ScanmanDan

Here's my latest. A simple straightforward build with just four days from go to sitting in the display case. A 1/48 scale resin kit by Gaso.line that you don't see built much . It's a nice resin kit with pretty good details and not very dear.( I paid $20AUS for it). I'll let the pictures do the explaining. A tiny little thing but makes a nice change from the more involved builds. I have a few more Gaso.line kits in the queue I'm looking forwards to getting at. I hope you like it. Dan

A quiet Christmas at home left plenty of time in the bungalow this afternoon to finish this one. Tamiya Panther G in 1/48 with Monroe Perdu paper zimmerit and Full tracks. Lots of fun to build. I hope you like it. Happy Christmas everyone. Thanks for looking in. Dan

Progress; PE track hangers and some foliage.

Progress; Dan

Progress; Hull basically finished, well as much as I'm willing to do. Maybe some oil paints and dirt but that's about all. The turret is next and the spare track hangers. ( Soldering tiny brass parts, looks like heaps of fun...not.) A fun build but like a lot of my builds I can see so much to fix. I do like those metal tracks though, and the zimmerit. I think next one will be the Elephant, no the Panzer IV no the..... Dan

I didn't think I could get any decals to settle into all that nice zimmerit texture so I busted out the Silhouette stencil cutter. Nice to have the right tool for the job. Not perfect but better than I had hoped. This was the last thing I was really worried about so the build becomes fun again. Thanks for looking in.

Panther Progress; The AK Burnishing fluid worked well but I found that I needed to mechanically clean the links with a fibre glass pen before it work well. I think next time I'll spend a bit more time getting each of the links cleaner before I assemble them. The base colour yellow is on but I'm having a devil of a time getting my airbrushes to spray well enough to do a good freehand camouflage pattern. I might just do a 'cloudy patten' or stick with a plain yellow beast. I'm at that point where all I can see are my mistakes and 'bits you could better next time' so I need to just push on and finish before the smashing hammer comes out.

Latest progress. I tried out some Friulmodel tracks for the first time and I gotta say I like them a lot. Expensive but a joy to work with and I think they look darn nice. I'll play with the other side tomorrow but now that I know what I'm doing they should got together pretty quickly. Pretty close to getting to paint this sucker.

Thank you Simon, You are too kind. Last progress on this for a bit while I await the metal tracks from Canada. I am going to see if I can make the early Friulmodel Panther track work, I know they aren't quite right but, eh? If not I'll use them on the D I have in the stash Should be a bit of a lark as I haven't used any of those metal track before. A few bits to futz with on this until then but I'm not holding my breath about shipping times these days as the mail services are stretched pretty thin. Our Posties are having to send mail outside my own state for sorting because of lockdown conditions, but have started deliveries on Sat and Sun to help spread the load. All things considered they are doing a heck of a good job. So if I have to wait a bit who cares Pic of the base primer. That MP zimmerit came out better than I had hoped. Thanks for looking in . Dan

A little progress; Schruzen hangers needed fixing once I noticed them while looking at some photos of the real tank. I thought that they were bolted on but no, they have a neato bent metal bracket. Soooo, off the the races and I added some plastic and brass bits and used the paper schurzen from the MP zimmerit set. I did use very thin superglue to stiffen the paper and it looks pretty good. They are removable too I'm interested to see how durable they will be in the end. Might just have well gone with the plastic ones from the kit but I wanted something thinner, with overlap and only a partial set on display. The tough part will be sticking to it and doing the other side as this was fun working out what would work, the other side is just boring repetition.

Thanks Simon, though I don't think mine is good enough to run with that crowd. I really like the form of the Panther but think the Panzer IV should get more credit for being the bigger threat on the battlefield. I'm am dazzled by just how many different camouflage schemes there are for the Panther. Looks as if you can think it then somebody, somewhere tried it. Still a bit weird building the hull and turret before the running gear but then I wanted to get that zimmerit finished. I tried some green stuff welds but didn't twig to rolling the putty between two plates to get nice even rolls until the wife suggested it. The welds are too big and rough but ya gotta learn somehow. Nearly art the red primer stage. I'm going to try something a bit different in the painting on this one to see if I like the results. Thanks for looking in.

Well I thought I'd wonder off and start some old wingy thing but once I got that box open and started messing about I could tell my heart wasn't really into it. The squirrels were playing pretty hard in the side yard so I started rummaging thought the darker recesses of the to build pile and found an old Panther G that I had bought, got the PE sets, turned barrel and even a MP zimmerit set for then promptly forgot about. Not exactly true as I can remember looking at the zimmerit set and those boxes on the rear plate and thinking, " Not tonight Josephine." Well courage and sticking points met the weekend and here's the results. Not perfect but better than I had hoped. Used good old Mr Cement S to stick the paper to the plastic. I didn't even thin it by sanding this time. But used some thin CA from Zap to 'seal' the paper after the cement had evaporated. I used some Games Workshop liquid Green Stuff putty to try and soften the transitions around the edges and that seems to work okay. Needs lots of coats to get any results but doesn't seem to clog any of the zimmer detail and cleans ups with water so doesn't like setting on the metal/pastic hull or the coated paper/CA which works to my advantage. The rest of the hull went pretty quickly but I should have used the full piece on the MG ball mount. If I had been smarter I would have used a little water to wet the piece and then pressed the ball mount into it stretching and shaping it to fit. Once it dried it would have been easy to attach/trim as were the flat parts. I've started on add some of the PE and I'm trying to raise the turret a touch so it docent sit/drag on the upper hull. I think I'll zimmerit and assemble the turret shell first before I attach the turret base. Fun build so far. Part of me wants to 3D print some replacement tracks as I have some brilliant designs from Alexandr Uhlik to try but the squirrels are chattering about keeping it simple. So far so good. Thanks for looking in.

Latest quick build. A nice kit and easy to assembly as are all these 1/48 scale Tamiya kits. I added a few little bits from wire and styrene but nothing too fancy. I may make a proper base for it one day but too many kits in the t'to do' pile. I hope you like it and thanks for dropping in for a look.

Well, kept my head down and finished this one. Pretty much OOB and a simple as I could keep it. Maybe someday I'll make a base for it but I'm already to start my next one 😀 I thought the kit figure was pretty good OOB. A really nice quick build. I love how well these 1/48 scale Tamiya kits build up. Thanks for looking in. Dan

Just a quick one pretty much OOB. A bit of fun to see if I could bend up the plastic fenders. I will need to do a few more until I get the hang of it. Nice kit, builds fast and I'm almost ready to weather it. I love how simple these kits are to build. Thanks for looking in. Dan

If you just got one of these kits MM be on the look out for the new Hauler T-55 set, it looks a treat and has both PS and resin parts. I'm saving for a set to use on my next T-55. Almost finished . I just need to find the antenna that I put somewhere 'safe' and a few more bits and bobs. Thanks for looking in. Dan

Got a bit done quickly. I need to get this done before I get distracted.

Glad you like it Stuart. Latest weathering; Working my way around the tank and doing bits and bobs. Thanks for looking in.

A bit more landscaping. Still working on some figures and need to finish the weathering on the T-55. But, I think it's coming along okay. Thanks for looking in. Dan

Matt I also do most of my work in 1/48 scale. I like to draw to output/printed size, that is, all real dimensions reduced by 1/48. I work in metric so this is easy. Just input the dimension and multiply by 0.0208 and Fusion 360 will spit out the scale dimension. Even easier you can set up all kinds of 'parameters' under Modify/Change Parameters. I usually set a unit less parameter of 'A' to 0.0208 at the start of all drawings in 1/48 scale as my ' Scale conversion'. Thus type a*385 into a dimension box and you'll get 8.008mm . Same goes for converting inches to mm (a*11.5*25.4= 11.5 inches into scale mm ) I do this mainly because I like to have the overall dimensions right but lots of the tiny details like latches and hinges need to be slightly oversized to print well. I have a self imposed limit of features no smaller that 0.3mm. This work flow lets me keep the drawing to scale, which makes importing drawings and pictures as canvases easier, and controlling that real world min feature limit of 0.3mm. Parameters are also a great way to set up dimensions that you always use, say a 0.3mm offset Additionally don't forget that the dimension boxes in Fusion 360 let you input all kinds of formula so let the program work for you. 1/2 and 1/3 stuff easy, a dimension less an offset or a centreline distance, easy. Have fun and I hope this helps. Fusion 360 is so neat.

Not to be a trouble maker Murdo but how small ya want to go? The two marker lights on the corner of the 1/48 scale T-55 just above the fender fuel tank are about 2x2mm and I regularly successful print details down to about 0.25-0.3mm square and I'm not a great printer. I think you can do just about as well as most manufactures as far as detail is concerned. And gosh help us when 4K screens get cheaper. Dan

Matt, Self taught is good. I started picking it up in December and while a zillion years ago I trained as a draftsman, when CAD was so expensive the Uni had very strict limits on how much time a student could play/learn the darn stuff, I'm more concerned with forgetting how the program works between drawing sessions. YouTube is a big help as you can jump back online to 'refresh' your memory on how you did it last time. The hard thing is sometimes you know what you want to do. And you're sure that it can be done. But you don't know what the system calls the command or procedure to get it done. Lofting was a real Bugbear as I wanted to do an aircraft nosecone but took ages to stumble upon the concept of 'lofting' It all make some kind of sense now but before is was a lot of stumbling in the dark. Take heart, you will get there.

One chief use of a component is that it allows you to draw a part on a seperate drawing and then import( copy) it into another drawing. That's how I did the open ammo box I showed in the other post. I did a drawing of the 100mm shell then made it into a component. ( Used the shell drawing to export a STL file to print lots of single shells) When I drew up the open box I started with a copy of my closed ammo box. Split the top off ( Made a new plane at the break of the top and body, then used the Split body command) and rotated the top back. Then roughed out the interior of the box, imported two copies of the shell and then added braces. A few other little things to make it print better but pretty easy once you have the box and the shell drawn. I'd also urge you to get into the habit of naming all your bodies and sketches as it makes it a lot easier to find the one you want when it's called Front View rather than sketch 7. And save often! Have fun, Fusion 360 is pretty powerful and I'm learning new stuff all the time

A little more progress on the base. Next weekend I'll get back to finishing the weathering and detail painting of the kit. Very green 😀 Dan

Hi Matt. If you are lofting you have come a long, long way in Fusion 360😀 and well done Sir. Yes, using rails will get you the rest of the way towards having the fuselage looking the way you want. I didn't find them very intuitive to learn but pretty powerful once you get them under control. If you haven't started yet I can advise that you control your 'new bodies' and make components when you can. Isn't the 'time line' a great feature? That ability to go back and change or add/delete a feature is marvellous. I am a big fan of Fusion 360 as a software package, I just wish it ran a bit better on my older computer. Save often and have fun. Dan