Mk1 gun carrier scratchbuild

[Model Mate]

Two updates in as many days! Must be a record for me, and all because my work laptop had a hissy fit and required someone from India to spend all day fiddly with it remotely.

 

Useful modelling time while I patiently waited and clicked a button to restart the pc every half hour or so.

 

I added some thin strips of plastic card and wine-top foil handles to each of the charge tubes, leaving a couple empty.

 

I glued them in place and added a shelf to the top over the first three ammo tubs. The rear couple sit under the fuel tanks that I’ve already added to the roof.

 

Another squirt of primer and Bob’s your uncle.

 

While I had the rattle can out, I primed the new mudguards and doors/hatches

 

The top still fits thankfully and it’ll all look suitably busy inside once the engine is back in - result!

 

And that (I think) is it for construction. I have a can of Halfords white primer, so I’ll try a bit of azimuthal preshading using that, then add dark grey and black preshading around hatches, panels and so on with the airbrush before the paint job proper. 

 

Next job then is to finish off the gun painting and then get back to the figures.

[Model Mate]

I gave the vehicle its white primer azimuthal highlights and packed it off to my boat to await the unboxing of my airbrush – sorry, no photo, but there’s not much to show to be honest.

 

Just one last bit for the gun wheels; camo paint, burnt umber oil wash and a good-old drybrush with some yellow ochre Vallejo – the one on the right has had this treatment, the one on the left is un-dry brushed….

 

The colours look a bit garish in this photo; they’re a bit more muted in reality and match the gun pretty well.

 

The figures made the return journey from boat to flat ready for a bit of work.

 

They’re a bit soft and chunky, so I pulled off their hands and heads, trimmed sitting man’s left arm a bit shorter and gave them a little weight-loss surgery with a 10 and 10A scalpel. This really helps sharpen up the detail as well as carve them down to size.

 

It made me reflect on the nature of model-making – it’s either additional (sticking bits together) or subtractive (carving bits off). As I (like most of us here) started out with and still build kits, I’m more at home with the former, but when it comes to sculpting, it’s important to recognise that the subtractive method(s) are just as critical.

Anyway, here they are before and after surgery – not immediately obvious, but they are a fair bit finer. I should really have modelled them in stages originally, but I got over-excited and did the whole job in one go which was a mistake. This time I’ll take a slower approach and add pockets, belts and so on only once I’m happy with the overall shape.

 

I’d also rather botched their puttees – using whatever I had to hand at the time (carpet tape) rather than wait to apply ordinary masking tape which would have looked better.

 

Boots are a real challenge, so I performed some painful surgery on a few spare ICM legs I had in the stash. I’ll try casting copies to see if I can get a few usable boots and calves.

 

As a fall-back, I tried ordering the Stalingrad tank crew set – a bit pricey, and it seems, unavailable. No great surprise I guess as they come from Russia, so I (rather reluctantly) dipped my toe into the murky world of Ali express-sourced Chinese knock-offs. Much cheaper, but buyer beware. We’ll see, if and when they turn up….

[Model Mate]

Time for a bit of stowage. There’s a load of stuff shown in the photos of “Darlington”; in fact it’s pretty much covered with boxes, crates, tarps and so on. I always like to scratchbuild my stowage bits – after all, it’s a scratchbuild project and this stuff does sit at the easier end of scratch work. Out came the trusty coffee stirrers and superglue. A few bits were fixed together as boxes, with wire handles which I’ll probably replace with thread to better represent rope.

 

Right; figure time….

 

After a bit more scraping and sanding, I got the first of my re-worked figures moved on a bit. I’m concentrating on the easier, standing chappie to start with. My trimming and scraping helped to make his top look a little less like Del Boy’s sheepskin and more like a leather jerkin. I realised I needed to add a collar to his jacket underneath the jerkin, so tried rolling out a thin piece of Fimo. The problem is/was, that without his head in place, the Fimo needs to be really thin and is therefore very flimsy and delicate and is really difficult to position as I don’t know exactly where his neck will end up. There’s a very real danger that it’ll either get in the way when his head goes back on, or will leave a gaping hole all around his neck. Either way, it’ll probably be best to glue his head back on first. However, the Fimo needs firing, and although it’s only 100 degrees, I’m not prepared to risk my lovely Hornet heads melting. A crew that all look like they’re having a stroke and wearing floppy tin hats isn’t the appearance I’m after!

Here’s my Fimo effort with the head dry-fitted – not brilliant; the collar is a bit puffy and looks more like a scarf, so I need to re-think.

 

I think I’ll try gluing the head back on and then making the collar using either green stuff or milliput – my money’s on green stuff to start with. That way he doesn’t need to go back into the oven.

 

His boots and lower legs are the next problem area. My previous efforts were frankly awful, so the legs I snipped from the ICM fellas were glued onto a piece of hard polystyrene foam board and a box made up to pour a rubber mould. I think I’ll pour just up to the tops of the legs, leaving holes at both ends of the mould in an attempt to relieve bubble problems – not sure if this will help, but it shouldn’t stop me casting even if there’s no benefit to be had.

 

At the same time, I dug out my earlier moulds for the ammo. I’ve just got a bunch of syringes, so hopefully I’ll have a little more casting success – fingers crossed….

 

[Model Mate]

Not much to report, but at least what there is is fairly good news.

 

I’d been having trouble with my resin casting – large bubbles ruining my results. The resin I’ve been using is a cream coloured product that has given me good results in the past, but the bottles are quite old now and the stuff goes off alarmingly quickly. There could be some connection there maybe… Anyway, at the advice of Colonel Kypton, I invested in a bunch of syringes. By preparing and mixing the resin as quickly as possible and using the syringes to squirt the stuff deep into each mould, I managed to get a 100% success rate – amazing! I now have a bunch of lower legs and a growing pile of ammunition to work with.

 

“Lurch” (he’s a tall, lanky fella with a gormless grin) had his head and hands re-attached – replacing his left hand with one featuring the usual, full complement of digits. I also trimmed off his awful puttees. His equally terrible feet will go soon too, to be replaced by the lovely resin ones.

 

Green stuff next for the collar and I think I’ll extend the sleeves of his jacket slightly using the same stuff. Buttons (probably good old nail caviar again) then he should be ready for primer. I’ll need to find something for him to hold – a spanner or length of chain maybe…. But that can wait ‘till after painting I think.

 

[matti64]

I've found green stuff on its own , while it takes great detail  can be a bit  soft and rubbery after it has cured. have you tried  mixing in a bit of yellow/grey milliput to give a final  hardness? I mostly try and go for a 3:2 green stuff to milliput ratio.

 

[Model Mate]

Ahh, that's not a bad idea! The Fimo is a little rubbery too, so it might not be a problem, but it's worth considering anyway; I'd never thought of mixing them - I'll have to give it a go.

[matti64]

1 hour ago, Model Mate said:

Ahh, that's not a bad idea! The Fimo is a little rubbery too, so it might not be a problem, but it's worth considering anyway; I'd never thought of mixing them - I'll have to give it a go.

They are both epoxy based  and quite compatible.

[Bullbasket]

Ah, the joys of wearing puttees! We were still wearing them "up country" in the Malaysian jungle in the 60's. Lurch is starting to look really good. Nice work.

 

John.

[Model Mate]

I drilled some generous holes in Lurch’s lower legs and glued them in place, fairing them in with a  fair bit of superglue (ahh-choo!) to fill the gaps. I then attacked the collar cuffs using green-stuff. I would have taken Matti’s advice and mixed it with milliput, but as I discovered I’d left my milliput at my boat, had to use it neat, which worked fine. It sticks so much better than either milliput or Fimo, and smooths out really nicely with tools lubricated with Vaseline, so was a pleasure to work with. The long drying time is also really welcome as you can go back and tweak to your heart’s content.

 

I’ve since added his buttons using good old nail caviar, superglued and pushed into holes drilled into his jerkin.

 

My dodgy Ali-express figures arrived in the post – mixed reactions really. Firstly, I’m not proud of ordering these in the first place, but with Stalingrad being a Russian manufacturer, there didn’t seem to be much option at the moment. The detail on the figures is really sharp – perhaps too sharp? It’s strange really; the clothing folds are razor sharp and really deep – pretty exaggerated compared to reality, but I guess it conveys an enhanced realism that suits viewing small models. I can’t imagine armour model manufacturers exaggerating the size of hatches, handles and rivets and so on for the vehicles, but we have this situation with figures – odd really. Secondly, the casting is pretty ropey – there’s a lot of “noise”, with flash and fuzz. I guess the moulds aren’t of the highest quality and get used for longer than they should. Overall, they give the impression of a digital photo with the sharpness turned up too high. The faces are also rather stylised and are nowhere near as realistic or animated as the Hornet ones.

 

I cleaned up one of the figures as best I could and fixed his head and hands on. He needed a bit of green-stuff repair to his short-cast collar. My own figures certainly aren’t from the “school of sharpness” and if anything are a bit too soft on the detail, so I’m not confident that I’ll be able to mix and match, but working on both options is an interesting exercise in itself and I can use the knock-offs to get guidance on pockets, badges, belt and so on.

 

Using this figure as a reference, I started adding pockets and whatnot to my own sitting fella including an extension to his jacket. Early days yet; there’s a way to go and he won’t look remotely real until his head and hands are back on. He also seems quite a lot smaller than the Stalingrad(ish) figure, but people are different sizes right?

 

[ColonelKrypton]

On 10/17/2022 at 6:36 AM, Model Mate said:

“Lurch” (he’s a tall, lanky fella with a gormless grin)

 

Surprisingly "Lurch" looks a lot my grandad.  He was a Sergeant  in the British Army in the Great War. He and his wife emigrated to Canada in the 1920's. 

 

Good to hear that the syringes worked out well.

 

cheers, Graham

 

[Model Mate]

I was thinking he looks a bit like our new king, but I prefer your backstory! The Hornet heads are wonderful - real characters but without being caricatures. 

[Model Mate]

After having his head and hands glued back on together with some new lower legs, my sitting man received a few more blobs of greenstuff to flesh him out (his knees in particular were a bit flat) and add extra details such as his collar.

 

He, along with Lurch and Captain counterfeit (actually he’s a Sergeant, but no matter) got a heavily thinned slosh of Humbrol 67 dark grey to act as a base primer and enable me to view them in glorious monochrome so I can see if they’re hanging together in any way realistically. I think the white spirit I thinned the paint with has got quite a lot of oil paint residue in it, so they’ve come out a bit blotchy and glossy, but it’s good enough to unify each of them and see what they’ll eventually look like.

 

They’re not perfect by any means, but they are an improvement over my first attempt, so it’s getting there. I’ll try sculpting a few others – one more at least for the interior of the vehicle and maybe a couple of onlookers.

[Model Mate]

I’ve mostly completed my 1:1 scale boat-building (or rather tweaking) work, and so am finally able to do a little work on the carrier; or rather the figures.

Here’s my lovely, compact new workshop – I need to get some LED strip task lighting in place, but already it’s a great place to be.

 

I did a little more “slapchop” research. For those who haven’t heard of this, it appears to be the flavour of the month in the world of wargaming figures and entails dry-brushing grey and white onto black-primed figures to pre-shade them prior to glazed colour coats. I’ve actually tried it before, but it didn’t have a cool name then, and I followed the monochrome preshade with airbrushed colour coats in place of brush-applied glazes. I have a love/hate relationship with my airbrush – the whole setup/preparation/clean up process is a bit of a pain, and I try to use a hairy stick where I can. As a result, my airbrush technique probably leaves a bit to be desired and I’m pretty comfortable with drybrushing for exactly the same reason, all adding to the temptation to leave the Iwata in its box.

I took Captain Counterfeit and dry brushed him with Vallejo model-air mid grey. I like these model-air paints for drybrushing; they seem to work really well as they appear to dry a little slower than the regular model-colour. This dry-brush coat was pretty heavy and I brushed up and sideways as well as down to get mid-lights on vertical surfaces. Using an air brush to pre-shade would require blowing from above in pretty much all cases, which would leave say a sheltered face un-highlighted. This might be more realistic, but would leave me without much dynamic tone in the face, so I think multi-directional drybrushing wins here, at the expense of smooth, clean airbrush work.

 

I followed the grey with a lighter application of white model-air, this time concentrating more on the upper surfaces.

 

The glazed coats followed, and this did give me a bit of trouble. I thinned the paint quite a lot with water on a wet palette, but there’s a danger of it working as a wash and settling into the shadow areas – exactly what we don’t want. Also, I tend to add a tiny drop of washing up liquid to my water, and this all too easily results in little bubbles, again in the recesses. I eventually started to get the hang of it – dilute the paint, but not so far as a wash, wick off the excess paint on a piece of kitchen towel and accept that each coat will be barely noticeable. By going over each base colour (uniform, puttees, flesh, boots) in turn, each of them dried in time for me to cycle ‘round again. I think I ended up applying about 6 coats. When it came to the hands and face, I ended up adding shadow and highlight detail in a more conventional manner on top. Details (buttons etc.) got a dash of paint and then I applied burnt umber, burnt sienna (flesh) and black pin washes using oils.

 

All-in-all, I was fairly pleased with the results – figures are a real challenge for me, and while this is miles off what I see other’s achieving, I’m pretty happy with it.

 

So it was time for Lurch to step up – here he is in his grey and white phases.

 

And partially completed colour…..

 

He needs a few more glaze coats, followed by the face and pin-wash treatment yet.

 

 

[ColonelKrypton]

Your figures are looking quite good.

 

As to "slapchop", I hadn't heard that term before until @Bertie McBoatface mentioned it in one of his postings. Another case of what is old is new again, something old re-invented by new hobby artists giving it a new and to their thinking, a more interesting name.  Some of the "modern" techniques use by the Warhammer ( et al )  artists are in fact very old - for example, use google and search for "sfumato"

 

As to glazes - indeed, a water based acrylic which has too much water added quickly becomes more of wash. Trouble with adding too much reducer or thinner to any paint is that you quickly reach point where you run the risk of causing the paint to break down. For glazing, a better choice is to add a glazing medium which contains the same acrylic binders as the paint but is much thinner and without pigments. Vallejo has their own glazing medium ( small bottles, big price per ml ) or you could use something like Liquitex or Winsor & Newton ( for example ) glazing medium or airbrush medium ( much larger bottle, better price be ml ).  My current favourite is Liquitex airbrush medium; it works very well for thinning Vallejo Game and Mecha colors. Some (most) of these medium seem to have a beneficial benefit of also retarding the drying time as well.

 

cheers, Graham

 

[Rob Pulham]

Captain Counterfeit looks mighty fine to me. I will be very happy if I get anywhere near that when I come to paint my two Tamiya Tankers.

[Model Mate]

I've still yet to break out the airbrush, but it's not too far off hopefully. In the meantime, Captain (or maybe Corporal?) Counterfeit's compatriot crew got the slapchop (or in my case slapdash) treatment. Still a bit of practice to be done here, although the results aren't too bad. I continue to struggle with figures; they just take such concentration, particularly on faces. An oil after-wash with bunt umber, black and burnt sienna on the uniforms, boots and faces respectively was slopped on, and they're still a bit glossy as a result. 

 

My own efforts - Lurch and the far right sitting figure do really stand out as being too soft on detail and generally not up to snuff, even compared to the poorly cast knock-offs. Lurch might still have a space on the gun carrier, but I think sitting man has lost his seat.... 

[echen]

Great figures! 

[Maginot]

The best part about modelling figures is drinking heaps of red wine and saving the corks to use as bases. Nice work, I reckon.

[Model Mate]

2 hours ago, Maginot said:

The best part about modelling figures is drinking heaps of red wine and saving the corks to use as bases. Nice work, I reckon.

Dead right; although it could also explain why their faces are a bit wobbly!

[Zephyr]

The sergeant sitting 3rd from the right is off the dial good. He's waiting patiently for the next insane order from Captain Cadaver with the invisible swagger stick!

 

Brilliant figures!

[Model Mate]

12 hours ago, Zephyr said:

The sergeant sitting 3rd from the right is off the dial good. He's waiting patiently for the next insane order from Captain Cadaver with the invisible swagger stick!

 

Brilliant figures!

Thanks Zephyr - of course he was the trial piece - it always seems to be the way - you splash colours on a paint mule and he ends up better than the target!

As a result he’s been promoted over my home-baked (or is it half baked ?) sitting effort. Private Lurch is still in thought, so my own boys are just about holding their own. To be fair, they’re up against reasonably stiff opposition. Whilst being poorly cast knock-offs, Corporal Counterfeit and his pals’ origins are as really good resin figures that I’ve learned a lot from. They’re actual not very realistic - too extreme in many ways; a pastiche - heavily textured and carachatured. For instance, their noses are impossibly thin slivers of resin, but as a result, they look “right” in scale once they get a coat or two of paint.

[Model Mate]

Work isn’t leaving much time for modelmaking at the moment, so I just played toy soldiers instead, posing my crew in anticipation of the final arrangement.

 

 

The vehicle looks white here, but in reality it’s overall Halfords grey with white highlights. The next job is to add some panel line pre-shade with dark grey and black. Ohh, and a swagger stick for one of the chaps as spotted by Zephyr – I’d just assumed he was extraordinarily camp….

 

Here’s the top brass inspecting the gun….

 

 

…which doesn’t fit in the carrier – grrr! My lovely new brakes that I was so proud of are, err, proud, and fouling the sides. Slight tweak required!

 

 

[Bandsaw Steve]

Great work!

[matti64]

That's looking great. The figures are really setting it off.  There's only one thing missing, which you  always see in photographs where there are Officers standing around, and that is a small dog.

[ColonelKrypton]

Everything is falling into place and the carrier, gun, and figures are starting to look really nice together.

 

cheers, Graham