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US Deuce and a Half...Not What You're Expecting!


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A bit of background to start with; I normally work in Myanmar every winter and get to see 'real' life there. After WW2 a lot of vehicles and equipment was just abandoned there for which the locals were very grateful! When I started working there nearly twenty years ago it was very common to see allied trucks and vehicles 'repurposed' as buses(buscars in local parlance), trucks and village transport. We ourselves have 7 buses converted from Chevy and Ford CMP C60 trucks, and every village has or had, an allied vehicle of some sort to transport villagers to town for shopping, charging house batteries(no mains leccy in a lot of places), and as general freight transport. Obviously spare parts are very hard to come by and maintenance is erm, basic!

It's a bit difficult to know where to post this as it's (ex) military but not an AFV, but at the same time could fit in the civvy section🤷‍♂️

Anyway, I thought I'd have a go at converting a US truck to a 'village truck'...Somewhere I've got a load of pics of typical vehicles, but I can't seem to find the hard drive they're on🤔 I'll attach one to give you an example...

 

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As I said, a lot of equipment was left behind as well as vehicles: PSP is a very common garden fence material!

 

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As a model it was fairly straightforward even for a very old kit. The assorted junk in the back is from a Tamiya(?) stores set, the rice sacks are made of putty, and the tarp is tissue paper soaked in PVA glue, and painted in the typical colours of Chinese imported sheets: Blue one side and orange on the other.

This was my first build since I was a kid, apart from the Revell 1:24 Landy which I built a few weeks before. I got back into modelling like many others I suspect, during Lockdown last year, having not built anything since I was about 14! The Landy was a revelation in how far kits have come in 40 years😱, so this one was a step back in time!

 

Looking at the pics now, I can see many ways I could improve it based on what I've learnt since then, but I prefer to leave it as-is...

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The fact that you refer to the Tamiya 2.5 Ton Truck as a “very old kit” is a bit frightening for me.  Old Tamiya kits for me were new when I started building as a kid in the 1970s-this one is from Tamiya’s “new age”!

Very neat subject matter and execution!

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3 hours ago, f matthews said:

The fact that you refer to the Tamiya 2.5 Ton Truck as a “very old kit” is a bit frightening for me.  Old Tamiya kits for me were new when I started building as a kid in the 1970s-this one is from Tamiya’s “new age”!

Very neat subject matter and execution!

Well I'm the same! I started with Airfix when I was young, probably around the time this was new when I was 10, or maybe a bit before! Tamiya models were way outside my pocket money range then, so building one now 46 years later is quite strange...

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8 hours ago, Spitfire 123 said:

Very interesting, I wonder what it would be like to ride one. Great job on the diorama, how did you do the tarp? 👍

Riley

Basically just cut a bit of Tempo tissue roughly to size then painted it with a mix of water and PVA wood glue until it started to go soggy, then moulded it to shape with tweezers etc., then laid it over the truck bed and painted more glue on until it formed to shape.

As it dries(it takes hours!) keep an eye on it to make sure it stays the right shape(wet it again to reshape).

When it's dry just paint as normal. I used Humbrol enamels as I didn't know how good acrylics were and that's what I'd used as a kid😋.

There're loads if videos on youtube to help; In fact I dunno where I'd be without it as there's so much info on there!

 

Edited by 621Andy
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Wow cool approach and great model. Last week I was binging through the "civilized beasts" thread on armorama and now I'm presented with one at home on BM. I like the colour too👍.

Cheers,

Ernst.

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