latest Dio. I call it WW3 1958

Cool! What kits did you use? Where's the car coming from?

Thanks. The car is from an old Monogram Kit 1/32 scale. The M-41 walker bulldog is Tamiya, and the T-55 is an old Lindberg kit.

Neat build you have there

Thad

very..interesting
How did you find the balsa-foam? was it easy to work with? I myself will be building a very large dio sometime this year and will need to scratchbuild practically everything, so any hints/tips on the lights, accessories, and other things you mentioned would be appreciated.

Cool!
Nothing like an ol' blown street rod going up against some Warsaw Pact armor!

Very interesting.

Looks good though :)

That was a great idea. It looks like it came off really well. Congrats.

Hmmmmm where to start...The lights starting at the top were made from small light bulbs from the hardware store, and the base is two different sized plastic tubes. The very bottom of the lamps are those eletrical wire twists. As for the Balsa-foam to get it I had to order it on-line and it cost about 5$ for a 10" long X 10"high X 1" thick sheet. I just did a google search for "balsa foam" and now I see there are more than one guy selling it, it's about time...The foam is very light but unforgiveing, you can not make a mistake on it as it is unrepairable. It takes any acrylic paint and Elmers white glue holds it just fine. For large building that would weigh a ton made out of plaster the balsa-foam is great. But for little one story building it just costs to much, it's easier to use plaster. One more thing I cheated when building this dio...At the time I was working at a hobbie shop and had complete access to all the wood, styrene, metal and plastic sheets and tubes. But as a result I brought home more supplies than money. I guess what i'm saying is you need every conceivable piece of styrene and balsa wood one can find, because that made it very very easy to scratch build. Oops i'm rambling, sorry.

Great idea, looks awesome. I like the 'Do Not Enter' sign under the T55. For the Balsa Foam, is it just like a high density foam? I use high density foam and it is easy to work with and can be fixed if you mess it up.

I forgot, the Balsa-foam comes in three different densities (high, med., and low). I used the low, because it was lighter and cheaper. The high density would have been much easier to fix, so yes you are correct. But the lower density foam was more porous and harder to cover up mistakes.