SPA Modeler

Male? Female?? OK, I still don't get it but... I bought one while visiting an out-of-town LHS to go along with the new-tool EE Lightning. So, my first-ever armour project is here!! Just getting the wip caught up here, it's nearly done at this point. (Summer slacker!)



The sprues:





No cockpit or landing gear to detail, no canopy glass to mask...

Kit-supplied cannons. To be honest, in 1/76, at a distance, probably weren't BAD. I had actually drilled them out & everything. Then I made the mistake of rolling them around between my fingers & noticing they were out of round...


So, first I tried to cut off the barrel right at the cuff & drill that out with increasingly larger drill bits. Woulda worked, except that my rod was too thick. (I get that a lot....) So I snipped that off too, added the brass right into that thicker area.


Good consistent rivet detail all over the surface.


Cannon all assembled, electrical tape for the cuff. Probably should have only used a single layer, but I doubled it, hit it with some CA, let it dry... THEN checked it in the slot that it was meant for....


Two little bits required to clamp the cannon into the turret, two more to clamp the turret into the opening of the "gun house".


Both halves of the left side sponson attached to each other sandwich-style. "Gun house" attached to the outer side, leaving a large area that somebody OTHER that myself could detail.


The center body section is made up of 5 panels that need to align with that ledge all the way round, as well as against each other I picked the lower and upper plates, and a forward section to attache here, then add the other sponson. After they were all secured with slower-drying Tamiya thick glue, I made sure their alignments were good, then dropped the remaining two plates into position.

Assembled!!



Primed!!!!





BTW, in case you were wondering, YES, this is a great little quick-build or summer project. I had the house to myself over a long weekend as the family was traveling. Ahhhhhh - alone time with the bench. Well, kitchen table in my case I suppose...

Consider the irony of my paint selection including German Camo Green, and German Camo Pale Brown...



With green on & drying. To be honest I wasn't convinced at this point...



Got distracted by supper & forgot to snap the green + brown before adding the charcoal divider lines.



The pattern was actually larger than the colour plate on the box, but I couldn't have gotten the divider lines any thinner, so this actually scales out alright as far as I'm concerned.

Gloss coat to facilitate my weathering methods, rubberband tracks attached. These things were impervious to my 2-part epoxy?? Ended up anchoring one end with CA, letting it sit for a few minutes, pull the length and add drips of CA all the way around as I went. Managed to add them both without getting BIG GLUE-Y FINGERPRINTS on anything.

So.... enamel paint & weathering pastels are next up I suppose.

hmmm - apparently my Humbrol Gunmetal has gone past its due date, all gummed up now. (it was from that new-formula range that SUCKED) Built my own, probably should have added some blue to my charcoal mix. The mix seemed to settle out fairly quickly as well, the silver I used seemed to stay quite dominant. WIll have to get a little heavy-handed with the wash to knock back the shine.

And at THIS point.... I sit here waiting for the friggin' enamel paint to cure. It has remained quite tacky to the touch, finally seems to be curing up as of this morning. I think If I leave it alone a few more days I'll be fine to add either a wash or pigments on the weekend.

Unless somebody else in here has a better idea of what happens when mixing Humbrol enamels with Airfix rubberband tracks?

VanceCrozier wrote:Unless somebody else in here has a better idea of what happens when mixing Humbrol enamels with Airfix rubberband tracks?

STRIP BABY!!!!!!! STRIP!!!!!!!!

Nice work on a neat subject. Great weekend project.