Got pix of your earliest armor? Here's J-Hulk's!

QUOTE: Originally posted by Keyworth The first armor kits I built were the old Monogram Military Vehicle series: the M-48 Patton (built two of those

Holy parallel lives, Batman!
Me too, Ed! Bought 'em and built 'em at the same time, too. Just wanted a pair, for some reason.
Lets see some pix!

Duke, more pix from you too, please!

Thanks J-Hulk! That means something coming from you! I love your earliest king Tiger! Great paint work!

Anybody wanna see more? I have at least twenty more armor models that are 25 or more years old! (j/k!) ;-)

*Walks away muttering 'I gotta get a website!'...*

:-)

Brian, thanks for starting this one. The first armor kits I built were the old Monogram Military Vehicle series: the M-48 Patton (built two of those), the Weasel, the M3 and M16 halftracks, the jeep and 37mm cannon, the whole nine yards; also every tank kit produced by Aurora. I still have the Patton and Sherman kits at home, but no paint. I also built the Renwal Duster, M41 and Ontos. The local dime store (ancient historical site for a lot of you members ) carried most of these. I'd built about one every two weeks during the summer, and maybe one a month during the school year. I started on 1/76th and 1/72 kits just before I entered the Army. I still have my first Airfix Lee and Sherman kits. I'll try to post pics of those later.- Ed

Thanks for the pix, Duke!
Some good-looking early work there!

Sorry to resurrect this old Thread, but now that Ron's site is back up, here are the pics I have of some of my earliest Armor:

First off, my first ever Sherman tank. I built this 28 years ago:



Then there's my 25-year-old M113. This one was refurbished though to look like this:



Another 26-year-old model, my Elefant:



My second oldest American tank at 27 is the M60 A2 'Blazer' otherwise known as the 'Starship':



And my second tank that I ever built is this Panzer III, built more than 29 years ago:



There are a ton more like these, but I don't want to crowd Ron's site with too many pics. Besides, I have more Works in Progress to post there for everyone to see!

Well after reading all the post I just had to add that most of my original models bit the dust in one way or another as well,, either by BB gun or maybe the "unknown to the parents firecrackers" or better yet,, lets see how well this plane really flies!!! I built alot of planes when I was a kid and alot of them got knocked outta the sky by my enraged younger sister and her 88mm whiffle ball bat. Ahhh those memories. I didnt start building armour till just before I joined the Navy in 84 my first model if I remember right was a Sherman that I entered in a local contest. unfortunately I have no pictutres of it.

I will also admit to painting tanks german grey as well. I built a Tamiya Tiger german gray that one I do have pictures of. I will post those as soon as I figure out how to post pictures here.

Thanks for taking me down memory lane.

I remember painting all my German armor grey. Kintiger, Panzer IV's etc.

Dan the jeep doesn't look as bad as you make it sound.

I have some pics of some of my 1/72 scale armor that is about 25-31 years old, but I have to wait till Ron's site comes back up before I can post them. I have alot of pics of old stuff to post!

Nice! I kinda like the snub-nose look!

QUOTE: Originally posted by J-Hulk A gray Jagdpanther to go with my gray Tiger II! I may just have to post my gray Aurora 1/48 Panther, too! Thanks for posting the pix! OK ya'll...fess up to painting all your early German armor gray! You know you did! Come on! Let's see the pix!

It did say German grey on the paint bottle


J-Hulk - I know you have an interest in Walkers - check this out

It's a snub-nose Walker Bulldog ( only kidding....this is another 20 year model that didn't survive storage too well)
Shows you how far Tamiya was ahead of everybody then






Again no weathering - just sitting on a shelf. This is the motorized one - I thought it was the greatest thing when I younger !

A gray Jagdpanther to go with my gray Tiger II! I may just have to post my gray Aurora 1/48 Panther, too! Thanks for posting the pix!

OK ya'll...fess up to painting all your early German armor gray! You know you did!
Come on! Let's see the pix!

I'm not sure i want to post pictures of my previous models. I don't really like them. I didn't have painted or detailed.

That Bradley looks good, as well as the Jagdpanther...and J-Hulk, your King Tiger is excellent...at 10, I wasn't even paying attention to the instructions! (well...um I still don't)

Dan

Man Brian,

My first armor was an Airfix 1/72 scale Sherman. It bit the dust back in the '60's sometime! I'll see if I can find any pictures of other early stuff.

Ron

J-Hulk -

My son found it on a shelf in my parents house - sparked some interest in modeling for him.


Did this twenty years ago when I was little younger - no laughing now !

Let me just say this was before I knew anything about historical references etc.. Back then I thought a well done model was one you had only small globs of glue and you cut off the excess on the sprue. Any weathering is from sitting on a shelf for twenty years.





...and yes I know there probably aren't many Jagdpanthers in this color scheme

Good looking Bradley, LQ2!
Dan, that jeep looks great, too. Even with the hawser tied to it!

I'm a serious packrat, ya'll. I've still got tons and tons of stuff from my childhood! Just never threw anything away.
Blew a lot of stuff up, though. But I still have even those unfortunate models on 8mm film!

My 31-year-old Tiger II looks good? Well, thanks, but...not bad for a 10-year-old, kid, I guess. Particularly since it was unpainted for the first two years of its existence. The slap-slap drybrush weathering technique is killing me! Actually, I think I was inspired to redo the old boy after having seen Bandai's 1/24 Tiger II done up in Military Modelling magazine.
Maybe that's where I got the gray idea from...

Let's see some more "first attempt" pix!

Well I have no armor that I did when I was a kid cause I did no armor when I was a kid. i did'nt even know there were armor kits till about 7 months ago. Here's a pic of my first attempt though. It was a Lee kit, never even seen another one of thier kits since then, and I built it just before I found the forum. Therefore I knew nothing about weathering,washes and just a little about drybrushing that the guy at the shop sort of explained to me. I did figure I would try to give it a dirty look though. Since I knew nothing about pastels either, I took a paper towel, burned it and rubbed the ashes over it. I have since then went back and did a little more work to it but thought I would let it sit as is so I can see how far i have come since that one with every build I do. I'm sure you guys can see how much you have helped me with my builds in a few months.

I don't have any pics of my early stuff. The first one's were never painted, just played with till they became targets for the BB gun or fireworks. My high school efforts weren't bad, but not great either. They were painted with a cheap a/b fed from a spare tire I pumped up with a bicyle pump, so not a lot were done. I've since given those to my nephews over the years to play with so....nothing to show.

Eric

You're kidding J-Hulk. My first attempts have long been consigned to the bin!!!! When I was 13 my parents moved us 1500 km's north, and due to space and costs I had to leave the built kits behind. At 42 yrs old, like a few guys here, they would have to be considered antiques now.

Dad started me modelling with an Airfix Wellington Bomber when I was about 8, but it was a disater unlike your effort j-Hulk.

From memory my first tank was either a Braille scale Matchbox Firefly or Hasegawa Panther; I had both.

My first 1/35th scale was a Tamiya Cheiftan - the one with the battery pack wire controls. Many a 'Tan' soldier was run over by that one.

J-hulk, 8 years old? Man, I have never even seen a plastic kit when I was 8, LOL. Even at that age, you are already very good.

My first? Well I have repainted it already, he-he-he.

I have to correct my posting...this jeep wasn't my first. I had at least a dozen kits under my belt when I did this ( You'd never know it ). I started doing 1/72 scale
armor kits from Airfix in the early 70's. I didn't have any pictures though,
and if I did, you'd only see a blob of plastic with dabs of paint on it.

And Cassibil, thanks for the compliment but you are being much too kind! Look at that rope I put on it....yowsa.

Regards, Dan

When I was a kid, I had almost the full collection of Weird-Oh's models. They were in my Mother's basement for a long time, but I guess she got tired of them because they disappeard. I don't remember if they had a tank type model, though. I remember a plane, surfers, hot rods, and the like.

You guys are sure putting up some nice stuff, though, for "first timers"!!

It doesn't look all that bad, Dan. You can see the effort put into it and that alone makes it special. A work of art vs a work of heart.

J- Hulk ...I couldn't find any old armor pics ....but still had this on hand.
Here's an old ambulance jeep that I did in the early 80s. I was in high school and started building again after a break from building for a few years. Ugh!



Regards, Dan

No fair having such a good build-up among your first!

I myself started modeling when I was nine, in 1972. As I got a little older I bought some of the Tamiya armour kits, the ones I could afford anyway, as I had a thing for tanks at that early age. I also really liked Japanese WWII ships.

Anyways, on the rare occasion that I did paint these things at all, I painted them whatever color I felt like. I had this King Tiger that I painted a kind of guacamole green because that was the color of some house paint my mom had in an old can stored on the back stairs of the house. I painted that stuff on so thick that it completely obscured all details. It eventaully peeled off and you could actually see the thickness of the paint in the peels -- it looked more like an orange peel than an avocado peel.

I had the Monogram stuff too -- the Brumbar, the Sherman Scraming Mimi, the Panzer IV, others I forget, plus all the American stuff. I think they made an M48 too, but don't quote me.

I wish I'd kept all of those kits, but I fell out of model making when I was around 17 and didn't get back into it until I was almost 30. I threw all of the kits away as I associated them with my childhood -- the military kits, the Prehistoric Scenes kits worth a fortune today, everything.

In the interim I was a hardcore miniature wargamer, and painted tens of thousands of miniature soldiers of all periods and kinds, including the vehicles for an entire late-pattern panzer division using 1/285th GHQ scale models, with a supporting heavy panzer battalion (Tiger II's -- not painted avocado).

I had all the Bandai stuff too, which I thought incredibly cool because of the interiors.

Ah, memories.

Good looking King Tiger J-Hulk.
mark956

my first was an F18 and it is lying on the work bench wanting attention since a chubby kitten suceeded where 12 yrs did not.

For 10 that is pretty darned good! Mine are all in a landfill somewhere. Some that are currently on the shelf should go there as well. I think the oldest that still exists is about 15 years old and is in my son's room. It's by now a very damaged SU100. Neat topic Brian.

Interesting topic, Brian, but I don't have anything to post. The closest I have to an ancient, first piece of armor is my Tamiya Tiger II that's still in pieces. I think I started on a Tamiya Centurion about 30 or so years ago, but who knows where that is. I don't remember if I finished it or not. Oldest finished kit I still have lieing around is probably a Klingon Battle Cruiser from the first Start Trek movie. I guess that could be considered "flying" armor!! lol

I look forward to seeing other posts here. It's nice to know you super modelers didn't just come about over night!