Outhouses and seating arrangements!

A very strange title to this post but it will make sense!

Yesterday I took a trip out of WMD HQ to visit a model shop. First time I have been in one for nearly a year due to Covid. Much as mail order has its advantages there are times when it is just nice to be able to physical see and touch things. My wallet was lightened and my arms full as I left but as I have found out that Mrs. Woody now reads this blog I will just admit to a few modest and essential purchases!

Meanwhile back at WMD HQ some more progress on the Zvezda K5350 Mustang truck with the body now taking shape. The seating arrangements in the title to this post refer to the seats in the body for passengers to sit in. Looking at the wooden slatted seats and bearing in mind the leaf spring suspension on the chassis its not exactly seating you would find in the first class cabin of your favorite airline. However, as this is designed for hardened troops they are no doubt used to the harshness or maybe take a cushion with them!

The seats in the first photograph are made up of 14 separate parts with the supporting frame being very fine and fragile. Experience and many swear jar moments have taught me that the best way of removing parts like this from the sprue is to use several light slicing passes over the plastic which means you are minimising the pressure and force on the part itself. For each frame there were three attachment points to cut through. Of the six supports I managed to get five separated from the sprue without incident - the sixth semi broke but was repairable. There are some more seats to build that attach to the sides of the body and then once these are joined to the floor that should bring the body build to a conclusion.

As I mentioned in the last post shelves are now up in my man cave AKA The Room of Gloom. I am now slowly moving models out of the house into their new home. The latest one I moved in was this 1/35 scale model of the KV2 Russian Heavy Assault tank. I built the kit in about 2014 from a kit from some obscure manufacturer. It was a simple kit and built easily and is one of my favorites. 

As you can see it was not designed to win any awards for finesse but in typical Russian fashion it was almost indestructible. I have read that in the early part of the Second World War the German army had very little capability to deal with these and other Russian tanks. The only way that they could stop them was to try to damage the tracks to immobilise the tank and then bring up artillery at close range to try to destroy the tank.

Why the outhouse in the title to this post? Well the KV2 had that enormous turret and to many soldiers it just looked like an outhouse plonked on a tank chassis and it became known as the Outhouse!