Model Mate

Absolutely beautiful work! I think I’ll take up jigsaw puzzles…. Can’t compete with this! Is all that interior now hidden, or can it be exposed?

Ouch! A Stanley knife sounds a bit hefty to be dealing with small parts. I’d invest in a scalpel if I were you. I know they’re terrifyingly sharp, but you’re actually more likely to cut yourself using a big blunt blade than with a small sharp one.

Never seen this vehicle before, but it looks like a good ‘in. Looking forward to see what you do with it.

I love all the dust and the stowage looks great. Hairspray can be a bit touch and go for me too - cheap, regular hairspray and Tamiya paints thinned with water seems to be the way to go.

Great stuff! Another vintage success story.

Hi everyone, here’s my just completed Academy M3 halftrack/SEEP/motorbike set. Mostly OOB, with a bit of homemade stowage and acetate windows. The switch from 1/16 straight to 1/72 was interesting! The M3 is a great looking vehicle I think -like an army muscle car, particularly with the visor up. It was a really nice little set and is crying out for a diorama. Shame the kit didn’t come with any figures, but I’ll have a look around and if I can find some nice ones, I may get a base together for this. Paint was mostly Tamiya with a few Vallejo bottles coming out for the detail parts. Weathering with oil paints and pastels. I’ve seen on the photos that the kitbags are a bit shiny, so they’ve had a touch of matt varnish since.

Thanks for all the feedback folks! And it’s done! Possibly a record for me at around a week and a half – I’m not sure - but I really enjoyed this little set. I sprayed a little Tamiya buff and flat earth on the lower parts of all three of the vehicles, and applied some earthy brown pastel mix, fixed with white spirit, and that’s that. Posted in RFI now….

What a beautifully grubby p IV! brilliant finish all round - it has a wonderfully brutal look to it.

Thanks John. I didn’t get a pen - they do a refill tube/pot that is just the ink and can be brushed (and apparently sprayed too). Works a charm.

A long, cold, wet weekend saw me getting quite a bit of bench time and progress on this little project. Starting with the main paintjob. I sprayed the upper surfaces with Tamiya buff and then some black along panel lines and around details. This was quickly followed by olive drab and a bit of a brighter green on the highlighted panels and jerry cans for a bit of variety. Next some detail painting of the tools, tarps, bags and boxes. Then some “Kevin” chipping of dark grey and a sprayed gloss coat of Klear in preparation for decals and washes. The decals went on really nicely, and I started the washes using burnt umber and black oil paint. After these were done, I applied a light drybrush of Vallejo Russian green. I applied a bit of water colour mud-brown (mixed from various colours) and scrubbed it back using a moist, stubby brush. Headlights were filled in using Molotow liquid chrome and filled with Gorilla clear glue And it’s now ready for a final light dust and matt varnish spray followed by some pastels

Excellent start on what looks like a great scratchbuild - good stuff!

I do like it, but take a look at any wood left outside for a while - it’ll be more grey than brown. You could try drbrushing a little light grey over your wooden boards to fade it a bit.

Ooh! I like the look of this! Should be a great build.

Fabulous result as others have said. I really like the barrels, chain and rope additions-beautifully done all round. It must be massive at 1/16 though!

In something of a reversal compared to my usual working methods, I’ve decided to make and fix a bunch of stowage to this one before painting. There’s not much supplied; just a pair of jerry cans, so I resorted to making a load of tarps, bags and so on. I cut some slices of round sprue to represent the mines that were carried in the side racks and stretched some sprue to make wooden poles. These were scraped with a razor saw to impart a bit of grain. Tarps and blankets were made from Kleenex; rolled/folded and then soaked in diluted PVA to fix them. The rolled ones were held in shape until dry with wire ties which were replaced by Tamiya tape straps before supergluing in place. Kit bags (pretty poor, but they are tiny) were made from milli-green (milliput plus green stuff) again with Tamiya straps. A bit of embroidery thread soaked in PVA secured the front-end blanket and I added another log and a bit of chain along with the two spare jerry cans. Here’s how it’s shaping up. The kit also comes with a SEEP and a bike. As John suggested, the switch from 1/16 to 1/72 has been a bit of a challenge, and I lost a SEEP wheel…. A WHOLE WHEEL! As a result, I resorted to a bit more tarp to cover a slice of tube and disc of card standing in for the spare. I got the bike glued together and it’s a pretty impressive piece of moulding given the size. It comes complete with a few tiny ejector marks though, and these were filled with sprue-goo and sanded back as best I could – although this photo reveals one I missed on the headlight – grrr! Speaking of which, I drilled out the headlight of course although I didn’t summon the courage to try similar on the exhaust!

and , sorry - I should add.... this looks fabulous so far; the dust effects you've got are fantastic.

I've had trouble varnishing over pastels, with everything going white, but that was spirit-based varnish and spirit-fixed pastels - might be ok with water, I don't know. I've been using watercolour (tube) paints for dusty stuff recently and they work really well. The nice thing is that you can go back at any time with a wet brush/finger/cotton bud and adjust it.

While the varnish dries on my last scratchbuild project and before I tackle the figures for it, I thought I’d have a crack at one of the smaller scale kits I picked up at Telford recently. It’s a nice little kit with good detail. I’ve been a bit wary of Academy kits in the past as the first one I tried (many moons ago) was an F104 star fighter which was probably the worst kit I’ve ever done - it simply looked nothing like a star fighter at all. This one is very nice though, with an added Seep and motorbike. Shame there’s no figures and not much in the way of stowage, though I like scratchbuilding bags and tarps anyway, so no great loss for me. As usual with kits, I started with an OOB promise to myself, but that soon went out of the window. I don’t want to enter the rabbit hole of detailed research, but there were immediately a few little tweaks I couldn’t resist. I got the running gear together, but there was a pretty obvious mould line running right around the solid-moulded tracks. That had to go, so I filed it flat and rescribed the pads and then the centre gap. The door upper hatches are separate, so I liked the idea of having them open. There’s no internal detail though, so I cheated by swapping them over, sanding the back sides a little thinner and gluing them in the folded position. Not totally accurate of course, but they look ok to me. I also scribed the inside door edges and added a few little bits of stretched sprue for latches and handles. The lower cab went together next and I added some foot pedals, again using bits of sprue. The windows come without any glass, so I fixed a bit of packaging acetate to the rear using superglue (Rocket hot). The seats in the rear all looked a bit too uniform to me, so I scratched some folds/texture into them using a curved no 10 scalpel, smoothed out with a bit of Tamiya extra thin. The winch had some embroidery thread wrapped around it secured and doused in superglue and I hollowed out the handle and drilled the barrel for the 0.50. Coming from 1/16 to 1/72 is a bit of a shock - all these bits are tiny! Talking of which, I also drilled out the headlights ready for a bit of liquid chrome and clear glue. Here’s where is stands at the moment - the tracks and wheels aren’t glued and the chassis is dry fitted too. I’ll do a bit of painting before it gets fixed together.

oops - a couple of typos in the above.... my thanks for the tracks goes to @TeeELL - top job! And the WIP link is: https://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/235126854-carro-veloce-cv35-116-scratchbuild/

Here’s my latest scratchbuild - it took around 6 months in total which is pretty quick compared to my last one which took a year. It was a blast and I thoroughly enjoyed it from start to finish. WIP can be found here…. Carro Veloce CV35 1/16 scratchbuild - Page 7 - Work in Progress - Armour - Britmodeller.com Built as usual from plastic card, nail caviar rivets and a bunch of plastic tube, rod, wires and so on. The only departure from my normal MO was the 3D printed tracks which are sublime, and thanks to tellell - I really couldn’t have done this without your help Tony, and I think I may owe you something for these - my girlfriend tells me you might have refunded her PayPal transfer. Please let me know if that’s the case and I’ll get a fresh payment to you. The props are, err, propped in place just for now; they’ll be fixed in place once I get the diorama underway. This part of the build is done, but the saga will continue with the figures and diorama, which will appear in due course in the relevant sections here on BM. That said, I’m still plucking up the courage to commit clay to get them started in earnest, so will have a palate cleansing kit or two done in the meantime. Finally, although this was 1/16 scale, it’s such a little vehicle that it’s only about the size of a “regular” 1/35 tank – here it is with my recent Panzer IV for comparison.

Last post (for now)…. I sprayed a very light Tamiya buff coat over the bottom half of the whole thing, followed by some yellow ochre and white mixed water colour paints washed into the recesses on the upper hull. Once dry, this was scrubbed back with a damp brush to leave a little build up of dusty dirt in various locations. Then onto pastels - a Sandy coloured mix of yellow, white, brown and black with a little pinch of tile grout mixed in for a bit of additional texture. I then sprinkled a few strands of autumnal static grass over the pastel patches. This lot was fixed using a white spirit wash with a drop of Naples yellow added. The roof hatches were glued in place - they’re supposed to open more than this, but the pry bar prevented them opening the whole way. Never mind; I like them up in the air like this as the rear deck is a bit more exposed to view. The tow cable and ropes were strung around the rear end to tie down the stowage and that was that. And that’s it - finished pictures arriving in RFI very soon. Mario and Luigi need some attention next. They’re looking decidedly undernourished, so I’ll be putting them on a diet of mamma’s good’a old’a spaghetti to fatten them up over in the figure section - come visit! It’s really not that far away!

Lovely paint work!

Lovely work on this one. When I did it, I made the mistake of trying to paint the tools and cable etc. separately and then stick them on after the main paint job, resulting in little tiny bits of painted photo etch pinging all over the place when I came to getting it all together, so I think you’ve taken the right approach by fixing them on first. Very smart.

Tips for airbrushing…. Well there are lots, but first is ventilation - you’ll need to be outside, or using an extractor. Aside from that, Tamiya acrylics are my go-to, using Tamiya thinner. You’ll need a compressor, preferably a quiet one with a decent sized tank, not a really tiny cheap one - they pump and won’t give a reliable air source. I use a pretty low pressure - around 5psi and a double action airbrush. Mine is Iwata and it’s fabulous, but there are some really nice cheap double action brushes around now. Have fun!

Stunning build, beautiful weathering and superb figures - the full house! Brilliant.