Maddog Manufacturing 2017 Production Line

[speedgraflex]

Hi Mark, I read through your latest progress for a fifth time tonight, just to absorb the details. Thank you so much for your time documenting your builds, giving out the blow-by-blow details. I learn so much from watching you set tasks, complete the tasks, then step to the next model—exactly like your quote from Firefly about "chain of command," you forge your links in the chain, hammer, set in place, hammer again, set aside, on to the next link (project). I think I am beginning to get a little grasp on how you do this, but my brain still wants to focus on just one project, think about it, obsess, build a little, think more, build more, think more, build—meanwhile you are finishing multiple projects, different types of projects, always moving forward. That is a very inspiring work ethic to me, Mark—and I know this is a hobby, but still, I find your approach really inspires me. So, thanks again.

[Duke Maddog]

Bruce I am honored by your humbling words. I appreciate it more than you know. Thank you ever so much.

Things have come to a halt so far due to a job I'm doing so it might be awhile before I get anything more done. Stay tuned though; more should be coming next week.

[Duke Maddog]

For the first time in about a week or so I was able to get into the hobby room to play. I managed to put in a couple hours getting caught up on a few things.

To start with, I added the engines to the wings of the Boeing 737 and did some sanding on the filler I added to the fuselage seams. I also glued on the tail surfaces. Here it is with the wings dry-fit to the fuselage:



The wings will remain off so I can paint the fuselage and wings separately.



Moving on, I dullcoated the Russian carrier Baku. The island is just sitting there dry-fit to the hull:







Finally, here is the progress I made on the armor I've been working on.


Since I had the airbrush out to dullcoat the carrier, I also dullcoated the three 1/48 scale gaming Shermans. Since they don't look any different (except flatter) I didn't shoot any pics of them. I did however shoot paint on my Merkava IV tank:





This is just a basecoat of green drab. Carlos told me these tanks were more green than the Israeli armor sand-grey that previous tanks were painted. So, I figured I'd basecoat this with the green drab then lightly mist on the Israeli armor sand-grey over to so that the green shows through. If I do this right; I hope it really shows well.

Since I was still airbrushing, out came the USAAF support set of vehicles. All of these got a base coat of Olive Drab:



Next will be detail painting and then gloss coat for decals.

While I was at it, I also shot a base coat of Olive Drab on the little Bofors cannon:



I'm gonna paint the barrel a metallic black/gunmetal color.


Finally, after putting away the airbrush, I still wanted to build something so I pulled out the little Vauxhall car and finished off the suspension that I didn't get to finish at Hobby Day:



Man this is a fiddly little kit that is a challenge to get lined up. I moved on and built the interior and main body of this car:



Later on I added the fenders to the chassis:



Once again, it was tough getting those fender to sit right.

Finally, here is a shot of the whole car dry-fit together:



This is going to be one sharp looking little car when I get done.


That's all I got done so far. I may be able to work on some more models tomorrow so stay tuned.

Meanwhile, thanks for looking in, comments are welcome.

[speedgraflex]

Great—and inspiring—to see all of these projects move forward today, Mark. Did you have a small fix on the delicate—I think you used the word "fiddly"—suspension of the Vauxhall? What was repaired and how did you do it? I was thinking about the cockpit of the Horten which I started in February. I quickly broke or more precisely, shattered one of the cockpit sides and had to rebuild the piece from brass tube. 1/72... so delicate! How do you work with these thin pieces? I was able to get the part off the sprue, but my handling of it caused the part to break... It's also really nice to see the first color coat applied, as well.
All the best.

[Stikpusher]

Dear lord, you actually listened to me?

Well here is a good shot of a Merkava IV for reference of the color

[Medicman71]

Some nice stuff there Maddog. A 737 is on my short list cause I wanna do a Southwest Airlines jet. Gotta figure out the colors though.

[Duke Maddog]

Bruce, thank you. The most effective fix was to bend one of the rear leaf springs a bit more so that the two axles lined up as seen from dead on. They look good so far, but I won't know how successful I was until I put on the wheels and stand it up on a flat surface.

As for how I work with these thin, delicate pieces: very,very carefully. I use a new Exacto or Olfa blade to carefully 'saw' them off the sprue and then I use tweezers with a delicate touch to manipulate the parts into place. Sometimes I fail, as in the parking brake handle on the side of the chassis that snapped in half. I'm going to have to fabricate a new one.

Thanks again for the great compliments, I hope my description helped.

Dear lord, you actually listened to me?

Well here is a good shot of a Merkava IV for reference of the color

Of course! Why waste a valuable and experienced asset? I appreciate that shot of the Merk IV, that will help immensely. I just hope my paint work turns out.

Some nice stuff there Maddog. A 737 is on my short list cause I wanna do a Southwest Airlines jet. Gotta figure out the colors though.

I do look forward to seeing your Southwest one. I think there are aftermarket decals for Southwest, but I'm not sure. As for the colors, they are a red-orange and blue for the most part, I've flown on enough of their birds to remember. Testor's makes (or made?) a color in a rattlecan that matches Southwest's red-orange pretty closely; it's called Sunburst. The Southwest Blue is a slightly lighter blue than Blue Angel Blue. I apologize, I haven't got a pic handy; I'm sure someone will come up with one.


Thanks again for the great compliments and references guys! Stay tuned, hopefully more to come soon.

[Duke Maddog]

Okay, now I have everything from this past week uploaded so here it goes. There's a lot of pics for not so much work, so bear with me. This is all the work I managed to get done over the past two or three days.

I'll start with my aircraft.

The first thing I did was to mask the windows for the F-102 Delta Dagger:



Then I shot a primer over the whole thing when the masking dried:



I did the same thing with the Boeing 737; I masked the windows first:



As that was drying, I shot a primer coat on the wings:



Later on, I also primed the fuselage:



Simple and easy, all that was put aside to set up properly. Later on, I'll try to see if I can apply a nice smooth coat of paint on them.



Moving on, I was getting sick and tired of the VW bus sitting around taking up space. I decided to get to work on that and see how far I needed to go before I had to stop due to lost parts and such. From the get-go, I screwed up. As I was getting ready to add one of the windshield windows to this, it got messed up. My attempts to clean it turned out thusly:



I don't even know whether to try to clear that up or just try and add some different windows or something....

Moving on, I finished up the interior of this bus:



While trying to add the side doors to the one panel, I broke both the hinges and lost them; making me have to glue this door in:



The other one I was able to install properly so that it opens and closes. Oh well, our VW bus in my youth had the same problem with a stuck door so...

I went on and finished gluing all the side panels on to the chassis of the bus. Then I installed the one door on the front panel; this opens up too. Here are the two 'subassemblies' sitting side by side:



In putting this all together, I found out about two more parts that disappeared with the front door, the back window and the lower body panel below the engine door:



Later on I snapped the front end onto the model to check alignment of the doors and such:



It was actually still pretty flimsy and misaligned, so I snapped the roof on top to help the sides to all glue into place properly:





I could add the wheels to this, but I'll wait. Beyond the wheels, this is as far as I can get on this until I find the missing parts. Back to the Shelf of Shame for this one until further developments.....



Moving on to something that I can finish, I got more work done on three of the armor models I'm working on.

First off, I shot flat black over the tires of all the USAAF vehicles so I could move on with them when I could:



I also detail painted some parts on some of those vehicles but did not take pics of them.

On my Merkava, it is really hard to see in these pics; but I shot a mist coat of Israeli Sand Grey over this model. I modulated the color a bit too, and also dry-brushed the highlights; not that you can tell here:





Later on I painted the tarps on the back of this with Olive Drab. Again, these pics make it hard to see the difference:



These effects are much more visible to the naked eye. Oh well, maybe later I'll be able to take pics that show this off to good effect.

Finally, on my armor, I got more done on the Vauxhall staff car. To start, I built the roof for this car:



Later after sanding the hood too much, I re-added the hinge line across the top:



This might be slightly out of scale, but I stretched the sprue to get this and I was afraid of stretching it too thin and snapping it.

I then finished adding all the parts to the chassis. I had to re-make the parking brake as it snapped off some time ago and disappeared:



After drying, this model was ready for paint. So I masked off the bottom where the two sub-assemblies are supposed to join:



I then shot the first color on this car; the 'deep green' that the instructions said to paint it:



That is a flat color so I'll be glossing that up later on.

In getting this far, I realized that the clear parts are missing for this kit as well. I do believe I have them in a different box somewhere; I just need to see if I can find them. Otherwise, I'm facing some difficult scratchbuilding ahead....


Finally, I joined the Star Wars Group Build here, thanks to the generosity of Bruce who sent me the Revell Imperial Star Destroyer. This is a well engineered snap together kit that surprisingly needed very little glue to seal seams and went together very quickly. It is also a 'motorized' kit with lights and sounds which are all controlled in this little module:



That clear pull tab will activate the batteries allowing this to work. I'll pull that when I am done with this.

Here it sits all nestled in place right in front of where the engines go:



There are openings in the back that will light up some clear blue parts in the engines.

Once the rear and engines were assembled and installed, the top hull was added to this lower hull. Easy peasy:



Here's a shot of the engines with the clear blue inserts that light up:



And yes, that gap is supposed to be there.

Next is the lower superstructure. You can see how they engineered this kit to go together without seams:





Next I added the upper superstructure to this assembly:



I then installed it on the main hull and slid the bridge neck into place:



Building the bridge itself required a bit of glue to close the seams adequately:



Finally, here she is in all her finished glory:





Finished assembly, that is. I still need to paint and detail this. To start that, I shot a coat of light grey primer over this whole thing:



With all the detail on this, it is screaming for some washes and dry-brushes of color!



That is all I have for now. That Star Destroyer was a real fun and relaxing model to build; it really helped bring me down from some of the more frustrating models I was working on. *cough*VW BUS!*cough*

I don't know how much more I'll be able to do for the next few days, but stay tuned, I'll be working on some of this hopefully soon. Thanks for looking in, comments are welcome.

[Stikpusher]

Nice work there Mark! That was a quick build on the Star Destroyer.
A suggestion for your VW Bus, since it looks like all the windows are flat panes, you can probably make up some new ones from scratch using clear acetate sheet..

[Duke Maddog]

Thanks Carlos! Being a snap-together kit made that Star Destroyer fast and easy to do. I will now focus on getting it weathered and looking as realistic as possible.

On the bus, I might have to do just that. I will see what I come up with. I just want to find the missing parts though.