ErikT

My favourite fighter of WW2, and extremely well done!

I've always loved those little ferrets, and you've built and finished this one beautifully! Very nicely done.

Why? Why do people have to make me feel so inadequate? Amazingly well done, especially for such a small scale (my favourite scale, no less).

Cheers, everyone! This is still one of my favourites.

Thanks! For the trees, I bought a Christmas wreath of fake pine boughs with the thin plastic needles, then cut off a few different lengths and brushed glue all over everything. Then I dusted them with static grass and painted them when dry.

Canada, along with other NATO forces, kept a presence in West Germany from 1957 to 1993 as 4 Canadian Mechanized Brigade Group. Here we have some Canucks working on getting their M109 set up for a big combined forces exercise in 1982. The M109 is the only thing here that wasn't either 3D printed or scratchbuilt. This was my first attempt at a small-scale cam net, which wasn't a complete failure, though I did learn what not to do after several tries. It's a piece of stretched gauze with crushed up leaves from my yard glued to it, but I think it looks okay. This was also my first attempt at evergreen trees. Everything was painted with Tamiya acrylics and weathered with Abteilung oils.

The decals came with the kit, but the entire camouflage pattern I masked and painted myself.

I just Googled 'Saab Gripen' and scrolled through the photos that showed up. As soon as I saw it, I didn't care if it was only ever just a concept scheme. I had to do it!

They are the ROCO brand, but most of them are broken and in pieces. I got a small box full and I think I might be able to resurrect a half dozen decent models.

Back in my Army Engineer days, our Regimental QM was clearing out some old stuff and he gave me a bunch of these HO-scale models that they used to use for table-top wargame exercises before they went digital. So, I painted a Leopard C1 and an M113 up, 3D printed a bunch of troops, and made up a base that resembled my old training grounds, the Western Area Training Centre in Wainwright, Alberta. The only thing I forgot to do was make proper tracks in the sand and set the two models down a bit into the base. Argh. Everything was painted using Tamiya acrylics.

Thanks gents! This is still one of my favourite ones. And definitely most of the credit for the water effect goes to Studio Blue Ocean. That guy is amazing.

Continuing with my freefall into the 3D printing rabbit hole, I found this pattern on Thingiverse and scaled it up slightly from 1/100 to 1/72. I think it turned out fairly well, and I was able to use it to experiment with some different weathering techniques without breaking the bank. The only real modifications I made were to open up the ballistic windows around the machine gun mounts and replace them with clear film, though in retrospect I probably should have found some better machine guns with thinner barrels. The jersey barriers and traffic cones are 3D printed as well, and the roadway is cork. Overall a quick and dirty little vignette that taught me a lot.

Being a Frostback from the Great White North, I enjoy doing Canadian models whenever I can. Both kits have been in the stash for a while, and I found some decals online for the CF-104 Starfighter, so I decided to do an older brother / younger brother kind of thing. And can you call yourself a Canadian soldier (or Airman) if you haven't had to chase a moose out of the training area or off the runway? Not in my experience. We had one walk up to a helicopter while the rotor was spinning in Wainwright. Had to shoot blanks at him to get him to leave before he got decapitated. The ladders, wheel chocks, pilot, and majestic polygon moose are all 3D printed on my Mars 2Pro printer. Paints are all Tamiya with weathering using Abteilung oils.

Why do I keep looking at things that make me feel inadequate? Your model is astoundingly well done.

Thanks again, friends! I honestly don't remember what colours I used; I just mixed some of my Tamiya paints until they looked close to the colours on the internet photos. It's been almost two years since I built this one, and I didn't keep notes on the paints. Sorry.

Having seen some of the tremendous work on this site with rusty, abandoned hulks and destroyed buildings, I had the idea to build a diorama depicting something abandoned on the battlefield myself. Here we have American soldiers fighting their way through a system of trenches and emplacements somewhere in northern Europe several weeks after D-Day. The squad has taken momentary shelter in an abandoned Flakvierling trench, the anti-aircraft gun now silent following a strafe by allied aircraft days prior. The gun has started to rust a bit in the few rainy days since being abandoned, but not too badly yet, a testament to the maintenance and diligence of its former crew, now fled, wounded, or killed; one may never know. The battle continues, however. The American soldiers are cautiously probing forward, shaken more than a little by the near-miss of a mortar shell that impacted only moments before, showering the trench with dirt and sand, and collapsing one side of the emplacement. The gun set and troops are all Tamiya, but all of the remaining details were 3D printed or scratchbuilt by myself including the green stuff Nazi flag and the milliput sandbags. Everything was painted with Tamiya acrylics with some Games Workshop paints and washes here and there. Abteilung oils provided much of the weathering. This was my most ambitious diorama to date, and I like to think I'm starting to get the hang of realistic detailing. I hope you enjoy it!

Thanks. Yes, there aren't a lot of good free models for download; this one was scaled up from a 1/100 file, and it shows in the fine (not so fine) details. The aftermarket parts are definitely great for dioramas and fine detailing. Have fun with your new printer!

Not being very skilled with armour modelling, and not having large spaces to store or display many 1/35 scale models, I decided to print a few using my Mars 2 Pro resin printer to try out some new techniques without breaking the bank. This is a T-72BV enlarged from a 1/100 scale free file on Thingiverse. The striations are still visible, of course, but they're not too bad for an inexpensive printer. I painted it in Tamiya acrylics and weathered it in Abteilung oils. I wanted to try some different techniques for chipping effects, though I probably should have lightened the overall paint scheme because it ended up too dark to see the chipping effects very well. I guess I'll have to paint up some more. Deary me. I also had some fun making the cobblestone street underneath it.

Just as I thought I was starting to get the hang of armour weathering, you had to go and make me feel like a novice again. How dare you! Superb work. I'm going to refer to your photos in the future for some upcoming builds.

I had this Mig-29 kit from Trumpeter in the stash for a while and decided to build it after the Russian invasion happened. The kit was very good and went together with minimal extra effort, though the masking just about killed me. I probably spent more time masking than the rest of the build altogether. This may be the last time I try a digital camouflage, though I am quite pleased with how it turned out. The decals are aftermarket, as are the ground crew figures, but the ladder, fire extinguishers, chocks, and power unit are all 3D printed by me. The paints are an assortment of Tamiya and Vallejo acrylics, and everything was weathered with Abteilung oils. Enjoy!

Thanks for the replies! Yes, the contour lines are the main drawback for 3D printing. With some of the prints I can smooth them out by light filling with putty and sanding, but with such a small model it would destroy some of the fine details.

I bought myself a resin 3D printer a while back, and I've been going a little crazy with it. This is one of my first attempts at printing an entire model with it, and I think it went pretty well for one of the less expensive printers (Elegoo Mars 2 Pro). This is my favourite scale for model aircraft, and I wanted to see how well an armour model would work in the same scale. The whole thing was painted and weathered with Tamiya acrylics, and the maple leaf decals are from GHQ. The last photo shows just how tiny the whole model is - 60mm from muzzle to the rear of the hull.

Very nicely done! And congratulations on the silver medal!

Being an ex-engineer, I've noticed there aren't many depictions of engineer-related events in modeling, so I decided to change that. Here we have a squad of Commonwealth troops walking past a destroyed Sherman Firefly that hit an anti-tank mine several days prior. This was my first attempt at modeling a damaged and burnt-out armor model, and also my first scratch-built (and partially burnt) tree. I learned quite a lot from this one, and I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. The model is the 1/72 scale Sherman Firefly from Airfix, and the troops are also an older set from Airfix, modelled out of a horrible, flexible rubbery vinyl-type material for some inexplicable reason. The tree was a wire armature I twisted together and then coated with Tamiya putty. Everything was painted with Tamiya acrylics and then weathered with Abteilung oils.

I like it a lot! I've recently gotten into the damaged / destroyed models, and they're a lot of fun and a big challenge. For a first diorama, you've done a great job. It looks like you've been doing it for years.