Hey guys! I've been busy at the workbench for a few weeks now and I want to share some of what I've been up to. There's a bit to muddle through here so be paient as I try to explain it all.
First, as many of you know I completed Tamiya's gorgeous M4A3E8 over a year ago, but I never got around to adding the beautifully sculpted TC figure. Well thanks largely to a new lighted magnifier I was able to really do this figure some justice.
1/35 Tamiya M4A3E8 by Mike Brindos, on Flickr
1/35 Tamiya M4A3E8 by Mike Brindos, on Flickr
1/35 Tamiya M4A3E8 by Mike Brindos, on Flickr
I also assembled just enough of the Tamiya M26 Pershing to have a place for its figures to go. The Loader is primed and ready for my next figure painting session.
Tamiya 1/35 by Mike Brindos, on Flickr
Tamiya 1/35 by Mike Brindos, on Flickr
More recently I started on the old (1975)Tamiya Panzer IV Ausf D. I've been at it for a couple of days now and its not nearly as bad as I'd have thought it to be. While no where near as detailed as most of the more modern releases it has been surprising me with how much detail it does have, albeit a bit soft in some respects. Its nothing that a few tricks up my sleeve haven't been able to sqeek out of the molds. Some smart uses of micro saws, Bondo, and PPP have been instrumental in getting me this far with it.
You'll see that I haven't finished assembling the hull and that I've used the tropical deck plates to spice it up a bit. I know those deck plates shouldn't be on an Ausf D but I think they add some much needed visual interest to the back deck so I'm claiming artisitc license on that one.
The figures are kinda sad. They're the typical soft sculpts of the early Tamiya years and their age shows. The Driver was shortened by 3mm, his shoulders have had sprue glue added to build up some sunken areas on both sides of his collar, and I filled in his cheeks with Bondo so he didn't look so skull-like. The TC has had hand surgery so they actually contact the hatch lids and the Gunner hanging out of the side of the turret has also had a hand sugically moved while his left arm is in limbo waiting for the glue on his right hand to fully cure before I can position the left arm on the hatch.
Tamiya 1/35 by Mike Brindos, on Flickr
Tamiya 1/35 by Mike Brindos, on Flickr
Tamiya 1/35 by Mike Brindos, on Flickr
Tamiya 1/35 by Mike Brindos, on Flickr
Tamiya 1/35 by Mike Brindos, on Flickr
Last, but not least, I've spent an enormous amount of hours building the Revell Leopard 1A1. Not because its a bad kit, but because of all of the tiny sink holes, misalignments, and flash. I absolutely hate the smoke grenade dischargers. They should have made the brackets separate from the launch tubes as that would've made them easier to clean up and the detail level would be much appreciated. They took far too much time to scrape seams from and I'm still not entirely happy with the results.
The turret bustle rack is tricky, but if you don't glue the top brackets to the antanae housings until AFTER you've lined up, glued together, and let fully cure then things line up pretty well. I wasn't too happy with the rack on mine because some of the bars were getting a bit too thin after all of my sanding so I threw some brown paper bag "blankets" over them lol.
But those were to only real problem areas I had with the build. Everything else just needed a bit of attention to go together properly.
The figures are from Valkyrie and they are stunning and work perfectly for this build, but because of the sculpts of the heads I'm using, I'm on my third repaint of them. Thanks to the afore mentioned magnifier I keep seeing flaws in my work and the sculpts are so fine that painting over them just makes it all worse and I lose the details. So the bodies are headless, for now.
Revell of Germany 1/35 Leopard 1 A1 by Mike Brindos, on Flickr
Revell of Germany 1/35 Leopard 1 A1 by Mike Brindos, on Flickr
Revell of Germany 1/35 Leopard 1 A1 by Mike Brindos, on Flickr
The Leopard is just waiting on me to want to finish painting it for now. I really like how the build turned out and it should be a real stunner once I've completed it.