1/48 Armor GB - 2007

Well, stupid me, I didn't see your signature where it says you're the owner.  Lonesome sculptor? Aren't all the ladies all over an artistic entrepreneur?

 Good luck with your business!

yep

I'm a  poor lonesome sculptor..., in farwest of France

Marc

Thanks

I'm on VBL , but I've just finished last week , a M1025 hummer , in scratch to.

The master have been fit in silicon, and the production is on the way.

The result in resin :

 Driver & pasengers are done long time ago...

 Marc

A modern armor in 1/48 and scratch built no less!!!??

 Marc, you are very weclomed to our GB. Looking forward to your progress. I've added you to the list.

Hi all,

This GB is new for me. Can I come in ?

i'm working on a VBL , in scratch.

with passengers

Marc

Lu,

Thanks for the encouragement and the link. One of the pictures (the one with the bombs) seems to be the another view of the same vehicle in the picture I already have. This front view takes some of the guessing out of the modeling.

I have last night started to cut down the sides of the Beute UC. The vehicle is starting to take shape up very well. From the Velinden set of 1/48 Luftwaffe Maintainence Corner (VE1132) I'll be using some of the equipment. Tonight I'll try to take some photo's. Hopefully my skill is up to the task. 

By all means I am interested in the bomb transportation sledges. I'll send you a separate email about them.

After this one I might do one or two more UC's which would be good in comparison. There is anopther photo of a UC in Italy being used as a tug for a Wellington. That one has that sand camofulage with the black lines making a geometric pattern. I forget the exact title for that type of camouflage pattern (Indian?).

Mike

Telsono: I have been thinking about your Beute UC project. I have to say you are right and your subject is a field modification totally. That is not so rare seeing the extensive use Germans gave to lots of captured UC along the war. Following that I think -regarding the paintwork- your vehicle would be surely repainted completely after the modification in my opinion. Germans made very different conversions and modifications over UC producing quite specialized vehicles, so that surely demanded a complete repainting in most of the cases, but one never knows. I could find one more (very inspiring) modified luftwaffe UC in the following link:

http://beute.pz1.ru/Beutepanzer/uk/APC_universal/universal-06.htm

And if you want to take a look to many modified beute UC, just change in the link the number of the page  (from 1 to 6), and you will find lots of very interesting vehicles.

As for your complete aviation project (including the He-111), some years ago, I made a Luftwafe 1/48 ketten towing one scratchbuilt bomb trasportation sledge I casted in resin then.  I made the sled to fit with the Revel/Monogram 1/48 He-111 1.000 kg bomb. I am not sure where, but I think I should have some copies of that sled somewhere at home still, so if you are interested -and I can find it- I can send it to you. The only condition is to give me time to find it, okay?

Lu

GasoLine Kfz 247 Ausf A (Conversion set for Tamiya Krupp Protze)

As I promised, here you have the kit fully assembled. To say true the kit went together very easily and everything went fast and well. the kit is well designed and parts are well casted so very little work is required for a correct and quick assembly.

As you may guess not all parts are glued definetely yet (chasis, wheels, fender poles & flags, steering wheel, raised binoculars, desk and inner panels) because that will help for painting more comfortably later, so they are just temporary placed for these pics.  

Now I only hope to have time to start painting soon.

Lu

On Friday, I received my order with the Hauler update sets for the Universal Carrier. When I started assembly of the kit and referring back to the reference picture I started to see some stark differences. The rear passenger compartment seem to have the side and rear armor removed. It'll be quite stripped down. This would make sense if it was used around the arifield as a general use auxillary vehicle and schlepper. (refer to the photo in my earlier post - work has made Photobucket unreachable through the firewall).

What this means is I am not going to use the two update sets I just acquired on this kit. I am going into my boxes of 1/48 ground servicing equipment to help spice up the vehicle. The crates on the vehicle in the picture seem to be of wooden construction. The big crate on the tail would seem to have been tailored made to hold miscellaneous towing gear. No armament will be added to the vehicle and the same goes for radio equipment. Taking a quess, the rear compartment may have had some tool boxes and other equipmet for servicing aircraft. I'll see what I can place in there that will look approriate. The step on the driver side will be maintained while that on the opposite will be left off as per the picture.

First thing will be to remove the side and rear armor plates for the vehicle sides. I'll follow the panel lines and remove the panels. On the rear portion where the shovels, etc. are stored, the molded equipement will be removed and the surface returned to a smooth surface. A new hitch will be added here to correspond to the picture from plastic card. Another identical hitch will be placed on the front of the vehicle as well.

Mokei - I do plan to use this finished model with a He-111H that I haven't started as of yet.

Karl: That T-34 is going well. To say true all these Tamiya kits go together easily and rarely will give you a headache (except for filling ejector pin marks). I think it is a good idea to sub-assemble running gear blocks for easy painting. I see people complaining about short distance between idler and first road wheel, but there are many photographic evidences that was not so rare on the real thing in almost all T-34 types, so I would not concern so much about it, and I leave that matter up to modeller´s discretion.

BARsrule: Believe me, take care of your Tiger because you also can be hooked up by 1/48 armor like I was. As for your confidence, as soon as you start gluing parts, you will realize these are "shake and paint" kits basically. As for Tamiya Tiger the only trouble I remember was a small gap between metal hull sides and upper hull at the rear, but nothing serious. You will be amazed how well parts fit together, specially complicated air cleaners tubbing.

Darson: Congratulations, you have one beautiful cat there. I like that vivid green shade you use on your camo. I also have that Skybow late Tiger and it is the best 1/48 model ever produced until now, in my opinion, but I have no plan to make it for now. Please give my best regards to Mr. Pershing, and let him know we are waiting for him here.

Waikong: Yes, it seems we can make a Tiger parade here. As for your brush guards I know to fix those PE parts is not nice task now, but I honestly believe your Sherman is worth the extra work, specially after all those elaborated additions you are making.

As for me, I finally complete 247 assembly yesterday and if I can have little time I will take some pics today, so more images are comming soon. Stay tunned.

Lu

Waikong the interior of your firefly looks excellent, nice job.  Btw where did you say you got the PE bits for the radio, they look very effective.

Lu I love the Tiger it looks fantastic.  Here is a couple of pics of my Skybow (now AFV Club) 1/48 Late Tiger from last year. 

Karl the T-34 is coming along really nicely, about the only problems I had with mine were cleaning the handrails which was a real chore and the fact that the tension on the tracks pulled the front idlers in so close to the road wheels that they where touching .  This was a real pain as it was too late in the build to do anything about it.

Cheers

Progress Update

I spent the afternoon filling all the ejector pin marks on the tracks.

There are an awful lot of them!

In order to simplify painting I've built the wheels and tracks as seperate sub units.

The upper hull is now fitted to the lower, with just tool boxes and handrails to be added.

At this rate I should have the turret built tomorrow. 

Karl 

Lu, nice choice of subject.

Great to see how the AM boys have all jumped on the 1/48 bandwagon.

Waikong, the interior looks great. 

As for me, my Tamiya T34/76 turned up yesterday.

Not a lot of progress so far, just added a few components to the uper hull.

I'm hoping to get the bulk of this build done over the next week. I'll post pics as I go.

Karl 

Dave: Well done if you go for more detail by your own like Pierre and Waikong. As for your Firefly boxes I cannot help because I do not have any info about that, but I think these boxes are quite easy to reproduce convincingly without much stress.

Waikong:  Good work on your interior. I see is enough for what can be seen from the open hatch and everything looks fine to me, so you must be satisfied to have one unique model now. As for your sherman there is one thing that does not match to me: front light brush guards seem to be placed too high on front hull. In my opinion brush guards should "wrap" front lights. It would be good if you fix that because your model would gain visually.

As for my Tamiya Tiger I is an old model I made two years ago, and that big cat is totally guilty and responsible of my current 1/48 armour addiction. Model is basically from the box but minor additions. I hope you like it.

Lu

Well, here's my progress so far.

Closing up the sponsons with plastic and added rear mud flaps with foil

As I previously said, inspired by Piwi's M10 interior, so I decided to open up the hatch. Here's the scratch build turret radio, seats, and misc equipment.

I then added a gun loading mechanism, a folde seat, and the gun elevation wheel. The PE wheel is from a set of trim wheels for  WWII  Airplanes. The gun loading mechanism is made from the scrap box pieces including parts from a 1/24 car, a 1/35 tiger, a 1/72 airplane landing wheels, etc...

 A bigger overall shot shows the brass barrel & other PE from a Lion Roar set.

Next up, I'm going to add a brass Hauler Culin hedgerow device and then its onto the painting the misc items like stowage and machine guns.

 Nothing to report on the Firefly this week, it calls to me but I've been avoiding it while I try out the airbrush on a willing Camaro that was gathering dust on a bookshelf. Now that I've played with the brush a little, I am looking forward to painting with it. In a moment of insanity, I somehow "acquired" a 1/48 Tamiya PzKfw IV with a set of 1/48 Panzer Grenadiers including armoured crew. I won't say I'm going to add it to the group build until I see how the Firefly is progressing in a month or so. The pictures from the other builds so far are very inspiring!

 The more I play with the Firefly, the more I'd like to scratchbuild some scale stowage boxs for the hull and back of the radio box on the turret. I only have photos for reference material so far and am prepared to try and draw up some plans BUT if someone has already done this or if someone is willing to share some dimensions from other sources, I wouldn't turn the offer down :o)

Keep the photos coming,

 Dave

BARsrule, welcome to the GB - looking forward to seeing more progress with your Tiger. I've added you to the list.

 Lu, I realize you've built the Tigers before the GB, but perhaps you can post some pictures anyway. I have that kit in my stash and its always nice to get inspired.

Waikong: I agree with you, Pierre´s work is very inspiring actually, so I understand you have now the poison in your blood to go beyond with your Shermie.

BARsrule: Welcome to the GB, and not to worry because never is too late to join (I was last before your arrival). As for your question, I already made Tamiya Tiger I twice (one is still waiting for paint). As for tracks you can use Tamiya template, but I did not because tracks fit really perfectly with very natural sag. My advice is to leave links on idler for the very last, just in case you need a final adjustement.

Lu

Hello Waikong, came here after your post in my thread in the Armor section. I'm a little bit of a late joiner, but oh well.

I'm building the Tamiya 1/48 Tiger 1 Early Production

Lookingforward to tackling the tracks soon (first time with an armor kit). I'm sure that's going to be an interesting experience. Waikong mentioned someone in this same GB building the same model, by any chance have you done the tracks yet? Or have you already planned how you will do them? Are you going to use Tamiyas little template built into the sprue or some other way? Thanks for the help.

Lu, thats starting to look real nice.

As for me, I was actually able to get something accomplished. I was going to do a fairly straight build, but after looking at Piwi's interior, I just couldn't resist some scratch building. So I decided to have my Shermn turret hatch open and add some interior. The problem is knowing when to stop. I'll have some pictures soon.

GasoLine Kfz 247 Ausf A (Conversion set for Tamiya Krupp Protze)

Darson: Take care of that hot Australian summertime, forget making models and go for a cold beer!

It is time to join hull halves. After gluing rear upper hull, gear shift and on are the only parts to be glued before "closing" the hull totally because I already checked remaining inner parts can be added comfortably later and in this way other inner parts (seats, separation panels and on) will not bother me to properly fit upper hull.

Once hull glued, external angled joint formed by lower and upper hull needed very little filling, and after that assembly is going well and fast. Here you can see all stowage boxes, chasis hooks, front lights and other small parts already added, and parts left will follow very soon at this rate, I hope.

Lu

Looking good Lu! 

Unfortunately there hasn't been too much progress from me lately as the weather here has just been too hot and humid to do anything.  Hopefully over the next day or two I'll have the model completed to a stage where I can show some pics.

Cheers

GasoLine Kfz 247 Ausf A (Conversion set for Tamiya Krupp Protze)

 At last I started assembly.

Chasis is complete but front lights and towing hooks will be added later. Now we can see how it fits on lower hull plus we can figure out how this vehicle looks with wheels.

Lu

Hi all,  

Today I got little time to take a look to all posts until now.  

Pierre: Good work on your TD so far. It is really refreshing to see you making everything by your own, and interior painting is as simple as effective.

Dave: I think you are making the right thing if you are going to add crew to your Firefly. As for your hatches question, I would placed them on closed position temporary (maybe fixed with tape or silly putty from inside) and I would paint the whole thing. Once complete you have to open them and paint inner side only. Anwyay take it easy and you will have success in your 1st time for so many things here.  

hkshooter: You are really fast modeller at this rate you will not leave anything for us. Sorry to hear about your problem with the KV turret top and good work on your sherman. My quesiton now is: what is next?  

Darson: Do not make us wait so long for frrst images of your Pershing.  

Thad: Go ahead with that Kubel.  

Mike: Excellent choice with that captured UC. A model full of potential to both armor and aviation modellers alike.  

Prometheum5: One tank a lots of figures... It seems dioramas are not that popular nowadays unfortunately.  

And finally as for others: hurry up with your models!  

Lu

waikong wrote:

Piwi, excellent interior work - I love built up interiors. Where did you get those headphones from? Or where they scratch built?

Thanks to all , Yes it's scratch built. 

GasoLine Kfz 247 Ausf A (Conversion set for Tamiya Krupp Protze)

 Darren, Thanks for your kind words.

Well, my time for making models is very limited nowadays, so I have to work -even a very little- when I can.

It seems my guessing was wrong totally. Instead of gluing parts I yesterday I cut parts. To fit the Tamiya die-cast chasis into the resin lower hull you have to cut original fuel and oil tanks which are positioned in central lower hull in this version (they can be seen inboard partially).

Tamiya die-cast part was cut with a modelling razor saw easily, and it is amazing to see how perfectly chasis fits into lower hull. Note GasoLine lower hull respects Tamiya design and rear suspension arms are supposed to be fixed by screwing as in the original kit.

Lu