A small pocket - Falaise, 1944

[Corsairfoxfouruncle]

Those look quite smart in formation. 

[gwyndaffandy]

Now I have a question for the group build leaders.

I know there is a 25% rule around started kits and I would like to know where I stand with this. 
 

The Manor farm kit I have used for my buildings a comes with a workers cottage as well as the farm house, the barn and the tractor shed. When I built my radio controlled tank diorama I built the cottage to see if it would fit but ended up not using it. As such it is almost fully built (but is technically less than 25% of the Manor farm set).🤞
 

 

It is also a lot less than 25% of the diorama I am building, but it will provide a mount for one of the planes. The support wires will be disguised with smoke from the chimneys. If I can’t use the building then I will try and use a tree but I don’t have any option to lift the plane higher than the treetop. 

 

 

[Marklo]

Looking wonderful. Not to nitpick but I’d imagine that archway would have been for horses and or carriages so shouldn’t it have a road leading out of it..

[gwyndaffandy]

7 hours ago, Marklo said:

Looking wonderful. Not to nitpick but I’d imagine that archway would have been for horses and or carriages so shouldn’t it have a road leading out of it..

Thanks Marklo, I think the archway you are referring to is the entry to the barn. The single strip of tape will be a single lane dirt path that would run past the cottage but also provide access to the barn. The groundwork needs to be sorted next which should tie things together better…..

[vppelt68]

That's fabulous, Andy! All I'm expecting to yet pop up somewhere is the 2cm Flakvierling  

[gwyndaffandy]

3 hours ago, vppelt68 said:

That's fabulous, Andy! All I'm expecting to yet pop up somewhere is the 2cm Flakvierling  

thanks @vppelt68  if I could find one I would add it to one of the Sd.kfz 7s just like the old Tamiya kit. My only option I think is to scratch one and I am not sure I will be able to do that…

[Marklo]

13 hours ago, gwyndaffandy said:

kit. My only option I think is to scratch one and I am not sure I will be able to do that…

Would be extremely tricky in that scale.

[gwyndaffandy]

It has been a while since I have done anything on this little diorama. I have looked at it most days thinking about the bits I still need to do but have not really been feeling it.
 

Today I picked up a paintbrush and some Vallejo IDF sand grey paint which looked to my eye to be a good match for the stonework and I used this to fill in the white card corners. I still need to put in the brick pattern. 

 

I was also gifted some gutters and drainpipes by @Mjwomack , thanks again Michael, along with a few other goodies. I decided to try adding that detail as well. 

 

I started off with an outline of the Manor House where I was going to put the gutters. This also showed me what cuts I needed to make

 

Then using an angle cutting station I started cutting the gutters to the right size. When cut they were joined into nice right angles. 

 

The next stage was to add the drainpipes. The height of the Manor farmhouse was too tall for the drainpipes in the set so I made my own. For this I used 0.6mm solder and a mini drill. 

To mount the gutters I drilled some holes in the side of the structure and inserted some 0.3mm solder. This isn’t glued yet as I will need to paint this subsection before final

 

 

 

The gutter is then superglued onto the mounting solder. The drainpipe is intentionally long as it gives me something to hold onto for painting. 

I have then cut off the excess of the mounting solder and bent the drainpipe to run alongside the building

 

Apart from a couple of tanks, I haven’t built anything this small before and I continue to be amazed at the level of detail available and the amount of rabbit holes you can pop down

[Mjwomack]

11 hours ago, gwyndaffandy said:

I started off with an outline of the Manor House where I was going to put the gutters.

bit late this time around- but you'll be ready for the next one😉, on the  Metcalfe website are 'footprint' templates for all their range; ideal for diorama and layout planning.

 

11 hours ago, gwyndaffandy said:

The height of the Manor farmhouse was too tall for the drainpipes in the set so I made my own. For this I used 0.6mm solder and a mini drill. 

 

Ooh that's filed away under 'promoting best practice'! I bodge by putting water butts everywhere! This is streets ahead of me, simply marvellous. glad the bits have gone to. a good home👍

 

11 hours ago, gwyndaffandy said:

the amount of rabbit holes you can pop down

 

BUT! Monty says....

 

 

 

...they're the best bit- could explain why my progress is so limited! If you want to see how much can be done in so little, check out some of @Tim R-T-C's builds

[gwyndaffandy]

11 hours ago, Mjwomack said:

bit late this time around- but you'll be ready for the next one😉, on the  Metcalfe website are 'footprint' templates for all their range; ideal for diorama and layout planning.

that would be useful for future trips into the very miniature world. Thanks

11 hours ago, Mjwomack said:

 

Ooh that's filed away under 'promoting best practice'! I bodge by putting water butts everywhere! This is streets ahead of me, simply marvellous. glad the bits have gone to. a good home👍

not sure I would call it best practice, more making it up as I go along 😀

11 hours ago, Mjwomack said:

 

 

 

BUT! Monty says....

 

 

 

...they're the best bit- could explain why my progress is so limited! If you want to see how much can be done in so little, check out some of @Tim R-T-C's builds

I bet that was a fun clean up when you got home 🤣🐶

[gwyndaffandy]

Very small progress update from a quick session earlier this morning. 
The Manor farm kit comes with some spare brick printed card to be used as you see fit. The instructions suggest using it for walls with some left over card to fill the middle. There are also capping stones for the top of the wall. I decided to build walls to present a perimeter to the main house.

 

here are mine after I had cut my walls out

I started by cutting the card into the correct size. Unlike the other parts to build the houses in the kit, these do not come with guide cuts in place already so it is down to straight cuts with rulers for these bits. Here are my two walls and the stones to top them off. I have tried to angle the outer edges as these will sit flush with the end of the base but will be on an angle rather than parallel to the base

 

I picked up some fencing off eBay and whilst I probably won’t use it on this build I did cut one of them out, they are an inch wide and cut it in half to work as gates

 

With some offcutsfrom my wall I decided to see if I could create some damage. Given how inaccurate the rockets were I figured some would hit the wall rather than the enemy. 
The offcut were glued in the same way as the walls, although with a little less care. I then took a drill to emote a chunk of the middle and then cut out the top. Not sure yet if this will be replicated in my pristine walls 

 

 The other task I completed was to remove the roofs from the workers cottage. When I originally built it I hadn’t coloured the underside or edges from the roof sections and they were standout white. With a sharp knife I have managed remove them with minimal damage. These will be coloured grey and reattached 

 

[gwyndaffandy]

I looked around for some figures that I could use a came across an eBay seller that was selling some Victrix games figures by the sprue. I felt this was a cost effective way of seeing what the quality was like

They are well sculpted and are moulded in a solid plastic, they have also taken paint well

Here are the 2 sprues I got minus a few of the figures. 

 

and here are the figures with a bit of paint slapped on. 
 

 

 

[gwyndaffandy]

The other bit of progress I have made concerns the buildings. Again, it is a small detail but it does make a big difference. I have added the tiles that go on the apex of the roofs. There are a choice of red or grey in the kit. I went with red for some variety. 
also added are the chimney pots. I have done both the Manor farm building and the workers cottage so far

 

 

Here is one of the German soldiers in the doorway. He looks to be the right scale

 

 

The other thing I did was to add some smoke from a chimney to hide the support. 
I know that it would be unlikely that the fires would be on in August in France so I will have to imagine that it is cooking smoke

 

 

 

[Marklo]

3 hours ago, gwyndaffandy said:

I know that it would be unlikely that the fires would be on in August in France so I will have to imagine that it is cooking smoke

Well it was a particularly cold winter that year so maybe August was a bit chilly. Ingenious mounting method.

[gwyndaffandy]

11 hours ago, Marklo said:

Well it was a particularly cold winter that year so maybe August was a bit chilly. Ingenious mounting method.

Thanks @Marklo, being a bit chilly works for me.

Edited September 1 by gwyndaffandy
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[gwyndaffandy]

Last night I managed to complete the Manor farmhouse. The final stages were adding the gutters and then reattaching the upstairs window that I kept dislodging. 
The previously fitted gutters were painted in black and then reattached.  With the gutters in place I bent the solder down pipes to touch the wall and glued the bottom with some superglue. Then it was a simple case of nipping off the excess. I have gone for an underground drainage system rather than surface water collection for my final diorama. 
 

When I glued the windows in I wasn’t too worried about the amount of clear plastic that surrounded the printed frames as they just glued to the inside of the cardboard. When attaching one of the gutters I managed to push one of the windows away from the wall with my drill. 
To fix the problem I cut out a slit in the cardboard former that provides strength and shape to the building. Through this I could poke a sculpting implement to hold the window against the wall. I needed to pull the window out to cut off some of the excess, this was achieved with tweezers, bending the plastic and swearing. 
 

Here is the completed house. 

 

And with the Typhoon flying off after the attacking run. I think I will try painting my supporting rods a lighter colour so they don’t stand out as much in the smoke. 
 

 

I think that is all my individual components ready for me to put it all together into the diorama

[gwyndaffandy]

Firstly, apologies for the photo quality in this update. I did all this work on a newspaper and in a box. It is too messy (at least the way I do it) to then put it into the photo cube. 
 

The first step was to add some texture to the insulation board base. I took it out of the frame for this purpose to keep the frame neat. 
This is a Vallejo product. I have used tile grout for this task before but my tub had gone off. 

 

I spread this thinly but I am not a skilled plasterer or cake decorator 😳

When this had dried I marked out where I wanted the dirt roads to go. I had a narrow path around the Manor House and the front of the barn is going to be dirt

I removed the houses and spread some white pva glue onto the areas to receive the dirt

 

With the tape removed I replaced the buildings and liberally poured some chinchilla dust to replicate my dirt road. I will add some pigments later

 

 

I gave this a bit of time to set and then tipped off the excess. I know have a rough set of paths marked out

 

The next stage was to add some grass. For this I used some static grass and the same process as before. The plan for this was to give the Manor House a nice lawn/garden with some grass at the edge of the roads. 

The grass was applied with a static grass applicator. I am a novice with one of these but I keep on trying. The grass was the shortest I had and is probably a bit longer than it should be in this scale. I will assume that the gardener is away…

 

The final square is for a hayfield. I am adding this for a bit of variety. 

 

The final steps for today were to add the walls at the edge of the Manor farm and some hedges to mark out the fields and roads. They are grass strips cut to the correct length and stuck on with superglue. 

That is it for today’s progress. I did have an issue with one of the windows coming loose on the Manor House after I had stuck it to the base. My solution was to cut a section of the base away and re glue it from underneath. I have had a few of the windows come loose. I will use superglue next time rather than PVA glue like I did this time. 
 

Next up will be to add the vehicles, planes and figures, add some pigments to the paths and add some bushes to the garden

[Corsairfoxfouruncle]

Beautiful work on the diorama so far. Gardner… Hmm I would think a manor farm like this would use sheep, goats or cows to control the grass length ? 

[marvinneko]

Great details. Do you think the planes would affect / interact with the smoke coming out of the chimneys?

 

I'm impressed with the buildings, and the damaged wall looks very cool. The stone wall looks a little perfect though. Perhaps a bit of weathering and weeds?

[gwyndaffandy]

On 21/09/2025 at 21:35, Corsairfoxfouruncle said:

Beautiful work on the diorama so far. Gardner… Hmm I would think a manor farm like this would use sheep, goats or cows to control the grass length ? 

You are probably right there @Corsairfoxfouruncle, I will have to assume that any spare animals have been requisitioned at some point earlier in the war. 

7 hours ago, marvinneko said:

Great details. Do you think the planes would affect / interact with the smoke coming out of the chimneys?

 

I'm impressed with the buildings, and the damaged wall looks very cool. The stone wall looks a little perfect though. Perhaps a bit of weathering and weeds?

Thanks @marvinneko, I think the planes would be higher in the sky in reality and would avoid the smoke where possible. The smoke is only there to support the planes and I haven’t got any other way of doing it. I could use clear plastic rod but that wouldn’t look right either. 
I will revisit the wall, in my head I have been playing with having the Tiger as a recent victim with the turret coming off the hull, this would lend itself to the wall behind it being damaged. 

[mick]

great work

[gwyndaffandy]

After deliberating for a while and building a few rally cars I made my final decisions. I am going to have the tiger being hit by a rocket. The turret just fits into the hole on the hull. This made it a simple task to remove the turret. To balance it in the air I cut down one of the clear plastic tubes that come on paint brushes. I coloured some of the cotton with some red and orange sharpies. I used the same pens to colour the tube as well. Then the turret was placed on top. 

 

The other thing I wasn’t happy with was the metal supports for the smoke and airplanes. I sourced some clear, thin plastic rod from the internet and used this. I think it is less noticeable. 
Other changes as this has evolved are a couple of damaged wall sections next to the Tiger. This followed the same method as m when I trialled it earlier in the build, I have added some pigments to the gaps and directly behind it. 
The figures have been added to appear as though they have left the 251 and are heading for the cover of the house. It maybe that they would run for the hedges. I have cut off the bases and attached them with superglue

The kubelwagen has 4 sitting figures that are on the small side, I have added the canvas cover to hide them. They are heading for the safety of the barn. 
The final thing was to add some flower bushes, these are commercially available plants in 1/35 that work in this scale as bushes, and some pigments on the stone pathways. 
I will need to set up the big photo cube to take proper pictures. But in the meantime here are a couple from the small cube

 

Thanks to all that have looked, liked and commented, in particular @Mjwomack for introducing me to how crazy some of the details are in this scale. This has been my first proper build in 1/144, I think there may be a few more in the future…

[Marklo]

That really has worked out extremely well. Love the whole thing. Especially good considering you could probably inhale some of the models 😃

[gwyndaffandy]

Today I have managed to set up the big cube and have snapped some better pictures. This one is then off to the gallery

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Corsairfoxfouruncle]

Excellent work on this. Ive always wanted to do a diorama or even a vignette. I just don't have the skills to do figures.