There is a lot going on at WMD at the moment so progress with the A39 Tortoise is even more glacial than usual! However, some top coat paint has been applied.
There is certainly more to apply but a start has been made and for reasons that I will talk about in a day or so it is going to have a long time to dry and harden before anymore gets applied!
Although the area that WMD calls home was not severely hit by the recent storms I was taken aback to see just how powerful the wind was.
Now that is quite a big tree and the trunk must be three foot or more in diameter but being out in the open it apparently stood no chance. No doubt a bit of a land mark to locals but now gone!
Not sure what the guys in the Transit van are thinking of doing but they will need something a bit bigger to cart that off!
Meanwhile, the second tallest structure in Grantham which is another land mark withstood the storms but wont be intact for much longer as the demolition team are at hand!
They do have more than a Transit van to cart the spoil away though!
A landmark today and gone tomorrow!
144 track links cut from their sprue, cleaned of their mounting points and stored in a jar ready for the day that I get round to building these tracks for the A39 Tortoise.
Just like the vehicle being big, these tracks are big!
On the left, two links from a T34 tank which is no small vehicle. On the right and dwarfing the T34 track links is one A39 link!
I finally got round to finishing the priming of the A39 Tortoise so it is all in a grey primer that should be a good base for the darkish green that the tank will eventually be top coated in.
The primer needs 24 hours to dry so I will need to be patient which is not something that comes naturally!
I have mentioned the sheer size of the A39 Tortoise both in reality and in 1.35 scale on several occasions. So just out of interest I got my same scale Tiger down from the dust shelf where I tell Mrs. Woody that models weather naturally when she points out the accumulated dust and cobwebs and put it at the side the A39 hull.
Now the Tiger was a large tank but compared to the A39 you can see the that there is a bit of a difference which manifests itself even more if you take a look from above...
Either way, if I were facing up to either of these I think that I would be look for a big hole to get into!
The WMD Film crew have been busy again with another YouTube release which explains why my model making may be taking a bit of a 'holiday' for a while!
Well my thoughts that the track links to the MENG A39 Tortoise kit would swallow up a lot of time were correct!
So far I have managed to detach and clean up 36 of the 144 links. That has taken a couple of hours and I am not even going to do the maths to determine how much time these will take as I think it would be depressing! It is just a case of getting on with it!
To try and remain positive I have actually started to glue together some of the links. I cannot do them all as I need to have the running gear on the hull so that I can drape semi glued tracks over it to take the necessary shape. The joys of model making!
Whilst I wait for primer to dry on the Meng A39 Tortoise kit I decided to look at the tracks.
Three sprues of 48 track links means a total of 144 links to cut out, clean up and assemble!
I managed to cut out and clean up 6 links and just from that I can tell that I will be spending a lot of time on these! That will certainly fill in the time I am waiting for the primer to dry.
The painting process on the Meng A39 Tortoise kit has started with a start being made on applying a Vallejo grey primer.
The cooler weather, the nature of the primer and the complexity of the parts to be painted means this will be a process spread over several days! That means cleaning the airbrush will be a regular occurrence too! Oh joy!
