75th Anniversary of 1944 Group Build (World at War)

Thank you Bish the the bike is a DKW NZ350 and the rider are included in the tamiya king tiger Ardennes front kit.

Thats handy. I know their bkes are nice kits, pity they didn't do that figure seperatly.

the king tiger of the ardennes front Dec 18th 1944 is complete. Painted all with tamiya acrylc's weathered with oil paint and chalks. The tank also sports friulmodelmetal tracks.

CM thanks again for this 1944 GB  will be on stand by for 45. thanks for watching and your comments.

Nick, that's a great looking Tiger, as is the bike, and a good comparison of size.

Not sure if it's something at my end, but when I click an image for larger view, the result is even smaller?

regards,

Jack

Thank you Jack yes Flickr changed some thing after their server maintenance they say that the camera roll is tired and needs a rest so they came up with this. The only way to large the pic is after posting and it makes it blurry time to look for another posting site.

ok this is better no? the pics I mean. Well I can see them on my pc but not my phone or ipad i guess I'll stick with flickr.

Hi Nick, I still see small photos - I would classify them as thumbnail size.  I don't know what size you uploaded, but if the originals from your camera are small, then I guess that's all we get to see?

I have a flickr account but don't use it anymore because it's near capacity for a free account (why pay when there other free image sites out there...).  Anyhow, if you can, link images around 1024 x 655 - flickr catecorizes this as large size.  I mean, you had good size photos during your build progress, not sure why the switch to small for final presentation?

regards,

Jack

This happened after the maintenance Flickr did to their sever. I emailed them waiting on response 

Outstanding, Nick.  Wonderful vignette.  I really love what you accomplished with the camouflage.

I'm having the same issues as Jack is when viewing the photos.  Do you have a favourite for the front page?  I can post it now, then change it later if something better comes along from flickr.

Thanks for being part of the GB.  It's always a pleasure to see you work.

See you in '45, if not before!

Thanks CM I’ll go with the first one.

Photo is posted, Nick.  If it happens you get a larger one, I can redo it.

Thanks again for your participation.

Thank you CM.  I went to ipostimg 

Thanks, Nick.  I replaced the front page photo.  Much better; you can actually see your work now.

Nick: v good Tiger II. Ambush scheme is very odd really, but it was widely used. German armor in the West had so much foilage on it, that you wonder why they bothered about such elaborate camo - no other country found the need. But I suppose the quality vs quantity equation they chose probably made them very picky. I remember talking to a war game designer (SGI) at the Pentagon in the late 70s. He said that the Tiger II was very close in quality (when it ran) to tanks of that era - M-60s, T-72s etc. (The Abrams generation was not in service.) At the time, it was probably a very bad weapon to produce with German industry straining and losses so high - maybe not the time for a Cadillac. Panzer Group Peiper got some Tiger IIs - probably the worst possible vehicle for wandering around the Ardennes. We probably didn't knock out many - but they guzzled gas and many ended up stranded. I'm sure the Rooskies didn't like them though. For the 1945 GB I might build a very late war Tiger II. I was going to buy the new Meng, but heard some horror stories about assembling the suspension. So I kept my Tamiya and bought individual tracks. We'll see.

Back to the SU-76. More on the vehicle and the astounding 1944 annihilation of Army Group Center in June-July 1944 later.

There probably is no more sincere Tamiya fanboy than yours truly. For the most part this kit has been typical of the breed - basically perfect. But when you get used to "shake and bake" you can get lazy and that's asking for trouble. (On the first time around I botched the suspension on the Panther just completed - 100% driver error, but easily fixed.) I got trouble on this one. Tamiya gave the kit "link and length" tracks - complete with jigs to get the correct top sag. I've done Magic Tracks several times and found them fine. I was expecting no trouble here. Wrong. The problem is that the SU-76 was based on a very small tank - the T70. Obviously the SU-76 is small too - about the size of the PzII - ten tons. So get this - the drive wheels have no sprockets on the inside. This is actually serious. The jigged top run of the tracks goes on pretty well and sag is pretty accurate. (I've seen pics of the thing with sag all over the place - some with almost no sag at all.) But now you've got to assemble individual links and anchor them on essentially one half of a drive wheel - which is very tricky. It didn't help that Tamiya supplied zero spares - a dumb error considered how easy it is to lose those things. It also didn't help that the fit between the fenders and the tracks is very tight on the kit - and several pics show it in real life. What this meant was that I had glue everything in - fenders included. This took half the time I've spent on the kit. It also means that I can't remove the tracks for seperate painting. In my view this kit would have been perfect for Tamiya's very good vinyl tracks. I could have gotten a perfectly good sag and popped the wheels in after painting. Fortunately because of the serious pigment work I do on the lower hull, precision isn't vital. But I'm not happy. I did leave the tools off and glued some of the rear with white glue so I can remove a piece and paint the fighting compartment. (Might add that Andy on the very good "Hobby Headquarters" YTube series did this kit and also found the tracks below Tamiya standards.)

Before priming I roughed up the surface with Vallejo plastic putty - because the SU-76 has such thin armor you don't see the pock marked finish of larger Soviet vehicles - so the acrylic putty, pretty subtle, worked well. I used Stynelrez with my Iwata HPC and finally found out why so many modelers like the stuff so well. The lighting isn't very good but the color is a nice flat black. I think I'm going to "black base" this kit and see what kind of irregular finish I can come up with. I black based the Panther but it was a complete waste of time as was much of the early weathering because of the winter camo. This one should be different. I plan on a base - but I also plan on two more kits this year, so we'll see. Here's where we are - done and primed

Eric

primed by Eric Bergerud, on Flickr

Nick, very nice job on the Tiger, the scheme has really come out well. Looks really nice with the bike.

Eric thank you for your comments I didnt want to do the dots but oh well. The SU-76 is coming out well.

Bish many thanks again Im working on some figures for the tank due to the rains.

Good progress on the SU-76, Eric.  Looks good!

Very nicely done, Nick.  That's pretty complicated camouflage, and you carried it out really well on the figure!

Very nice work on the figure Nick, that SS camo came out really well.

Nice work on that Eric.

Thanks gents Im done with this figure. Thank you for your comments..

Good job, Nick!

If it's not too late, I'd like to add a F7 Tigercat and possibly an F6 Hellcat, later this year.

More progress - if that's the word - on the SU76. Last pic showed the kit built and primed black. I primed it that way to employ "black basing" on the model which I've found an excellent technique for aircraft. (Anyone not familiar with it should search "black basing" on YouTube and watch Doog's 8 minute introduction. Doog has made a five hour course on the subject, but the 8 minute does fine. BTW Doog is a really good modeler.) I use this instead of "modulation" or "gray scale" shading. Those techniques work pretty well (check any armor build on Andy's Hobby HQ on YT - Andy owns a hobby shop and specializes in armor - very fast but quie good builds) but like preshading on aircraft they are too regular in my eyes. Chemical changes in paint, fading and the direction the sun hits any object works against visual order. So with black basing you start with a "Mottling" coat - thin squiggly lines all over the place of a lighter color suitable for the eventual base coat. In my case I used three shades of light olive green. Then you apply the base coat very well thinned (I use maybe 3-1 thinner/paint) and very slowly. Too much and you get an opaque coat which makes the mottling (or preshading) pointless. What you want is an irregular coloring with blotches of different shades. This is going to be weathered a lot more, so the effect will moderate as the colors change. Did this with my "go to" Golden High Flow acrylics which are the best water based paint I know of for an airbrush. You have to make your own colors, but that's fun for me - I just check my recipe book for a suitable color and futz away. A lot like finger painting. This color is a little darker than a new Russian 4B green, but I think it will look fine by the end. From what I can see just about any kind of olive green works for Soviet armor. There's a near web site dedicated to this one color - 4BO.com - and I profited from their observations. Anyway, here's the mottling followed by the tank with the base coat on. The blotchy appearence is quite notable - but that's part of the plan. Not sure how this is going to turn out really - you do so much weathering on armor that evidence of blackbasing may disaper. On this kit, I'm going to try to use all acrylic weathering - pigments and maybe some oil fading excepted. More later.

Eric

Mottling:

Mottle by Eric Bergerud, on Flickr

Base Coat

base2 by Eric Bergerud, on Flickr

base3 by Eric Bergerud, on Flickr

Tomcat and Armor:  good to have you join the GB.  There is plenty of time to do up a build.

I'll update the build roster, and put you, Armor, down with a "TBA."

Tomcat:  I put you down for the F7 and F6.  I'll also include the manufacturer and scale if you let me know that information.

Thanks for joining up.

And a shameless plug:  I'm also still running group builds for each year of WWII, and they'll all be open until 31 December, 2020.  That way you can complete a kit for each year of the war from beginning to end. 

Very nice finish and paintwork, Eric.  That's a great effect and turned out well.

Just returned from a ten day trip to North Carolina.  Oldest daughter is living in Concord, near Charlotte.  Had time to visit USS North Carolina at Wilmington, and the Moores Creek National Battlefield Park.

checkmateking02

Tomcat and Armor:  good to have you join the GB.  There is plenty of time to do up a build.

I'll update the build roster, and put you, Armor, down with a "TBA."

Tomcat:  I put you down for the F7 and F6.  I'll also include the manufacturer and scale if you let me know that information.

Thanks for joining up.

And a shameless plug:  I'm also still running group builds for each year of WWII, and they'll all be open until 31 December, 2020.  That way you can complete a kit for each year of the war from beginning to end. 

 

Both the Tigercat and Hellcat are Monogram 1/48 scale. Looking over the stash, I am pretty sure I have enough to cover the war '39 thru '45.

BTW, are there seperate build threads for each year? Or, are they all under this one thread? Just so I know where to post pictures.

Tomcat:  thanks for the information; I'll add it to the front page.

There is a separate thread for each of the 75th anniversary WWII GB's.  Below are links to each one.  And of course, you already know where the '44 GB is!

You're more than welcome to take part in any or all of them.  There is a different badge for each GB.

1939-40 GB

http://cs.finescale.com/fsm/modeling_subjects/f/29/t/161378.aspx

1941 GB

http://cs.finescale.com/fsm/modeling_subjects/f/29/t/168803.aspx

1942 GB

http://cs.finescale.com/fsm/modeling_subjects/f/29/t/173219.aspx

1943 GB

http://cs.finescale.com/fsm/modeling_subjects/f/29/t/177276.aspx

I had hoped that the addresses would come through as live links that you could just click on, but it seems they didn't.  You can copy and paste them, and that should get you to each one.

Thanks for your interest!

Embarrassed to say, I haven't made much progress on my kit for '44, so I plan to get busy on it very soon.