1/20 Gans Salvage Ma.k Diorama - COMPLETE!

[Hunter Rose]

Hi guys! New guy jumping into the fun, have always been a modeller starting with airfix kits, but have only really got serious in the last 4-5 years. I frequent a couple of forums and after an invite from Will Vale, a friend of mine who models on here I gratefully accepted to join the group build as it seems like a good community and I've never taken part in a group build before.

Anyway enough about me and more about models! Basically I've had a Gans for a long time now, it was the first model that got me into the Ma.k universe and I've finally come up with an idea for it.

This is the rough dio plan sketch



The gans is going to be wrecked and a crew in a modified pick up is going to be salvaging it, for the truck I'm going to use a lindberg syclone



Most major thing I'll need to do with it is to make a gun turret with a mounted machine gun, so I need to cut a hole in the roof. I've got some bevelled metal rings I found at work which will be the rim and two more pressed together later will form the mounting ring for the gun I'll make



For now I'm starting to get the head together which I'll show being loaded into the back of the truck by the two man crew, with damage and bits hanging out of it



I marked out the hole for the mounted gun by holding my metal ring in place and scribing around the inside edge



Then after much drilling and swearing (the lindberg styrene is a bit hard and brittle) I removed the bulk of the material from within my circular mark and then used a grinder tool on my dremel to neaten it up.



This is my beveled ring in place, next I'll ca glue it on and use some squadron to fill the gap between it and the roof



I am starting to get all the gans bits together, focusing mainly on the truck for now, as there will be some internal bits I'll have to make for the gans but I'm not 100% nailed down what bits will be exposed with damage yet.

But one thing I definitely want is for the hump bit from the front of the gans head hanging extruded with a mess of wires behind it. A stroke of luck is that the smaller hoops I have are a perfect fit for the circumference of the dome base.



One will be attached here, another on the dome piece, and 1 maybe 2 surrounding the mess of wires as if they were rings to hold the large loom of cables in place or something.



Started to get more of the truck together. I'm just doing enough so it looks correct if you peer through the wheel arch and the underside stuff just in case.







Got the inner tub in, but haven't glued in the chairs or dash yet of course for easy painting. Haven't said yet but the windows are going to be armor plated with some wide mesh covered slits, so I'm most of the inside isn't going to be visible, so I'll be painting them but not going to go nuts with super detailing.





Next job is to start thinking about the mods to the exterior, I've got a 1/24 italieri truck accessories set, scale is out a bit but its for big trucks so it looks right which is good,and it has some cool bits and bobs on it



I'm also not going to be putting any of the stock lights on it, they will be done as if covered over/removed, so I need some and so I'm using this light rig, was thinking about putting in the front



But I like how it looks on the roof, just have to see how if I can still fit my mounted gun rig on, and once I've put the front bumper detail on I'll add a bull bar to it



After checking cant have the lights on the roof it will definitely interfere with the turret. Got the hood and front pieces on the cab, except for the scoop/bumper, partly to fit on my new bullbar light rig but also because I'm not adding the body-kit pieces to it (I want it to look more like a generic work horse) and the side wheel arch bits fit onto the ends so it doesn't sit flush and looks odd being there without it



For the bullbar I'm using a the bottom part of a piece from my truck accessories set



This is how the light bit will sit on it, as you can see I'm going to have to trim it down a tad



Before I sort that I also got the bevel ring that surrounds my hole in the roof glued into place



Filled the gap in with greenstuff and smoothed it over



Then I put a ring of greenstuff round the outside edge and made a weld seam with a scripe tool





Then I primed all the inner bits and the chassis I got together



Then I whipped out some styrene sheet to make some armor plating! Dont want any windows on this, I'm going to have armor plating over the side windows and windscreen with mesh covered slits in them, and just a flat armor plate for the back window which is where I will later mount a winch.





Used the clear parts as templates and then just trimmed it down from there



Cut the first hole and used it as a template for the second to make sure they are pretty much the same, and cut some brass mesh from a sheet of it I have



Got my mesh glued into place, see if you can spot the deliberate mistake below where I glued them both on the same side!



Carefully removed the mesh and put it on the right side then got them both in place



There is a slight curve to the bodywork so after gluing the bottom in place I used tape to hold it and got it glued down too.





Now to deal with the front screen armor, started by using the original as a template on some styrene



Then to help give the same curve as the windscreen, I pegged it (hi tech!) to the original and submerged it in some boiling water for a few minutes before lifting it out and running it under the cold tap. I then checked the fit and it was pretty good





So I cut the holes for the mesh



And then trimmed down some mesh and ca glued it in place, then the whole front plate is held in place with masking tape while I put some liquid cement round it to glue it



Now to add weld seams for the armor plates, for my seams I roll some greenstuff into thin lengths and press it around the edge of the plates



Then I use a sculpt tool to press in the weld detailing



Worked around all of the plates using the same method







And then I primed it just to check the look



Then sprayed a red brown base coat to the chassis, its going to be a bit muddy in the dio, so this is going to be weathered and then covered in dirt and crud



And sprayed the seats a very dark grey



And the cab interior and dash black



Then gave it all a mid grey dry brush, I'm not doing anything fancy with the interior as with the balck and the mesh slits you wont really see much in there anyway





And made a start on the gun turret by epoxying together two of the beveled rings which will serve as the mounting frame for my soon to be made machine gun



Okay so next up I'll continue on the turret frame, and get the bullbar and lights sorted for the front.

Thanks for looking, more soon

[whitestar12chris]

Hi Hunter, very interesting build, welcome aboard, have fun.

All the best Chris

[philp]

Great start.

Are you going with the kit wheels/tires for the pickup or something a bit bigger?

[Mitch K]

Lovely build - very interesting, and looking forward to how this progresses. I have to say though, that is some seriously rough welding!

[Ian Shumsky]

Interesting idea - will be watching with interest!

[theanorak73]

great build, gonna be watching this one closely

[Dan]

Very Mad-Max, I'll be following

[Dermo245]

Nice work, welcome to the GB!

Dermot

[Will Vale]

Yay, so glad I could convince you to join in

Will

[Hunter Rose]

Hi Hunter, very interesting build, welcome aboard, have fun.

All the best Chris

Cheers Chris I'm sure I will

Great start.

Are you going with the kit wheels/tires for the pickup or something a bit bigger?

Thanks philip, using the standard wheels, want it to have a rough and ready 'not-quite-fit-for-purpose-but-all-we-had' look to it, if that makes sense!

Lovely build - very interesting, and looking forward to how this progresses. I have to say though, that is some seriously rough welding!

Cheers Mitch, in the future according to the Matrix, no one could knit, and in my future no one could weld! Seriously though I just like the rough weld look, want this to look like it the salvage crew just bodged it together.

Interesting idea - will be watching with interest!

Cheers Ian, appreciate the interest

great build, gonna be watching this one closely

Thanks anorak

Very Mad-Max, I'll be following

I'd be a hardcore liar not to say that was a definite inspiration! Thanks Dan

Nice work, welcome to the GB!

Dermot

Cheers Dermot

Yay, so glad I could convince you to join in

Will

Glad you asked mate, its nice to join a new modelling community, looking forward to sharing my work and seeing others

[Hunter Rose]

Right now Groot and Rocket are done and kick myself back into action on the dio!

Got the front bullbar sorted, it was a bit wide so I cut a middle section out. Then to get it together into one solid piece at the right width I cut two pieces of brass tube



And inserted the end bits of the bullbar into them



Then I trimmed down the light rig



And then sanded down the end bars with a rat tail file so it fits over the radius of the bullbar piece nicely, and drilled a hole in the ends to insert a piece of wire for strength when glued in place





Then after drilling corresponding holes in the bullbar I got the light rig super glued into place, then used thin slivers of greenstuff to make some weld seams







Also got the legs glued on to my turret frame, I'll get the fit on the roof sorted but wont glue it in place till after painting the the truck camo I think (same for the bullbar)



Only other small job I got done today was to put some armor plating over the lights, nothing to protect there, I just imagine it would be done as a cosmetic thing to cover over the broken/redundant lights.



When the glue is dry I'll get more greenstuff weld seams around them.

Thanks for looking, more soon

[Hunter Rose]

Quick update time

Got the welding done around the plates over the lights



Next I wanted to add a dent to the door, so I got a nice big round grinding ball into my rotary tool



And then ground down a thin patch in the plastic to allow for warming and warping



Aaaaand then in the words of Sam Beckett "Oh boy!"

Yeah I managed to melt a hole in the door So I stuck a piece of styrene behind it



And slapped some filler over it. Ho-hum, lesson learned, at least I have a nice big dent now!



When its dry I'll sand it down, only other small thing I did was to give a rough dry brush coat of a dark silver to the chassis



Its very rough, but one of the next jobs will be to mix up some dry mud and cake it all over anyway. Other job that needs doing is to start the wheels and get the back primed



Really want to get things moving and get this to the paint stage asap, once the dent is sanded I can sort out some holes to attach the bullbar then reprime and start the camo.

Thanks for looking, more soon

[Will Vale]

I think the dent will end up looking pretty good - I found it was too easy to make small dents with e.g. a soldering iron but hard to get a big banged-up panel like that. FWIW I found holding things up to a lightbulb was a good way of applying heat

Are you going to de-chrome the wheels, or just weather over them?

Will

[Hunter Rose]

I'll just weather over the chrome, thinking about messing them up a little with a file first to simulate scuffs and wear.

Thanks for the light bulb tip, not thought of that. I think what didn't help as well is the styrene is quite stiff and brittle so it doesn't go soft easy, think I'll leave that as the only dent, may put one on the edge of the truck bed, but aside from not wanting to burn my shed down I dont want to over do the effect.

[Madhatter]

seriously very cool work here. I love the welding technique - if I ever have to represent welding, I'll have to try it.

What kind of gun do you have in mind for the roof? Mini-gun? An armored turret? Both!?

Your paint work is fantastic. The seats actually look quite comfy! Better than mine

[Hunter Rose]

Thanks Madhatter

The gun is going to be a twin barrelled machine gun that I'm going to scratch/bash, I already have the barrels, a pair of 1/24 scale barrels from RB Models

I know the scale is slightly off, but in my experience being slightly smaller isn't as noticeable as being slightly bigger. Plus using both and them not being the main focus of the gun will negate that, I may put some armor shielding on it too

[Hunter Rose]

Had some shed time today so I primed over the filler covering the hole, and I'm pretty pleased, the texture is a little rough in the middle, but that will work in my favour as I'll be rusting up the middle of it.



And while I had the primer out I primed over the wheels and also my armor plates covering the old lights, and you can see I drilled two holes to take my new bullbar





Also while I was thinking about wheels I filed the sides of the tyres to remove a lot of the writing and add a bit of wear and tear



Got the bullbar all sorted too, sawed some brass tube to fit onto the back, this was because the lights come back a bit too far for it to sit flush against the front so the fixing will allow it to sit a bit forward of it.



After super gluing them in place I used some greenstuff to fill in the gaps and help hold it in place even more.



And then checked the fit and used a rat tail file on the holes to adjust the fit and line it up properley





Then primed it



Also got the truck bed together and primed it also





And now that front and back are primed got out the airbrush and painted them JGSDF brown for my base camo colour





Next Up I'm going to spray on some patches of dark brown and olive green. The armor plating will not have the same camo, going to give them a rusted paint job.

Thanks for looking, more soon

[Will Vale]

Looks tidy! Are you going to do rusty hardox plate for the applique armour?

Will

[Hunter Rose]

Looks tidy! Are you going to do rusty hardox plate for the applique armour?

Will

Thanks Will! Pretty much yeah, just going to give a base rust colour, will then sponge on some different shades and when its dry will use a some mig pigments to enhance it and add further variance.

[Hunter Rose]

Just a small update to show paint progress, this is stage 2 of the camo, freehanded some green on with the airbrush. Next I'll put some small random patches of dark brown, or maybe just leave it like that as I do like how it looks, not too sure at the moment will give it some thought, opinions welcome!

Hmmm, thinking about just going round the green patches with the dark brown to help them stand out, and that could look cool, again, opinions welcome!

Thanks for looking, more soon

[Madhatter]

nice! My only observation would be the panels are very straight for a ute such as this will be. Personally, I'd add more dings and dents, but then, I also wouldn't have a clue on how to achieve it.

So I'll just shut up, take my seat at the back and just watch

The camo, BTW, is quite appropriate to my eyes. It'll look better once you've weathered it I reckon

[Hunter Rose]

Any input is always welcome Madhatter, I hear what your saying about dings and dents, I've got my big one so that makes up for lack of smaller ones! But seriously after doing that one the styrene on this is so thick hard and brittle I was nervous of breaking it.

But yeah I'm planning on heavily weathering it including mud sprayed up the sides, both caked on dry and darker glossy fresh stuff, which will help with the used look no end anyway.

[Will Vale]

I'd keep the camo simple - it's going to be some dude with a spraycan trying to make his ute a bit more "tactical" rather than a proper army paint job, I reckon?

On the dents, you could try doing fake-3D paint chips or rust spots to get more apparently depth out of the finish?

Will

[Hunter Rose]

I'd keep the camo simple - it's going to be some dude with a spraycan trying to make his ute a bit more "tactical" rather than a proper army paint job, I reckon?

On the dents, you could try doing fake-3D paint chips or rust spots to get more apparently depth out of the finish?

Will

Yeah thats what I'm thinking too, an in the field rattle can job, and thats a good shout for the "fake" dents, thats what I'm going to aim for.

Just got back to work from my lunch break and this is what I managed to squeeze in!

Got the brown outline sprayed round my green, and I'm pretty pleased with how it looks, also sprayed some shading/weathering in the truck bed just for the hell of it, and got the bullbar sprayed black

Next up I'll start the rust painting on the armor panels

Thanks for looking, more soon

[theanorak73]

very nice, very impressive. coming along well.

camo looks a bit jungle/safari !!!??? got to say i gave up on the idea of camo for my zombie diorama because i just couldn't decide how to do it, so whatever you come up with will look fine to me.

cant wait to see the rusty armor plating

Edited March 24, 2015 by theanorak73