Achtraden! 8x8 Group Build '09-'10

Hi guys!

Just calling in to say that I haven't forgotten this GB. Some excellent work going on - love Mike's Italeri Puma.  my own Dragon Puma is progressing slowly - things like Christmas, review builds and work getting in the way. However, I've now almost completed the interior, and will be starting on detail painting tomorrow. Construction is about 70% complete, and exterior painting should be starting in a week or so.

Should be able to post a few piccies in a day or so, but in the meantime, a quick query. My instinct tells me to use a MG42 for the Puma's co-axial machine gun. Would this be correct, or should I use a MG34?

Cheers,

Chris.

Back in November, I decided to build a Dragon 1/35 Sd.Kfz. 234/2 Puma, with the Griffon etched fret and some Armorscale turned brass shells for this GB. I see that I posted an in-box review of the kit then, but nothing since.

My notes tell me that I started this project on December 6^th last year, but I can’t see anything that suggests that I’ve written any WIP posts so far. So here’s making up for lost time.

Assembly of the lower hull and suspension was uneventful. The only change I made was to remove the locating pins on the drive shaft ball joints, so that the road wheels can be posed at an angle. This in turn required alterations to the steering linkages, but nothing particularly difficult. When the suspension had been set up, I placed the whole underframe assembly on a flat ceramic tile, and weighted it down with a couple of heavy books, so that all eight wheels would touch the ground when they wer cemented in place.

Here are a couple of piccies – the first one shows the whole suspension assembly:

And the second shows a close-up of a couple of suspension arms:

Next up – hull and fighting compartment inteior.

Cheers,

Chris.

Well here are my final shots of my completed build;

I had a wonderful time with this build. I did do some experimenting with my oils as it was my first solo final paint on, this, my second build in 20 years. I have really enjoyed seeing everyones finished builds as well. I am looking forward to my next GB!

-Ryan

Ryan!  I really like your camo... that's the probably the best part!  Did you use airbrush or was it hand painted?  Welcome to our club... I returned to my hobby last year after not doing for 20+ years.  I know the feeling... it was awesome!  Hope to see more of your future builds.  I will do Turretless GB after this...

Brother Ryan.................OoooooooooWeeeeeeeeee....Sweet!  whats next on the bench.  Any more groupbuilds???  Turretless for me after I finish my 1\32 F4F-3

Bob

Niiiiiiiice! Love the camo.

Nate

Hi guys, it's been a while since I posted here, but I've been keeping up to date with everyone's excellent work. Chris, nice suspension coming together! Ryan, that's a sweet finished build! You'll be pleased to know I've added yours and my own finished builds to the wall of honour in the lead post.

I pulled out the Trumpeter M1126 Styker for a look an hour ago and I'm very impressed -- the company seems to have its act together by this point. I had a poor experience with one of their earlier models a couple of years ago and lost a bit of enthusiasm for their product, which is a shame. The Stryker looks very good, very crisp mouldings, with vinyl tires and a photoetch fret for grills, jerry can racks and the topside blade, etc. The hull parts fit together perfectly at the first dry test. It has the feel of a model that will go together well and be a fun project.

I'm not sure when I'll get to it, i must finish a couple of planes first, but I'll hopefully be adding this kit as my second go round for this build.

Cheers, Mike/TB379

PS: If there's anyone I've missed from the completion gallery, just let me know!

The line up of completed builds is becoming seriously impressive.Nice job fellas.

Moving on to the hull and turret interior. The interior detail is very good, and I found little need to replace anything from the Griffon etched set. Most of the etched detail, in fact, just a straight replacement for what you already get with the kit, just a bit more fiddly and often less realistic.  Life is too short, for example, to replace plastic brake pedal treads with etched ones, especially as they’ll never be seen on the completed model.

The kit turret is a bit more lacking in detail, though. The etched set provides turret seats, recoil sield and other gun details, radios, and more, and I decided to use it, even though not much will be seen on the completed meodl, unless you remove the turret. I’m also going to add a co-axial MG34 from the spares box. It’s not the best one I have, but even with the turret off, not much, again, will be seen.

The basic interior colour is Panzer interior cream, with Dunkelgelb main gun breech and dark green seat cushions. I pre-shaded the interior cream in black, with a white dry-brush and a burned umber watercolour wash to further bring out detail. Here are some more piccies:

Pre-shading

Hull interior

Roof detail – the vision ports were tricky to assemble. The instruents are made up from individual decals. Though time-consuming to apply, they look very convincing when completed.

Next up – hull assembly.

Cheers,

Hi, Mike, I've been dropping by from time to time, great GB going on, cool builds so far. I was distracted with work being done in the house.

Well earlier on this evening I finally started the CENTAURO. I hope to have pic's up ASAP.

I'm delighted to be typing this message as I was one of the first to sign up over in armour and pobably the last to start. I hope to get regular posts here and in the Armour Forum.

Terry.

Hi Terry -- great to have you in the saddle at last, and I look forward eagerly to seeing the Centauro go together!

It's been a bit quiet round the eight-wheelers clubhouse in the last couple of weeks, I was thinking of making a start on my M1126 Stryker in the near future to help get the pagecount turning again too.

Cheers, Mike/TB379

I am guilty... haven't done much for last 2-3 weeks.  Thanks to the freezing weather that it was too cold for me to do airbrushing in the garage.  By the time it was finally warm enough, I was busy helping my boys build their racing boats for the cub scout event.  Believe it or not, they won first and second places in best boat designs... it made me very PROUD.  Future modelers you can say as they did great job...

I personally would like to see some close up shots of those ships.Can you tell us more about them?

Those ships do look good!

Meantime, back to the Puma...

I used the etched set’s turned brass smoke projectors and smoke grenades, because they seemed either thinner or better-detailed than the kit items. I used the kit mounts, however, because the etched items seemed very fiddly for not much extra detail.

Assembling the hull upper and lower halves went routinely enough, though the rear section had to be clamped while the glue set. I considerd replacing the engine deck ventilator vanes with the etched items, but once again found them to be a lot of extra, fiddly, work for not much, if any, improvement on the kit items. I did, however, use the etched grille mesh beneath them.

Things went less well when it came to assembling the fenders. I opened up a couple of the side stowage bins, and made new doors from 20thou pc, using the etched fret locks. Assembling the fenders to the hull sides, however, showed up a lot of large gaps, which I filled with CA and Tippex.  At first, I thought this was down to my lack of modelling skills, but in this month’s Scale Military Modeller International, there’s a build article on the Dragon Puma by Bill Plunk, whose modelling ablity I know and respect. He encountered similar problems, so maybe it was the kit after all!

I wanted to have the rear stowage boxes open, so used the etched items, which are much closer to scale thickness than the kit items. Likewise, and for the same reasons, the spare wheel mount. To give them a rusted texture, I coated the exhaust mufflers with Mr. Surfacer 1000, and then stippled them with a short, stiff, brush, dipped in laquer thinner.

And that was more or less it for main assembly – though there was still a fair bit of detail work to go. Next up – main painting.

Cheers,

Chris.

For main painting, I started, as usual, with a primer coat of Humbrol 140 medium grey.

The subject of my build is a vehicle operated by the 2^nd Panzer division in Normandy in Summer 1944, in Olivgrűn squiggles over Dunkelgelb. The Olivgrun squiggles are about 1mm wide, and have tight, but feathered, edges. There’s no way my airbrushing skills are good enough to do this freehand, so I started by spraying the whole vehicle in Olivgrun, using Tamiya acrylics.

I then spent the best part of a couple of days rolling out very thin sausages of white tac, and applying them to the model, in squiggle and smoke ring shapes. They were applied fairly lightly, so as to facilitate feathered edging:

For the Dunkelgelb, I again used Tamiya acrylics, mixing equal parts Desert Yellow and Deck Tan. I usually use Buff to let down Desert Yellow for Dunkelgelb, but had forgotten that I had run out, and my LHS was out of stock. To make it easier to get the soft edges, I reduced the spray pressure to about 10psi, and sprayed at right angles to the surface, from about 6” away. I then added some white to the spray cup, and used this mix to let down the centres of the panels to be painted in Dunkelgelb. As you can see, the resultant colours:

are on the light side, but this is intentional. On top of this will be three or four coats of Future, a burned umber oil wash and three coats of Mattcote, all of which will serve to darken the finish significantly.

I also sprayed the road wheel tyres in Tamiya acrylic Flat Earth, and then dry-brushed them in Neutral Grey. With some of the brown showing through, this makes a quite realistic colour for German WW2-era synthetic rubber. The dry-brushing also leaves the tyre recesses in earth tones, and \I think this looks more realistic than spraying the wheels tyre colour and then dry-brushing the earth/ mud.

Next up – decals, washes, detail painting and varnish.

Cheers,

Chris.

Chris -- that's a most unusual approach, I'll be most interested to see how it all comes together in the weathering stage. I agree, trying to freehand lines so thin is a highly specialized form of airbrushing, if I can manage 5mm wide I'm very happy with myself, to go narrower than that is a big ask. So congrats on finding a very novel solution!

Well, guys, after looking at it for a long time, I've cut sprue of Trumpeter's M1126 Stryker:

This is late-tool Trumpeter and I'm very impressed, their engineering seems logical and parts are tooled with great care for maximum detail. The plastic is tough but not brittle and reacts readily with liquid cement. Fit of the main hull parts is nigh perfect, and sprue attachment points are small (high pressure moulding) and in discrete places where they can be smoothed out with minimum work.

I've done some work on the underside today, making up three of the four differentials and stub axle assemblies (six parts each), and adding the applique armor under the bow. There are lots of parts but it has the feel of a clean build without any nasty surprises in store, so hopefully this one will just flow along.

Cheers, Mike/starhawk379

Hi guys,

First WIP shot of the Stryker. I've pretty much followed the construction order in the plans, which I rarely do, but it seemed as good as any on a subject with so many parts. Here's the lower hull subasembly, including all differentials, axles, steering linkages and shockers, 76 parts in total (six more left off as yet as they're small and strike me as fragile:

That's four of the wheels and all the jerrycans too, another 20 parts. There's a fair way to go yet but it's been a good build so far!

Cheers, Mike/TB379

Lookin good Mike. It reminds me of an LAV on steroids!

Nate

Looking sweet Mike.

Bob

Well I finally got some progress shots taken of my Centauro. So far so good no real problems. Well I'm so late it would be better if I got on with the pic's.

The hull, its actually quite big but seems that the kit wil finish quite low in ride height.

On the bottom I found it easier to assemble the drive shafts away from the hull.

Lower hull and suspension just finished.

The add on armour plate is veisble on the front.

I simply stippled the plastic to replicate the anti-slip plating as on the real vehicle it is not very prominent.

One thing that has slowed me slightly is the additional armour, I noticed that the kit has the welds cast into the kit in certain areas. I decided to do most of the welds on the upper hull as much as possible. I'm only using available reference.

THis link I found to be a great source so far.

http://www.afvplanet.com/especial/centauro/index.html

Terry.

Looks good Terry.  That's a rather unusual drive system the beast has.

Nate

Hi Guys,

I'm calling this one done. I don't know why, but I came down with a SERIOUS case of modeler's block with it when it was almost done. Next on my plate will be something totally different for me: a WWI bi-plane!

Anyway, here she is. Feel free to comment.

Nate

That's fine work, Nate! I'm calling my Dragon Puma done too. Diminishing marginal returns have set in with a vengeance, it's been on the workbench for more than two months, and is beginning to interfere with other projects. Final piccies and comments tomorrow morning UK time, when I should have better light to work with.

Cheers,

Chris.

Thanks Chris! I know exactly what you mean about interfering with other projects. I felt like I HAD to finish this kit for this GB before I could do anything else, and it was really starting to drag out. It was really a very nice kit to build, but I wanted to start other kits, and felt I had to finish this one first.

Nate

Terry -- interesting beast! Can't wait to see her come together!

Nate -- fabulous finish! I know what you mean by modeller's block, but this one is a showpiece to be proud of. I especially like the rusting of the mufflers, it's very convincing, as is the overall finish, the arbrushing, the weathering, paint chipping, PE work, you name it... Top marks on a superb build! The lead post has been updated.

Chris -- you should be next to finish, I look forward to adding yours to the leaderboard too.

We now have six finished builds, three of which are Pumas, and the seventh will be as well, in addition to a 232. But with Terry's Centauro and my Stryker we have some modern eight-leggers coming along too. Speaking of which, I have four small subassemblies and about 25 small dressing parts to go. I'll be joining the hull soon, and she'll be ready for paint in no time. WIP pic of the upper hull soon!

Cheers, Mike/TB379

THanks, Mike Nate, Bob I hope to get real progress for this build. 

Nate that is one super puma.

Just a quick thought, I went back to page one and had a look at everything finished so far. Well the 234 chassis seems the most popular so far. I did not read all 18 pages of posts so far, but of the 234's how many are Italeri?

I really can't tell the difference from the photos. I have bought the Dragon 234/2 and the 234/4, both beauties. 

I can say that from the day many moons ago that of the Italeri kits the 234/1 was "O'kayish" , the Puma was brilliant but I cannot remember how old that lady is, I built mine in the late 80's and do remember that an article did appear in FSM at one stage on how to articulate the steering. I build Italeri's 234/3 but at the time I could not get much reference about the mount for the short 75mm, I presumed it was similar to the 251/9 stummel. Now here is the corker....... Italeri's  234/4 was ......well.....it was "POO" the gun mount was pure fantasy.

I would love to hear from somebody who has built both kits recently. Just an opinion on how lets say the dragon PUMA looks against the Italeri. All I know that was wrong with the Italeri PUMA was that the turret was slightly too tall.

If anybody has any thoughts I would like to hear.

P.s. in the end I would go Dragon but I am kinda only interested from a point of nostalgia.

Thanks.

Terry.

Hi Terry,

I haven't built the Italeri Puma, but I do have it in my stash along with the 234/1.I also have all three of  Dragon's 234's in addition to the Puma I just finished. Comparing the two manufacturers is like night and day............especially when it comes to the suspension. The Italeri's suspension is simplified, were as Dragon's is a work of art. I did post pics of the underside of my Puma during construction, so I'll refer you to them to see what I mean.

The Italeri kit isn't that bad really, it's just not up to today's standards.

Nate

Well its been along time since I showed my mug in here and having spent the best pasrt of the last hour catching up on everything, I  now feel up to date. Alot of very nice WWII armor, nice to see some modern stuff show its head .

Got a little bit done just before christmas, and got alot more done last night. Underneath has finished assembly except for the propeller guards, and some started on top.

Here's were I was at not long after we started

Here's where I'm at after last night

I spent most of my availible time tonight catching up here, so I wont get much if any done tonight otherwise I hope to get an hour or four in tomorrow

Andrew

PS for those who have forgotten (and I dont blame you LOL) I building Trumpters ASLAV

Most of the rest of the work was time-consuming, but routine. Three coats of Future were followed by the decals, which were of Cartograf’s usual excellent quality. A further coat of Future over the decaled areas followed, followed by three days’ curing time.

Recessed detail, POL, and water stains were represented by oil paint pin washes, followed by three coats of Humbrol Mattcote. While this was curing for a couple of days, I painted the OVE and other detail stuff with Humbrol and Citadel acrylics.

I was depicting my model as it would have been in early Summer 1944, only a few months after it would have left the production line, so I decided not to over-do the weathering. I represented slight scratching and wear over heavily trafficked areas with tiny chips of soft lead pencil. Soft dry-brushing of tan and sand shades of Conté Crayon and chalk pastel dust served to blend colours together and tone them down, while Tamiya weathering powders served to add road dirt and grime on the lower hull and fenders.

Last of all, I added the radio aerials. The starfish aerial head came from the kit’s etched set (for some reason, the Griffon etched set doesn’t provide one), but the kit plastic item is pretty good. For the aerials themselves, I used lengths of thin brass rod, painted black.

And that was it. I quite enjoyed the build, though it did drag on from time to time. Originally, I had intended to add crew figures and stowage, and may yet, but not until later this year at the earliest. Here are some final piccies:

Comments and queries, as ever, welcome.

Cheers,

Chris.