BWP Posted December 18, 2010 Share Posted December 18, 2010 Hi all Been actively modelling (as an adult) for a couple of years, although most of my output has occurred in the last twelve months, since I moved to a house that actually has room for a work desk and shelves to display my efforts! My primary interest is in armour modelling, but I also dabble in science fiction themes and maybe even the occasional aircraft. For vehicles I am "scale neutral" but for various reasons I have been concentrating on 1/72-1/76 scale kits; I expect this to widen out to include other scales in the not-too-distant future. I hope you like what you see here. 2010 has been a pretty good year for me, in terms of output. Something new for me was this all-resin kit from Cromwell. Excellent detail, but not so excellent that some minor improvements could not be made. More pictures, including "in progress" shots, can be seen here. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BWP Posted December 18, 2010 Author Share Posted December 18, 2010 And this is the trophy I built for an annual wargaming tournament held locally every April. It is 1/48 scale, the Tamiya Universal Carrier Mk.II, scratch-converted to a Mk.I. Hauler PE, resin replacement suspension from Gaso.line, and resin stowage from Black Dog was also made use of. Decals were from the Bison "New Zealand Armour" sheet and depicts a NZ vehicle in Libya. I probably put more effort into this kit than anything else I have built to date and it was quite satisfying for it to come out as well as it did! I didn't get to bring the kit home . More pictures, including "in progress" shots, can be seen here. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Deon Posted December 18, 2010 Share Posted December 18, 2010 Always nice to see some armour, particularly the less glamorous stuff in braille scale Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BWP Posted December 18, 2010 Author Share Posted December 18, 2010 Another Resin kit, this one a Panzer IA from Cromwell. A nice little kit, but bizarrely the hatch is molded open, forcing you to fill the space with something! I used a figure (or half a figure to be more accurately) left over from a Fujimi Panzer I kit. Decals were from Aleran. I had fun painting this fella and then had a disaster with my spray varnish, which crystallised due to the cold weather. I cleaned it up as best as I could but it didn't recover completely (although it looks worse in the photos than it does in real life). More pictures, including "in progress" shots, can be seen here. And now for a real change in scale and subject! This is the Polar Lights 1/1000 Enterprise, generally considered to be an excellent kit. (Nowadays it is available from Round2.) Well, I had an unbelievable amount of grief building it. It almost went into the bin on more than one occasion. Nothing sat right, massive filler needed, parts kept breaking off, the decals disintegrated ... very frustrating. But apparently it's just me, as many people have built this kit with no issues at all. Oh well, I have another one in the stash, I guess I'll find out eventually if I'm any luckier the second time around! Regardless, I think it came out OK. There are parts where you don't want to look too closely though .... More pictures, including "in progress" shots, can be seen here. My first 1/72 (as opposed to 1/76) vehicle kit. This is the ESCI T-34 Model 1942, and a fine kit it is (especially for its age). Still, it has plenty of room for improvements. All of the wheels were replaced with resin ones from Al.By. The tracks are PE from Ace. The gun barrel is a brass one from Model Point. The turret hatch is from a Dragon kit. I did a lot of scratch-building work on the gun mantlet, and the handles are from wire. There is no interior, so I blanked off the turret interior and the back of the hull. There is the same figure from another ESCI T-34 kit doing service as the driver, only visible though the front hatch of course. Decals from an Eastern Express T-34 kit. (I have a lot of T-34 kits in the stash.) The only major trauma on this build is that the track lengths were too short. I was able to fill the gap with plastic tracks from the kit. No build is perfect! More pictures, including "in progress" shots, can be seen here. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AnonymousDFB1 Posted December 18, 2010 Share Posted December 18, 2010 Nice work and well done on the win Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BWP Posted December 18, 2010 Author Share Posted December 18, 2010 A small change in pace with a very small kit of a very small vehicle -- another resin kit from Cromwell, the Russian T-37A amphibious tank. Very easy to build -- although I did need to scratch replacement details under the hull -- and even easier to paint, I chose a captured Finnish vehicle as the blue and white stripes were a nice relief from overall green. No decals required. More pictures, including "in progress" shots, can be seen here. Back to the Panzer I, this time the ESCI 1/72 example. This kit has a very good reputation, but IMO it deserves none of it. There are some serious accuracy issues with the hull shapes. It features "tropical" hull shapes, but has none of the other wartime attributes -- no Notek light etc., and does not even have a full complement of pioneer tools, normally rather prominently displayed on the upper hull. Other aspects of the kit are very simplified. Some simplification in a kit this small is not unexpected, but Fujimi avoided 90% of this kit's problems, and in a slightly smaller scale to boot. All those complaints aside, it was satisfying (from a modelling perspective) to get the kit looking as good as it does. I've got two more of these in the stash, and I'm not really looking forward to building them. More pictures, including "in progress" shots, can be seen here. It doesn't get much simpler than this. Another Cromwell resin kit, or actually a pair of them, two Model 1940 T-34s that each feature only two parts (hull and turret). The only difference between them is the turret -- this one is the cast turret. The only modification required was to relocate the front headlamps a little further up the front glacis plate. A lot of clean-up was required in the suspension though, and underneath there is no detail at all. (Not really a problem as you can't see it, of course.) The bits you can see are excellent, though, with the exception of the tracks which are disappointingly flat and featureless. Painting was pretty simple! I was going to use home-printed decals replicating a scheme provided in the UM Model 1940 kit (the actual decals from that kit are too large!) but there was something wrong with them and after two failed attempts I decided the no-decals approach would work fine. :? More pictures, including "in progress" shots, can be seen here. And the brother to the previous vehicle, this one is the welded turret version. All of the previous comments apply here, although obviously the paint job was a bit more interesting! No decals were required. More pictures, including "in progress" shots, can be seen here. Lordy! It's an Airfix kit! Albeit a very heavily modified one. Tracks and gun barrel from Dragon; idlers, drive sprockets and side fuel drums from ESCI; the rest is scratch-built with plastic, wire, and a lot of putty and subsequent sanding to shape the turret. More pictures, including "in progress" shots, can be seen here. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CliffB Posted December 18, 2010 Share Posted December 18, 2010 What a great range and choice of subjects Cliff Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BWP Posted December 18, 2010 Author Share Posted December 18, 2010 "Star Trek Space Ship Set" by AMT/ERTL; scale is 1/1600. Decals by JT-Graphics. Not at all difficult to build, but each ship has poor accuracy in many of the details and quite a lot of filling and sanding was needed, not just to fill the gaps (which were considerable) but also to modify the shapes of many of the pieces. Still, not too shabby, I think. More pictures, including "in progress" shots, can be seen here. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jimbuna Posted December 18, 2010 Share Posted December 18, 2010 Really nice work....well done Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BWP Posted December 22, 2010 Author Share Posted December 22, 2010 Last kit for 2010 ... the Airfix 1/32 kit of Monty's Humber Staff Car. More images, including work-in-progress shots, can be found here. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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