clive_t

They look good - never used MB figures before, but the MiniArt set I used were good quality mouldings. The fit of the parts, good though it was, was of no real consequence to me, as for several of the figures I did a lot of hacking and rearranging of limbs to get the poses I wanted. Apologies yet again for infesting your thread with links to my own threads, but the WIP for my Alam Halfa dio figures is here .

Cracking job on those Jim, as usual. Hope you're keeping well mate

Don't let us stop you starting a new one! I'd be interested in seeing what the figures look like before you work your magic on them, just to gauge the quality of the moulding etc - no worries if I'm too late!

Hey Darryl, Francis is correct - well remembered Francis! I did a long roll of camo netting draped along one side - which was actually made from a rolled up piece of gauze, and soaked in dilute PVA which was coloured with a dash of desert yellow. The idea being that I could secure it in place, and then force the roll to 'sag' in the middle in between securing points, to give the impression of weight. For the other side I made a long tarp roll out of a strip of metal cut from a tomato puree tube - very soft, easily rolled, squashed and creased, and that too was sprayed with desert yellow or similar. For detail the relevant page of the WIP thread is here . As Francis says, though, often they were lost in the rush to break leaguer, or they just fell off whilst at the gallop.

That's turned out brilliantly

I think the technique would likely work, although you might need to build up the effect in successive layers of 'sandwiches' as I described previously.

Wow, nicely done! And a bit of a beast in 1:200 too.

Sorry Darryl, I hadn't noticed the fact that they had marked the set as discontinued. I imagine, however, that there may be suppliers out there with residual stocks. I also made use of a couple from their British jeep crew set (again, with Hornet heads): https://miniart-models.com/products/35051/ You might hazard a guess as to which of these made the cut, from the RFI for which is here.

Thanks Dago58, me too oddly enough! In fact, I've found the DVD so just need a suitable timeslot where I can watch it without 'er indoors chuntering away in my ear! Gerry, that's exactly what I have on DVD Thanks Beefy, much appreciated

Great job on the Grant MiniArt do actually do a British tank crew set: https://miniart-models.com/products/35078/ This was the set that was included with the Academy 'El Alamein' boxing of the Grant that I did a couple of years ago.

Thanks Rich. Actually, credit where it's due - I took a ton of inspiration and tips from that Scale-a-ton fella on You-Tube. The actual clip where he does his is here .

Thanks Rob, most kind

Thanks Rob, much appreciated. Thanks Gerry, I too have this full length DVD in my collection - you will probably understand and appreciate that I had the theme music rolling round in my head for much of the time I spent building it!

Thanks, Chewbacca, much appreciated. The technique I used, was to get a 10cm - ish square piece of cardboard that's been culled from some carton or other (I used a container for a vivarium heat lamp) - anything will do, as long as it's shiny on the exterior. On that shiny surface I spread out some of the gel, in several separate areas and different sizes. I then got some of the teased out cotton wool, and laid it flat on the wet glue, and patted it firmly so that every bit of the cotton wool was in contact with the glue. I then coated the cotton wool bits again with the gel, in effect I now had several very thin gel/cotton wool sandwiches I usually gave it an hour before attempting to peel the thin sandwiches off the shiny card. What I ended up with were some almost transparent sheets of thin strands and small, flat clumps of cotton wool. I then tore the things to roughly the desired shape and size, and cut a piece off each with some scissors to give me a flat edge to go against the hull in the right location. They was simply fixed on with gel; more gel was applied after that had dried, so as to build up the thickness of the 'wash' as required. Once it dried I still had the cotton wool surf effect. Sometimes it was necessary to pull the cotton wool off the card before the gel had set fully, so that I could tease it out a little more - but the fact that it was at least partially set meant the cotton wool kept its shape better before completely drying and fixing to the model. Like any technique there's a learning curve to negotiate - my waste bin was fairly busy receiving the aborted early attempts before I got the result I was looking for! Having said that, it's not a costly lesson so definitely worth giving it a try. I think you could very likely achieve the same with PVA (disclaimer: I didn't actually try it); the main point is the use of the shiny card to give you a stable layer of thin cotton wool that's also mostly transparent when peeled off.

Thanks Alan, I am having Senior Moment Overload here, bloody lockdown is sending me doolally