Monthly Archives: April 2012

Geschutzwagen 39H(F) – Blast Models Detail set

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One of the kits that have been on my to-build list for a while (which most likely means I might get to build it in the next 10 years) is Bronco’s 10.5cm LeFH18(SF) auf Geschutzwagen 39H(F). The vehicle is essentially 10.5 cm field howitzer mounted on a chassis of the French Hotchkiss H39 light tank. Wehrmacht has captured handful of these during their French campaign in 1940. This self-propelled gun is one of those vehicle, which came to see the light due to the expediency with which German designers have been able to reuse whatever material to improve mobility of their army.

Bronco’s kit is one of their earlier ones and has been released already some year ago. First thing that still surprises me is how little publicity there was and is around this kit. I admit that the quality is not at the level of the more recent releases by this producer, but I haven’t encountered any negative reviews or any other indication of significant shortcomings of this model. Given that the vehicle participated in the ever-popular Normandy campaign, I would expect to see it more often on the photos and display tables at model shows.

The second thing which I don’t quite understand is the lack of aftermarket parts for this model and this was putting me off when thinking about starting it. Any aftermarket sets are mostly designed for the much older Trumpeter kit.

During my recent trip to France I paid visit to Blast model store and the one detail kit I have picked up was the Blast model set for this vehicle (again the one designed for Trumpeter kit).  The detail set provides resin parts replacing quite a few donor kit parts. The casting is very fine and there is only very little flesh to be removed from the casting blocks. While Bronco’s kit was much improved compared to the Trumpeter one, this set still has quite few parts offering significant improvements over the donor kit, such as the ammunition stowage racks – comparing the resin alternatives I was surprised to see how much simplified are the plastic ones.

One particular part of the detail set that is extremely well detailed is the radio set and the instruction provide detail schema for wiring and connecting all of its parts (the radio equipment actually comprises 8 resin pieces,not counting the headphones you might want to add).

All in all I am so far very pleased with the quality of this Blast detail set, which was the first I ever got from this brand. Hopefully I will be able to get my hands on it sometimes (relatively) soon…

(please note that the photos below do not depict all of the detail set parts, there are few more).

Type 2 Ka-Mi – Part 6: Barrels, exhausts & decals

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I have added few touches to KaMi some day before my last week’s trip, mostly dealing l with the details.

First I painted the barrels of the two machine guns. For this I used Vallejo paints, which I regularly use to hand paint the details. I used mix of Black and Black Grey – Black is too dark by itself and Black Grey too light, mix of the two seems about right to me. I always add touch of paint retarder, so that I can fix any unwanted overpainting of adjacent areas.

After painting the barrels, I have applied graphite. I do this using following method: I rub a regular pencil on a piece of sandpaper to get the graphite powder. Then I use makeup tool, called angle smudge (it is a kind of sponge brush that is used in makeup application and can be bought in Shoppers Drug mart. The particular one that I use is by Posh brand and I got two of them in a set – the other is called Round Smudge) to apply this to the surface, in this case the metal part of the machine gun. The advantage of this tool is that unlike most of the modelling sponge brushes I have seen, such as the ones by Tamiya, this particular one has sharp edge and can thus be used to reach edge of the surface without touching adjacent areas.

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Blog updates

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It has been few days since my last update, which is mostly because I spent the whole last week on a business trip to Versailles (doesn’ sound that bad, eh. Unfortunately it doesn’t happen that often). While there was no chance to work on my blog, I have of course not missed the chance to look around for military or modeling related opportunities.

First, I have paid visit to Les Invalides, one of the places which must be on a to-see list of any military fan visiting Paris. The building, impressive by itself, is a home to Musee de l’Armee, France’s national military museum. Due to the limited time I had for visit, I have focused mostly on WWI and WWII exhibits. While I dare say that museum might be bit smaller than the Imperial War Museum in London, and has definitely less armour pieces on display, it still provides for quite a few interesting displays. One that caught my eye was FT-17 displayed right in the courtyard of the building. One thing noticeable in the museum is quite extensive collection of military uniforms of both wars.

Having a few hours left on the last day on my trip I decided to find the Blast models store in Paris. It is not that far from the center and with the help of my Blackberry’s GPS was able to reach it just few minutes before the close. The store is definitely one of the better ones and I have picked few books and a resin conversion, to which I may devote a separate post(s) in the next days.

Perhaps my personal highlight of the visit was Wednesday’s gala dinner in the Trianon palace in Versailles. The dinner was served in the Hall in which George Clemenceau accompanied by Woodrow Wilson, David Lloyd George and other statesmen presented the conditions of the Versailles treaty to the German delegation on May 7, 1919.

Below are few photographs from my trip, since they were taken with my cell phone’s camera, the quality is not too great.

I joined the dark side!

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Yes, it’s true, I decided to switch side and build: an airplane. And the reason is very simple – to learn something new. After years building tanks and armored vehicles I realized how little I know about building airplanes. I definitely haven’t tried to build one since I was like maybe 12. And having seen really magnificent airplane models on the recent model shows I thought I might learn something.

When I started modeling about 8 years ago (I mean serious modelling, not the things you build when you’re 12), the breakthrough in my model building efforts was participation in the modelling workshop. The clinic (called Box-to-Battlefied) is still regularly held at Hornet Hobbies store in Toronto. In those few evenings that the workshop took, I have not only learned techniques and tricks that simply cannot be read in books and magazines, I have also found one of my now best friends in Dave, owner of Hornet Hobbies and long-time master modeller, whom I owe most of what I now know about building models.

So knowing that similar workshop aimed at airplane modellers (called Flightlines) is also held at Dave’s store, I decided to sign up for the current run. The workshop is run by Tony Bell, another modeller whom I greatly respect (even though he has not built a single tank as far as I know). In spite of all the years of modelling under my belt, I was surprised to find out how much I can still learn - in the three evenings of the workshop so far I have learned things I haven’t heard about before.

The subject this time is recently released Revell’s PV-1 Ventura. it’s very nice looking kit (for a very fair price), not overly complicated, but solid base for further detailing. And Tony is master in that field.

So if you were ever wondering what are the secrets of modellers building all those amazing models and you happen to be from the Toronto area, I have one advice for you – sign up for the Box-to-Battlefield or Flightlines workshop and you will find out. To do so, contact Dave or Trish at Hornet Hobbies (
http://www.hornethobbies.com/
) and they will gladly help you (and say hi to them from Vlad).

Few pictures below from the last Flightlines sessions…

Voroshilovets Artillery tractor – Part 8: Mud

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Voroshilovets has become bit of a guinea pig right now as I was testing some techniques of creating muddy look using a technique I have recently discovered.

As can be seen from previous posts, after applying base green coat at the lower hull I have added basis for layer of mud. This was done by applying mix of white glue and water (so that the consistency of the mix is such that it can be easily applied with a brush) at places where I wanted to add mud and then sprinkling fine soil I have collected in the garden last spring. This soil has thoroughly dried since and I have crushed it bit as well, so at the bottom of the jar, where I store it is some really fine soil. Of course you have to hold the surface to which you apply this horizontally and once it is done I turn it upside down and tap it gently to remove loose soil particles. As desired, this process can be repeated number of times.

After the glue has dried I decided to give the surface another coat of green base (just the base, no highlights or any other effects) to reduce the contrast between the surface and the soil.

If you are not looking to add heavier layer of mud you can skip the above steps and directly proceed to the one following below. I just find it more efficient to build the volume this way (garden soil is much cheaper than pigments).

With the soil firmly in place, I then add pigments. The technique I use is following:

I wet the surface where I want to add pigments with the pigments thinner (usually oil based thinner). Then keeping the surface horizontally I dab the pigments with medium-sized brush in medium and larger volumes as desired – I just dip the brush in the pigment (both brush and pigments are dry) and then touch the surface, so that the pigments get attached to the wet surface. The important point is that the brush should barely touch the surface – just the pigments should. The brush should in no case slide along the surface, otherwise you will just smear the pigments which will look unnatural. The process is then repeated with another 2 or 3 different shade of pigments, placing the lighter pigment shades on top of the darker ones. Also keep the combination of pigment colors compatible, so that it corresponds to the environment and terrain where the vehicle would be located (or will be if you are building diorama).

Again, the process can be repeated many times to achieve desired effect. At the end just add the thinner to the whole surface so that the pigments are thoroughly wet and let them dry overnight. The following day I have checked the effect and make some small corrections – e.g. crushed larger particles of pigments that would look unnatural.

When satisfied with the look I have then applied pigment fixer (I use Mig products). This makes sure that the pigments are firmly attached to the surface and do not looses in time.

  

After applying pigments in this way, the contrast between the base paint coat and pigments as well as between the different pigments shade is excessive and needs to be reduced. To achieve this I have airbrushed the surface withe mix of Tamiya Flat Earth and Khaki Drab mixed approximately in 2:1 proportion. I think I have overdone it a bit on the first side I was working on, so there is now not enough contrast.

  

To add depth to this effect I have at the end I have applied heavy wash of the Burnt Umber and Black oil paints.

 

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WellCoME 2012

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Modellers from the GTA area as well as from far away (read Ottawa for example) had another field day today. This time the venue was Guelph and the occasion was Wellington County Modellers Exhibition.

I like events like these, usually I meet friends I have not seen for a while and there is always something interesting on the display tables.

As an armour modeller I must again admit that the quality of the armour models was overshadowed by the flying stuff – the collection of large scale planes was truly amazing. There were few nice armour models, but frankly I would wish for more (though since I myself have not brought anything again, I should not really be complaining…)

If you have been to Guelph on Saturday, I would be glad to hear what was your impression.

As usually you can find my photo report here.

Type 2 Ka-Mi – Part 5: Dry-brushing, filters, washes & tracks

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I have spent last few evenings adding few touches to the Ka-Mi.

To tone down the contrast created by preshading and highlighting I applied oil filter. I used my trusty Winsor & Newton Burnt Umber and to keep the wash in balance with the underlying colour I mixed it with Payne’s Grey. I kept the filter rather thin, trying to avoid darkening the resulting paint finish too much. You can always darken it afterwards, lightening is much more complicated. I applied thin layer over all the surfaces.

After letting the filter cure for 24 hours I drybrushed the raised details to make them stand out from the background. Again used the Payne’s Grey, this time mixed with White. After few refinements of getting the mix the correct leve of contrast vs. the underlying color I drybrushed all the rivets, hinges, raised weld lines and similar surface details.

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Type 2 Ka-Mi – Part 4: Second highlights

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The last paint layer that I plan to apply is the second highlight, to increase the contrast and give the model little bit more “depth”.

For this layer I needed another shade of grey that would be lighter than the first highlight. I picked XF-19 Sky Grey as a base. To blend the colour with the previous paint layer I added bi of IJN Grey, so that at the end was mix approximately 5:1 Sky Grey: IJN Grey.

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Type 2 Ka-Mi – Part 3: First highlights

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Tamiya offers quite a wide range of grey colour paints in their acrylics range, so I had to choose which one to choose for the following painting steps.

I decided to use IJN Grey XF-75 as I liked the shade and it was sufficiently lighter compared to the base coat. From my own experience, It is always better to use paints with higher contrast for different layers, as the contrast is usually toned down during the application of filters. If the contrast is small, the colors of the model at the end blend too much and it loses much of its vibrancy.

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Type 2 Ka-Mi – Part 2: Base Coat & Preshading

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So, having added last few pieces to the vehicle I decided to give it some paint today (or rather yesterday as it is past midnight already).

To save time I decided to skip priming the model. I wanted to save 24 hours I usually let model stand to have the primer thoroughly dried. I think in the future I will follow my routine and start with the primer, as I noticed that without this, the paint rubbed off especially on the wheels quite easily.

The base coat in this case would act also as a preshading, so I wanted to use darker shade of Grey for this layer. My idea originally was to use Tamiya German Grey XF-63. However, after testing this at the bottom of the model, I found that this color is still too light for what I needed. So I have added Tamiya Nato Black XF-69, so that the mix was 5:2 of German Grey:Nato Black. I thinned the paint as usual with Tamiya lacquer thinner in a ratio 4:1 thinner to paint. To protect the interior of the turret, I masked the opening for the hatch with masking tape from inside. With the above mix I then gave the model thorough coat covering all the surfaces.

For the wheels I wanted to try the new Tamiya paint (as far as I know this is new, maybe not) - Rubber Black XF-82. I wanted to apply this at all the running gear as a base coat and preshading. This paint would also be my main coat on a rubber parts of the wheels, which I would mask when adding following paint layers.

I like this new paint quite, it is really very “rubbery” shade od dark grey/black, I think this paint will be quite often in my repertoire in the future. It is definitely the best choice for painting rubber wheels.

Type 2 Ka-Mi – Part 1: Construction

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(UPDATED on April 3, 2012 – added some more corrections)

Here comes another recent inspiration of mine.

Having seen this model built by two of my friends (and both very nice models) I decided to give it a try as well. I had planned to build some Japanese armor for some time now, and this kit is perhaps the best to start with.

As was already said few times, this kit might be the best Dragon’s kit yet. It is really lovely. No complicated construction, low parts count, amazing fit of the parts, beautiful details and quality of moulding, you name it. There is decent interior provided for the turret, so it would be a shame to have all the hatches closed.

As usual with the Dragon’s models, you will have to bite through the instructions, which are typical Dragon’s quality (or rather lack of it). To name just a few corrections:

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