TigerII

You're absolutely correct Stik. That's why this 'proficient' shooter will take a .45 over a 9mm any day of the week and 3x on Sunday. BTW I DO own a 9mm and I love shooting the 147gr JHP subsonic although the pistol is better suited to 115gr.

 

Yes indeed. Earlier this year I saw another example of "proficient " shooter/shooting... or should I say non proficient. One of our locals was shot up by one of our bad guys who happened to be using a .45. Victim was hit multiple times. I want to say at least four times, and possibly as many as seven. Nothing vital though. Victim was able to self transport to a local hospital, survived, and all things considered, came thru it pretty well. Ya gotta hit those 10 rings, no matter what caliber you use.

Yes this is a good thread! Oh yeah, keep on those figures too!

This is a teriffic thread.

I'm definitely going to try the "pen & paint" idea when I do the faces on this little lot later this week.

I'd love to move up to 1/6th or 1/8th scale eventually. That would be some serious fun.  :)

stikpusher

You guys are repeating some urban legends in regards to pistols. I was issued a M1911 as. My duty weapon in 1984. It was junk- worn out. Move it around and the parts rattled like nuts & bolts in a coffee can. I would not get issued a GI M9 Baretta until much later in my career. And it was nice. As far as the military shooting +Ps goes, not allowed. Only standard ball ammo is issued, per Geneva convention. Only SOF types use the "hot load" 147 grain +P hollow points. The same round I have carried on duty for nearly 25 years as a cop and put thousands thru my department issue 92F with no slide cracks. It is a good pistol. As far as combat use of the M9 goes, there has not been much. Panama & Gulf War did not see much pistol shooting by guys issued M9s. By the time of OIF/OEF, the pistoleros who did combat shooting with handguns, had the new HK .45s. Shot placement is what drops your bad guys most, not caliber. A proficient shooter is far more likely to drop his target with a 9mm than a poor shooter with a .45. The SAS used the 9mm Browning High Power for decades with no complaints to drop lots of bad guys. Because they were proficient. It's the shooter that counts most in a gunfight. 

 

stikpusher

You guys are repeating some urban legends in regards to pistols. I was issued a M1911 as. My duty weapon in 1984. It was junk- worn out. Move it around and the parts rattled like nuts & bolts in a coffee can. I would not get issued a GI M9 Baretta until much later in my career. And it was nice. As far as the military shooting +Ps goes, not allowed. Only standard ball ammo is issued, per Geneva convention. Only SOF types use the "hot load" 147 grain +P hollow points. The same round I have carried on duty for nearly 25 years as a cop and put thousands thru my department issue 92F with no slide cracks. It is a good pistol. As far as combat use of the M9 goes, there has not been much. Panama & Gulf War did not see much pistol shooting by guys issued M9s. By the time of OIF/OEF, the pistoleros who did combat shooting with handguns, had the new HK .45s. Shot placement is what drops your bad guys most, not caliber. A proficient shooter is far more likely to drop his target with a 9mm than a poor shooter with a .45. The SAS used the 9mm Browning High Power for decades with no complaints to drop lots of bad guys. Because they were proficient. It's the shooter that counts most in a gunfight. 

 

I also had a Berreta M92F for the first part of my cop career.  Also, no problem shooting +P ammo through it.  We qualified with ball ammo and carried the +P as the duty round. And then politics stepped in...we went to a .40 cal HK USP for several years, and changed again to Glocks several years back.  I miss the solidness of the Berretta...

Spot on, also with your marksmanship comments.  It's the shooter that makes the difference....

Ah, the good ol' reflection dot. I don't always like the look of how they turn out. Just as I've tried adding a touch of gloss to them before and I didn't like that either.

I'll give it a whirl on the strength of your suggestion however. Maybe it'll look right on this fig.  :)

Edit: No, that didn't look good. It gave him a distant "starry eyed" look as if he were day dreaming and that's not the look I wanted him to have. Nice thing about painting acrylic over enamel clear is that it just wiped right off. :)

Happy modelling my friends!

Hey mike nice work!

Now I have a suggestion. Try taking that driver and put a dot of medium gray on each of his eyeballs, one side or the other of the iris, unless of course you want them crossed!

You can test the effect here on the screen by putting the cursor over one side of the eyeball.

Thank you Gamera! I'm happy with those results. Now back to work on the M-48 while I wait for more reference pics to be delivered so I can finish the further construction of the turret basket on the M-60.

They look great to me, very nice work Mike! 

Okay I'm calling these guys finished. Not much was left to do and it went rather quickly once I got into it.







Personally I think they turned out pretty well considering their initial lack of pronounced details. I hope this proves to you guys that with some effort even older, less detailed figures can be dressed up nicely and give you good results.
Like everything else it is only a matter of putting in the effort.

I didn't get the wires to go where I wanted them too in the end. It didn't look natural enough and I had a hard time getting it to look like it was. I finally settled for the wire just running under his leg into the cupola. I have the rest of the coiled end of the wire set aside for later when I get the TC permanently attached later in the build.

Thoughts and opinions are welcomed.

Base paint on helmets.

Still a tad wet.

I've always thought of him standing in Paris lol.

Well, he's pink since he's on the Eastern Front and freezing his tail off, and he has dark circles since he's been on alert and hasn't gotten any sleep... 

The wire in the hand makes sense to me! 

That did take me a lot of trys to get those eyes straight lol. But he's far too pink, and that's not a trick of the lighting. He really does look that pink. Plus there are dark circles under his eyes, which would be a cool effect if he weren't so pink lol. He does have a sad kind of face, but that was not intentional at the time. That was just how he turned out.

His complexion is wrong and I know how to fix it.

The M-48 tankers will be getting the rest of the wiring for their helmets after I get the helmets painted and my TC will have the wire running over his hand as if he's used his hand to pull it away from his leg. The idea came to me last night and I think it should work to explain the position of his right hand.

Thoughts?

Hey Mike, looking forward to the finishing touches. 

And nice work on the Panzer guy with the pipe. You don't give yourself enough credit. The eyes are straight and everything, which is something that takes me multiple tries to get right everytime. 

I know, I know. It doesn't look much like I did anything at all. But all that is left to do is the helmets and the TCs boots.

The TC's vest and the lining of the helmets has been completed.

Almost done.

Gamera

Yeah, I've judged a few times and hate the nitpicking between the top contestants. I guess you have to decide someway though. 

Just to me if you can't see anything in the inside without a flashlight I'm not detailing it. Esp if there's only about one mm around the figures waist to see around. 

 

Bingo. I've never been a judge, but that's exactly how I see it.

A little while back I found an old stash of horded model parts in a very old chocolate sampler box. In a baggie, at the very bottom, was a saved treasure I had thought lost to time. A very tiny dark green plastic smoking pipe that came with the Italleri figure for the Pz. Mk1.

This morning I painted it.  :)

Mind you, this figure was painted early last year after I came across the video that I have since been using as the basis of how I paint my figures. This was a practice figure then so he looks pretty bad in comparison with what I can do now (at least in my eyes).

I modeled the pipe after examples I have seen that were popular for that time period. I like the way the pipe looks, but Macro was not friendly to the figure, or his complexion lol.

Yeah, I've judged a few times and hate the nitpicking between the top contestants. I guess you have to decide someway though. 

Just to me if you can't see anything in the inside without a flashlight I'm not detailing it. Esp if there's only about one mm around the figures waist to see around. 

Not much point to showing the interrior of a tank usually, even if there is a figure in the hatch. I know what the judges are looking for, but a lack of interior details is hardly a killer from my point of view. If you're not meant to see it, then its not meant to be seen.

I suppose I would make a poor judge lol. I'm more about presentation and the effort applied then about how accurate the bolt head pattern are.

They look great Mike, I'm looking forward to seeing them mounted on the tank. 

Pawel: Wow, that's 1/72th!?! Fantastic job on the M48 and the figures! 

And interesting opinions there- I too feel that a tank etc without any figures is just a big hunk o' steel without figures to give it 'life'. I know it kills me in contests to stick a figure on there where a judge can shove a flashlight past it and see that there's no interior but I still think it looks better than a tank with all the hatches locked shut. 

I don't like the rubber band tracks neither, I replace them whenever I can. Although they are getting nicer and nicer these days - but I like the control the plastic tracks give me. As for the Revell 1/72 M60 - it has a very nice suspension, but the tracks have a problem (guide horns/central connector), which is a pity. It can be fixed, though! :-)

Good luck with your builds

Paweł

I used to love ESCI 1/72 armor kits, but I haven't done one in decades. When I have the rare opportunity I pick up a Revell kit when I can. I'll choose indy link track kits over rubber band tracks any day.

Thanks a lot Mike!

From what I heard ESCI scaled down the Tamiya M48A3 to do their kit, so I thought I'd follow :-)) Of course with some fixes - couldn't help myself.

Have a nice day!

Paweł

I can't believe you put that much detail into 1/72. Much respect Pawel. That was epic. lol  :)

I did that M-48A2 in 1/48 and I thought that was a pretty cool project, but you went even further in an even smaller scale. Sah-weet job you did on that.

Hello!

I've got the Bronco track kit. Well, it looked very nice in the box! They are not terrible, but lots of work. In theory, you can make them fully workable, in praxis trying that looks like a ticket to the asylum for me. So I'm building them fixed, that gives me some room for error. The only benefit of those Bronco tracks over the AFV tracks is the look of the guide horn/center connector in places where the track curves around the wheels - it really pivots whereas in the AFV Club track those guide horns are connected to one link only, and that might show - you have to look close, though. The workload is about three times less IMO, though - so I'm not sure it's worth it. Maybe, just maybe it would pay off to build the straight sections out of the AFV Club kit and the curved sections out of the Bronco set - probably not.

I have built the AFV Club set for my M48A3 - the one on the photo above - and it's nice, can be built easily with no glue required, their minus is an ugly ejector pin mark on every shoe - you better fill them all now, so that they dry a week or two, and then you can sand them flush and you're good to assemble the track.

Want to see something masochistic to do with M48/M60 track? Try this one in 1/72:

http://cs.finescale.com/fsm/modeling_subjects/f/3/t/135370.aspx

Good luck with your build and have a nice day

Paweł

Which one's are you using again?? I've got the AFVC set and I've been dreading that lol.

Your tracks sound like a nightmare. Are they really that bad?

Mike, I plan to post an update any day now, but I'd have to shoot some more photos. I'm wraping up the tracks and I'm working on the dozer blade. Those tracks... 30 more links to go, six pieces each! 130 already done - unbelievable, isn't it?

Take care

Paweł

I think you and I see this in pretty much the same way. The figures are the action in our stories. :)

I am looking forward to seeing more progress on your M-60 conversion. Is there any more news there?  :)

Mike - very interesting! Thanks a lot for your post.

Many people see those figures as plastic toys. I say - in the moment we're starting to tell stories like you just did, those figures get to be much more than just toys. What's cool - we're started with two pretty much identical pieces of plastic. Where we got to with those pieces of plastic are two different stories. That should prove something to the people saying there's no creativity in modelling - looks to me like they don't know what they are talking about.

Thanks again and good luck with your build

Paweł