Show us yer stuff!

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Gazza
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Re: Show us yer stuff!

Post by Gazza »

A few more Italian aircraft (Macchi MC.202s this time) under a different flag. There's a little bit of silvering under some of the decals, so I'm going to have to redo those areas.
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chrisswim
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Re: Show us yer stuff!

Post by chrisswim »

Gazza, Looking super sweet!

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Chris

redleg
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Re: Show us yer stuff!

Post by redleg »

Great infantry pics Gazza, and excellent looking aircraft!

Great work Chris!
Redleg's Website: micropope.webstarts.com

pmskaar
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Re: Show us yer stuff!

Post by pmskaar »

Here are my first completed GHQ M-13/40s. This is actually my first completed project of 2023 as well. I used Flight Deck Decals Italian Tactical Markings on the sides and rear of the turret but had to trim off the tank numbers to make them fit. I think they add a lot to the models.

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chrisswim
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Re: Show us yer stuff!

Post by chrisswim »

This is an M-163 Vulcan. The hull had the matching shape for the turret. My thinking is this is an ‘old’ M-163. More than 30 years old.

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Chris

panzergator
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Re: Show us yer stuff!

Post by panzergator »

Chris, rather likely that is the CinC Vulcan without the flotation pods on the sides and splashboard. My old GHQ Vulcans had the pods.
All blessings flow from a good mission statement.
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Mk 1
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Re: Show us yer stuff!

Post by Mk 1 »

Here is my most recent refurb project. This was in part inspired by an AAR posted by Mark Luther a while back, in which he featured an older casting of a GHQ Tiger II that was the star of his game.

I have more than a few older GHQ models in my "ready forces" box, and can only hope that they make as proud of a showing if/when they wind up on a gaming table.

Well, can only hope if I do nothing to improve their appearance. Can do more than hope if I get my %## in gear and complete a few more refurbs.

So here is one. I had refurbed some of my T-34-85s a while back (posted earlier in the thread). But in that case only one tank out of a full company was an older casting. The rest of the company were late 1990s castings (still current) that are beautifully modeled but had not been painted up to the level that did justice to the castings. I have a fair quantity of T-34-85s -- enough to make 3 full companies + brigade command. This includes about 15 of the older castings from the 1970s. As I had only refurbed one company, I decided to bring the rest of them up to my current painting levels.

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This is how the older 1970s GHQ T-34-85s looked before the refurb. They were originally spray primed, then spray painted with Testor's Olive. A poor choice of colors, and not a very well done painting job. The pray paint was too heavily applied, obscuring some of the detail on models that didn't have a lot of detail to start with. In the background you can see some of their brothers who have already been repainted, to see where I was going with this.

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Here is the company of all-1970s castings after the refurb. The color is a richer forest green (looks a bit darker in the pic than it is in person). I did not strip the old paint, but used washes and dry brushing to bring out some of the detail that was otherwise so washed out. I added a few extra items -- ammo crates and unditching logs -- just to give some interest to the otherwise rather barren old models.

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My old way of identifying command tanks was just to put colored smudges on the undersides. Red indicated platoon command tanks. Yellow was a company commander.

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In my prior refurb I decided to use the GHQ castings with rolled tarps on the back of the turrets as the platoon command tanks, with an added commander in the hatch as the company commander.

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So I did the same with these as well. The tarps are made from rolled aluminum foil. The company commander is a clipped upper body of an artillery crew figure.

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These old tanks are veterans of many game tables. Next time they make their way out, I will no longer feel as disappointed in their appearance.

-Mark
-Mark 1
Difficile est, saturam non scribere.
"It is hard NOT to write satire." - Decimus Iunius Juvenalis, 1st Century AD

BurtWolf
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Re: Show us yer stuff!

Post by BurtWolf »

Great report Mk1 - interesting to see those old castings. I have some and was saving them for destroyed tank markers (way down in the priority list at this point)…

Question for you on turning the Polish bodies towing vehicles into Fiat 508s, how did you remove the casted side wheel spare? Thanks!

Mk 1
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Re: Show us yer stuff!

Post by Mk 1 »

Question for you on turning the Polish bodies towing vehicles into Fiat 508s, how did you remove the casted side wheel spare? Thanks!
Here's kind of the whole process.

First, the starting point:
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From the GHQ catalog, this is the "Polski Fiat" PZInz302 that we start with.

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This is my core set of hobby tools. You see (bottom to top) cuticle cutter, flat-sided tapered triangle head metal file, hobby knife (xacto/razor blade), thumb drive, bent flat-headed tweezers and pin headed tweezers. I didn't use all of them for this project, but I have this one pic of all of them for potentially multiple project posts. The H-35m39 tank model is just to provide a sense of size.

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We will make a few small modifications to the model.

First, I used the cuticle cutter to do the first level slicing off of the spare wheel. Then I used the hobby knife to scrape the cut area flat (you get a pronounced ridge with the cutters (pronounced at this scale, at least). Then I used the flat-sided triangle head metal file to file the side of the vehicle where the wheel had been located.

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Here you can see the result. The wheel is now gone.

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The PZInz302 had the front doors removed compared to the original Fiat 508. So I then filled the open space with acrylic gel medium, and smoothed it out with a flat toothpick. Any sort of modelling putty would probably do for this step, but I find the acrylic gel to be convenient because I use it for mounting and texturing my infantry bases, so I have it handy and am familiar with working it.

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A spare wheel is then added on the back (alas the process of removing the spares from the sides does not generate useful spares for the back, so these were sourced from towed gun bases in the extras bin).

If the intent is to leave the vehicle with the top open, there is an added complexity in that he rear seat in the PZInz302 faces backwards. In the Fiat 508 it faces forwards. That is easily enough disguised by placing a kneeling gun crew figure, with legs snipped off (with cuticle cutter) into the position that someone seated on the proper back seat would take up. Now you can't really see that the seat is in the wrong place. Also, the folded down roof needs to be modeled along the back of the rear deck. Again I used acrylic gel for this, but any suitable modeling putty would work.

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To model it with the roof up, I used the canvas roof from the GHQ US Jeep models. The struts were clipped off. It was shortened a bit in length, to match the distance from the front of the rear deck to the windshield (note that on the Fiat 508 the rear deck was not covered by the canvas roof when it was up). The corners were rounded down a bit with the flat-sided metal file. Then some acrylic gel (putty) to fill in the corners a bit.

Kind of a long answer to a short question. But maybe others can draw out some information on other issues too.

-Mark
(aka: Mk 1)
-Mark 1
Difficile est, saturam non scribere.
"It is hard NOT to write satire." - Decimus Iunius Juvenalis, 1st Century AD

BurtWolf
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Re: Show us yer stuff!

Post by BurtWolf »

Thank you for such a detailed answer! I appreciate how much effort you put into modifying and making a really good kit bash. They came out well. I just bought my sets so in the next few weeks I will try it out and report back in results on the forum….

redleg
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Re: Show us yer stuff!

Post by redleg »

Great work you guys! Pete - your work is spectacular s always! I'm following your work on Facebook as well!

Mark, great posts! It's crazy to see the difference in the level of detail between the early sculpts and the newer ones! And your kitbash is really awesome! Thanks for the tutorial!
Redleg's Website: micropope.webstarts.com

Mk 1
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Re: Show us yer stuff!

Post by Mk 1 »

BurtWolf wrote:
Tue Jan 24, 2023 4:35 am
I just bought my sets so in the next few weeks I will try it out and report back in results on the forum….
For a bit of inspiration -- perhaps for BurtWolf in his kit bashing, perhaps for the rest of us as we anticipate his results ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHlmnsCZObo

A short (1 min) video collection of scenes from Italian wartime propaganda reels that have Fiat 508s in them...

Really kind of gets me in the mood to take mine out and push them around on a table.

:wink:

-Mark
-Mark 1
Difficile est, saturam non scribere.
"It is hard NOT to write satire." - Decimus Iunius Juvenalis, 1st Century AD

BurtWolf
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Re: Show us yer stuff!

Post by BurtWolf »

Those are bouncy little cars ha! Appreciate the footage, good stuff.

Gazza
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Re: Show us yer stuff!

Post by Gazza »

Just the finished photo of those MG 151/20s that I posted in the thread about painting camo.
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redleg
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Re: Show us yer stuff!

Post by redleg »

Those look great Gazza! You must have some very powerful glasses to paint those!

I finished up some Wolverine bridge layers last night, and they turned out fairly decent. I feel like I’m starting to nail my technique down, but there is still some variation from batch to batch as I paint. My last step is to dry brush, and sometimes I get too much paint and it becomes a wet brush step!

Overall, I’m pretty pleased with the model. I got 6 of them and they are all going to my ACR project, assigned to the regimental combat engineer company. I did 3 bridges in travel mode and 3 in deployed mode. None of the travel mode bridges are glued to the vehicles.
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Redleg's Website: micropope.webstarts.com

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