SPA Modeler

This is officially my first build of 2015. At least that's when I started it. Who knows when it will be done....
As some others have mentioned, I'm not planning to do a day by day, piece by piece WIP here. Just batches of random pics as I get things done. As stated, the kit is by Dragon and was given as a gift from a friend who has started to build for therapy reasons. Like myself, he needed something to help with his PTSD issues, and once he realized how well it worked for me, he decided to give it a go. I'm happy to say he's on his 5th or 6th build, has just completed his first diorama, and is starting to play with photo etch now. (I'm trying to get him to join)

I added the Lion Roar photo etch to this because, let's face it, nothing says armor quite like a ton of trinkets and baubles attached everywhere! It will eventually be a diorama depicting a squad from the Grossdeutschland Panzergrenadiers during Operation Citadel. Still working on a title though.



All the lower hull PE installed. To make things easier later, I brush painted the areas I may miss with my airbrush. I plan to go with an overall RAL 7021 scheme on this. I've seen quite a few of the sand/green/brown schemes lately and though a little old school might be nice.



Mucho brass! Actually, that's 1/3 of the detail work. another 1/3 is attached to the tools, and the final 1/3 will go on after it's painted. This one fender took me roughly 12-16 hours to do. (the plastic posts are styrene stock filling in the holes for all the kit supplied mounts.)

As usual, comments and suggestions are welcome. Thanks for looking!

I think our Swedish friends said it best, "Yumpin Yimmminy". This is gonna be good.

So I woke up this morning around 5am to 63 degrees. By 8, it was almost 70 and partly sunny, so I pulled out the airbrush and shot a base coat on the lower hull, fenders, suspension and rear plate.



By the time I left for work at 1pm, it was 72. It's now 5:30pm, 39 degrees, windy with semi horizontal rain. Of course the roads will freeze tonight, so tomorrow will be quite interesting.

Glad I took the time to paint!

looks good! Be safe.

Just watched the picture of the fender with tons of PE... All PE given in this Dragon kit, or any aftermarket by ABER and the likes?

This is all Lion Roar aftermarket, Thomas. The kit came fairly well detailed overall, but (IMHO) lacked the detail it needed on the fenders. Especially since the Germans loved mounting pioneer tools and such on them.

The Lion Roar set comes with a ton of PE for this thing! 6 frets, labelled A-F, plus a bunch of different diameter styrene & brass rods, copper wire and acetate with the driver gauges printed on them.

Joe, thanks for this update! I wonder if you did solder some of this PE. In case you did, how on earth does this work?

I tried to solder it, however, my soldering skills leave a lot to be desired!. I used gel CA for most all of the PE. In some cases I used thin PE applied with a toothpick using capillary action.

I tried watching numerous youtube vids on PE soldering, but have decided if it's more than attaching a feeder wire to my HO railroad track, it ain't happening!