by MACO and from a lot of other companies, too. You can find the store at http://mc-modellbau.de/

Update 04/2018
http://mc-modellbau.de/ has closed it's gates.

March 9, 2010

Pegasus 1:72
German trucks

Not much text today, I had a little accident at work which made me a big headache. An empty beverage box, I remember it was a Coca Cola box, felt on my head from 3 meters height. It caused no blood but made a lot of pain.

Used colors:

When I got them I painted them in grey, can be seen inside the drivers cabin. But I was not satisfied with that. So I repainted the trucks with the following colors:

Revell Aquacolor Sand plus Seagreen and Citadel Bestial Brown for the camo pattern, then a mild black wash. Citadel Chaos Black for the tires and Citadel Catachan Green and Citadel Thraka Green wash for the cover.


Modifications:

- added Headlights from the spare box

- a scratchbuilt
Notek for booth trucks made of plasic card

- driver mirror made of steel wire and plastic card

- a windshield made of clear plastic

- build spacers, I hope it is called spacer, of steel wire. The balls at the end are drips of pva glue


There are still some little spots I will have to rework (what I actually wanted to do today) and add some decals but the two trucks are almost finished (for today).

March 8, 2010

Some 1:72 Soviets
(Work In Progress)

Beside I was a little ill last week, I think it was some kind of flue, I was very, very lazy. But here're some pictures of the progress I made on my Soviet forces. In one of my first posts in this blog I showed some pictures of the figures, but now they got the final matte varnish and are glued on their bases.

Heavy machine gun support, a DSchK 12,7mm machine gun. The figures are from Mars, the bases are pokerchips. I changed the positions of the gunners arm because it looked poor in its original pose. The structure of the base (and all other bases) is made from a mix of birdsand and pva (white) glue.
I have alternative hmg teams on the workbench, some Maxim guns from the ESCI/Italeri Soviet set.


Some antitank rifle teams. These figurese came from Mars, too. I took the barrel of the at gun from the Revell "Siberian Riflemen" antitank gunner, the handlebar is made of scratch plastic. The base is from some plastic card.


More figures from Mars, this time a 60mm mortar. The legs of the mortar were made of 0,5 mm steel wire. There is a small bag with mortar ammunation for every mortar which I can't find anymore. When they are found they will be added to the base, too.


Some mortars. The smaller mortars are of 80mm calibre, they come from the ESCI/Italeri Soviet Infantry kits. The two larger models are from the Airfix Soviet Infantry set, they shall be the heavy 120mm mortars. I added some static grass to their bases, I still have to do this on all other figures in this post.


Light machine gunners, the are from the ESCI/Italeri Soviet Infantry kit. Every rifle squad has a light machine gun for fire support.

The color that I used were:

Skin:

Citadel Bronzed Flesh, then Citadel Ogrin Flesh wash

Uniform:

Citadel Desert Yellow, then Citadel Devlan Mud wash

Helmet:

some Hobby Color green mixed with a little part of white

Equipment:

different brown tones of Citadel, Vallejo and Hobby color

Boots:

Citadel Chaos Black

Heavy weapons:

Tamiya XF 5 Flat Green

Other colors:
Citadel Burnished Gold, Citadel Blood Red, a selfmixed dark silver/steel tone, and some more colors I can't remember
.

Now I'm almost finished, only 120 figures more to paint, and in the last days I had not much desire for painting figures.
And then there are some tanks, I think there are 6 T34/85, 4 JS-2 and some support vehicles waiting for glue, paint and decals. There is still a lotta work waiting for me.
But there are some old projects finished, tomorrow I will post some pics of my Pegasus German trucks and my scratchbuilt Bergepanzer III.


February 28, 2010

Del Prado 1:72
Leopard 2 A5
color comparison

In my last post I wrote that the green color used on the Del Prado Leopard is too bright. Today I made some photos of real Bundeswehr equipment to show that this is true.
On the left side of the picture you can see the model, on the right you can see a Bundeswehr transporter. You can see, the colors that Del Prado used are not authentic, they are way brighter than the
colors that are used on the real model.

By the way I got today my first two books about the Eastern front of WW2 at the monthly fleamarket. They include a lot of pictures and some informations, I did not have the time to check the text, I just watched the pictures in it.

When I have read them I will write something about the books. I bought the following books today:
Guido Knopp "Der verdammte Krieg / Das Unternehmen Barbarossa"
ISBN 3-570-01229-8 for 3,5 Euro and

Laurence Rees "Hitlers Krieg im Osten"
ISBN 3-453-17289-2 for 4,5 Euro


But now I have to recover my strengh, today I had a lot efford. Maybe I will post later in the evening something more, but at the moment I just want to get off my wet clothes, eat something and just chill out a little.

Offtopic:
I found out where Lost & Found Records got the covers of some their bootlegs they released in the early ninties, check out the following picture comparing my "Siege" CD (I own this great CD for almost 20 years now) with a picture from the G.Knopp book.