Progress!

Yes! Progress! The reason for this positivity is that the T80 MiniArt tank is just about finished! The tracks are on, it has been treated to a wash to highlight nuts, hatches, hinges and similar as well as having had a bit of weathering powder added. I just need to add the clear lens to the light and I think I will call it a day. Not my favorite or best build and one that I started just over a year ago on the 20th March 2021 (click here to see my post on the start of this kit) so its not been the quickest either. However it will go on the shelf as a further reminder of my modelling ineptitude of which I have a lot!

Light fantastic!

Light fantastic - well maybe not quite what you were expecting but some progress with the K5350 Mustang truck fitting the various light lenses (well there are a couple left to do but most have been done) and that is fantastic because it brings this build closer to a finish! 

A couple of things happening in the picture above. Firstly is that I have masked up the door glass parts so that I can paint the metal support that separates the main winding window from the quarter light in the green body colour. It was only at this stage that I saw the level of detail with the hinges and clip to close the quarter light being incorporated into the moulding. Quarter lights were a common fitment on cars up to the early 1980s which shows my age as my first car had them! It also had a lot of rust! Secondly is that I am using Tamiya clear red paint to paint the inside of the light lenses which are the brake/side and fog lights. I would have used the clear paint in orange but despite a deep search of WMD HQ I could not find my jar of that paint although as always, I found a number of things I was looking for several weeks and month ago. I will probably find the clear orange paint in late December whilst looking for Mrs W's deeply hidden Christmas present that I will have forgotten where I stored it. However all was not lost as I had a jar of Tamiya orange paint. If you don't shake it and just unscrew the top you will usually find a very translucent part of the paint on the bottom of the screw cap. I was in luck and I used this to paint the indicators and various marker lights. I paint the inside of the mouldings which I have always found gives a good result but there is nothing wrong with painting the outside. To affix the lenses to the truck I could have used glue as there are special glues for clear type parts that are usually a PVA formulation. Ordinary plastic glues will just cloud the clear parts and it all gets very messy and a really good model can be ruined. There is another way that I use and that is to use varnish as the glue. A military modeler many years ago showed me a kit that he had built and told me that we tend to forget that varnish has adhesive properties. He had used it to his advantage in fixing many of the small components. On that basis I tried it and it works. With clear parts the varnish dries clear and does not 'cloud' or mark them unlike plastic glues or even super glue which some modelers use. Super glue may be tempting to use and in the right places it can do a great job but generally not on clear parts which it reacts with and marks them and turns them cloudy. For the K5350 truck I used Tamiya clear gloss varnish and painted it on around the area that the lens fitted into or onto and then placed the lens into the right place on the model. It now looks like this.

Just two more marker lights to fit to the side of the cab and two lenses inside the cab and that is done. The windows are next and if they go as well as the light lenses that would be fantastic! 

The wonders of decals!

 

The K5350 now has decals applied! Small steps but about 2 hours work for this job which seems a long time but sometimes you have to take your time. The areas where the decals were to be applied had been sprayed in a gloss varnish a few days earlier. The gloss varnish gives a smooth surface for the decal to sit on. Leave a matt paint finish and the decal, especially the carrier film around the edge of the decal, are likely to 'silver'. This is where air becomes trapped under the decal and shows it self as a silvery mark. Get a gloss varnish coat under the decal and you are well on your way to successful application! Famous last words! One of the other issues that can affect decals is where they have to conform to a raised or depressed surface. As the picture shows above the decals are not on a flat surface. Decals are not very good at doing much else than laying flat. If you want to get them to settle around the contours of the model you really need a decal softener. Apply this to the decal once in place and leave alone to do its work you will find that the decal almost magically molds itself to the surface contours. My softener of choice is Micro Sol but there are are others about which no doubt work equally well.

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Another thing that I have learnt over the years is to make sure you have a fresh blade in your modelling knife when you cut the decals from their sheet. Use a metal straight edge as well and keep fingers out of the way - I talk from the experience of not following this advice! 

There are many different thoughts on the best way to wet the decal to break the bond with the backing sheet. Some people leave the decal in a saucer of water and wait for the decal to almost float off. That is one method but if the decal does float off the backing sheet it becomes a job worthy of several swear jar contributions to then actually get it on the model in one piece and without it folding under itself. My preferred method is to just dip the decal and backing sheet nito some water for a few seconds and then just leave it on the workbench. The water will still do its job and after a few minutes the decal will be loose of the backing sheet and ready to apply.

I will let the decals fully set and then apply some matt varnish to give them some protection.

Take 5.

There has been a bit of a gap since my last post dealing with other matters. A couple of friends of mine are going through some life changing issues at the moment and my thoughts and hopes are with them. 

It has been a case of Take 5 for me for the last few days in model making terms. For those wondering what Take 5 is it is a term that is used to tell someone to take a rest for a few minutes. There is also the Dave Brubeck jazz classic that is Take 5 here. 

I did, however, this evening do my own version of Take 5 by completing the build of 5 MiniArt Russian Tank crew members that came with T-80 tank kit. I don't just throw these posts together you know! They just need fettling now and painting.

As you can see they are resting in the shadow of the K5360 Mustang truck that still awaits finishing! What will get finished first? Think I will Take 5 whilst I figure that out!

Cab painted.

 Yes I can confirm that the K5350 cab is painted! Finally! Its done! Finished - well the painting anyway.

The picture sequence below shows my untidy but as I would call it, functional masking, the cab and doors in primer (don't tell Mrs Woody they are posed on the cooker top which I need to now clean), then with additional 'functional masking to allow the green to be airbrushed and finally the finished cab. Note I had already painted the headlight units in silver so a ball of Blu Tack (other similar type products are available but this just happened to on the desk at the time) was applied to each one. Being involved in other matters over the past few days has given the paint time to harden before I give it a coat of gloss varnish to allow the decals to be applied and then sealed with a coat of matt varnish. Following that the glazing, mirrors, lights and windscreen wipers need fitting and some weathering to match the chassis and cargo body. Then it will be finally complete!

I won't tell you how I dropped the cab on the way back to the man cave AKA The Room of Gloom but it only broke a couple of pieces off and I must have been that relaxed that the swear jar did not need topping up!

Mirror, mirror on the workbench......

If you think that the K5350 Mustang truck model build is dragging on I must agree! However in my defense I keep getting dragged off into other things. Today it was a trip to the scrap yard to get rid of some scrap metal and than this afternoon cutting a very over grown hedge for a neighbour. However I have assembled the mirrors for the truck which are now on my work bench. Zvezda kindly supply some self adhesive ready cut reflective sheets to put on the mirror to imitate the real mirror glass. Looking at the mirror arms and their fragile nature made me think that to put those cut outs on once the mirrors were mounted to the truck was likely to end in a large contribution to the swear jar! I therefore devised a cunning plan of painting the front faces of the mirror bodies first which would give the rubber surround, then mount the reflective sheets and then mount the mirror bodies to the mirror arms. I could then either mount the arms to the doors and paint or paint separately and then mount to the door. Either way some masking tape on the reflective sheet will protect it from any painting. I will have to see if it all works out and will I be the fairest of them all???? I am sure Mrs. Woody has an answer for that!

In plain sight!

I have completed the chassis of the Zvezda K5350 Mustang truck for some weeks ago. This took many hours of work. The chassis has stood in front of me for hours on my modelling bench. I have spent many hours adding washes and weathering to it and even spending time watching the paint dry! Why then, having spent all this time looking at it, holding it and working on it, did it take the fitting of two jerry cans to the cargo body to realise that the battery box and mounted air tanks on it was upside down! In best Homer Simpson voice - Dooh! This mistake was in plain sight for weeks but I missed it - just goes to show you that even after years of modelling you can still get it fundamentally wrong! However I did manage to gently break the two joints of the battery box to the chassis and re-glue the right way round!

Above the battery box on the wrong way round so that the cargo body would not fit once some jerry cans had been fitted.

Having managed to gently break the joint it was time to put right my long standing error!

Now the right way round and the body fitted with the jerry cans in place.

The cab is almost ready for full external painting and once that is done there are really only mirrors, light lenses and decals to fit and the final weathering - Great!

Watching paint dry!

A gap of a couple of days since the last post as I have literally been watching dry on the K5350 Mustang Truck. Well there has also been some work on getting the last pieces of the cab fitted so it can be painted up but a lot of time has been taken up in applying 'washes' to the chassis and cargo body. I use very diluted brown and grey Vallejo paint. This is then painted on to the model and then I let gravity takes its course as the paint pigment gets trapped in nooks and crannies of the model as well as dulling the overall paint finish. As it is very dilute it does take a long time to dry hence you feel as though you are sat there watching paint dry. Its all very therapeutic though and you can get lost in time if you decide to intervene on gravity's effects by using the paint brush to start making streaking effects or adding paint here or taking it away from somewhere else. The idea however is to make the truck look well used - no shampoo and wax every Sunday for a working truck like this! In essence applying a dilute coat of paint like this is trying to emulate the environment the vehicle drives through. Take a car out on a wet day and it comes back home looking dirty. Rain itself contains dirt, the spray off the road has dirt and even the air itself can have dirt in it. All of this dirt just loves to deposit itself on vehicles - especially if you have just washed it! Something I have explained to Mrs. Woody on many occasions when she has deemed her car needs washing and I have tried to get out of it by pointing out that it will only get dirty again. Never works!

The cargo body started out looking like this 

and now looks like this

Still a way to go but you can almost feel that ingrained grime on the paintwork. 

Whilst I was waiting for the paint to dry I did have a look at some of my previous cherished models or as Mrs. W would say junk, which are beginning to reside on the shelves in the man cave AKA the Room of Gloom. Built about 18 years ago this is an Italeri 1/24 scale DAF 95XF Super Cab. It was a simple build as there was no engine to construct and it was one of Italeri's first ventures into their 'New Concert' of simplified truck kits. There were a few others but they were not popular with modelers and I am pleased to say all the new releases over the past few years have been full kits with engines and gearboxes.

Its hitched up to an Italeri Schmitz Dumper Trailer which is an impressively big model. Built in 2013 I recall managing to build the majority of the kit in a day! Wow! If only I could do that now. I can see from the photo that I need to get the duster out. Unlike the K5350 Mustang Truck this truck and trailer are cared for! 

Right back to the paint drying channel!
  

The Dirty Seven

This is not a WMD cheapskate rip off of The Dirty Dozen film! Mrs Woody holds the purse strings and me entering the World of making films is not something that would pass the funding analysis. Anyway this evening I left Mrs. W pursuing a handbag website and had a few minutes to do a bit more on the K5350 truck. Before finally assembling the wheels I need to do a bit more weathering. Trying to give the wheels that dirty look was done with the aid of a very dilute coating or two of Vallejo Earth colour. The idea is that being dilute it will be drawn into the nooks and crannies as well as toning the overall look of the tyres a bit further. They will need to dry overnight and you can see in the phot above they are still damp.

I also had time to put the seats, steering wheel and dashboard in the cab so that is almost complete. Not entirely happy with the weathering inside yet. I did use a Humbrol Dust Wash which took about 3 days to dry and still is shiny. I have splashed a bit of the dilute earth mix (almost sounds like the old advert for Brute aftershave with Henry Cooper and Barry Sheen - Splash it all over! - See the advert on YouTube by clicking here) that the tyres had in the cab to see if it will tone it all down. I will wait to see what tomorrow brings - possibly Mrs W's new handbag! Antway off to see if there is a Blood Moon again tonight as there was a great one last night.

  

Getting dirty!

No, not adult humour but time to start weathering the chassis of the K5350 truck. Over the last couple of days I have given the chassis a few washes of a MIG dust wash and added a few oil stains from a substance made by MIG that I have had so long that it is like tar! A bit of white spirit thinned it to a useable consistency and it was applied to things such as the universal joints and sump plugs. The exhaust which looked pristine in its aluminum paint will in real life have been made in steel and therefore will have rust as the heat of the gases burns off the protective paint. I replicated this with some suitable weathering powders. I still need to blacken the end where the diesel exhust would leave a sooty deposit.

As i need to finish off the inside of the cab so I can assemble it to paint the outside I spent a few minutes painting various things on the dashboard to make it look like a photo I had. Disappointingly the kit does not have a decal for this but hopefully given the small size, its location inside the cab and the steering wheel hiding it, my jerky painting may not be noticed! Finally to give the impression of a glass dial face I added a few drops of Tamiya gloss varnish inside the dial rims. Hopefully this will add a little variety to an otherwise large expanse of matt black. I also painted the two jerry cans that fit to the back of the body. Whilst the carrying case is painted in Russian Green the jerry cans themselves are in a Vallejo Reflective Green to add just a bit of variety. They will need a bit of weathering as well - you don't see that many pristine jerry cans in the military - they are usually a bit battered as they weigh so much, just like those paving slabs I reset today! Oh well I will just have to pretend they are jerry cans to make the job a bit more interesting when I do the rest of them!

Silver lining?

 

Way back when I started this build of the Zvezda K5350 Mustang it started with the engine block and gearbox. I was going to paint these before they were installed in the chassis but as the build went on that wasn't a realistic possibility - I just would not be able to paint the chassis whilst not overpainting the engine/gearbox to some degree. Hence I am now at the stage with the chassis painted where I need to paint the engine block, gearbox and transfer box for the 6 wheel drive in a silver or in this case an aluminum colour. Given the basecoat is black on the components, the aluminum Vallejo paint covered well. I used a mix of the ready thinned Vallejo Air and the ordinary paint that gave a first coat that in effect 'floated' itself into most of the nooks and crannies. A slightly thicker second coat went on once that thin coat had dried out. After that had dried a little black paint was brushed onto areas where the aluminium paint had strayed and it almost looks as though I know what I am doing! The disappointing part is that much of that detailed engine will be covered for ever and amore once the cab is installed. The kit offers the option of the cab in normal position or with the cab tilted to make the engine viable. No doubt with some though a way to make the cab 'tiltable' could be found but I am happy enough just to have a truck with the cab in driving position. If the guys at Zvezda had meant it to tilt then that's how they would have made it so I am not going to try to do what they did not! Fitting the cab and body back on the chassis you can see how much of the engine and transmission is hidden. Once I get some weathering on that will tone everything down and hide some of my dodgy painting - every cloud has a silver lining!

6 Wheels on my wagon - or is that 7 if you include the spare?

For those of a certain age the title is a play on that old hit Three Wheels on my Wagon by the New Christy Minstrels - see it on YouTube here . However for the K5350 six wheels on the ground is what it has and having test fitted them I am glad to find all six do touch the ground so no twisted chassis! Phew! I could not resist putting the body and cab temporarily in place and standing one of the MiniArt Russian tank crew figures that are being assembled at the moment next to it. For 1/35 scale its a big model. It is really coming together. Hopefully soon to be finished but I need to finish re-setting some large and heavy slabs over the next few days just so Mrs Woody knows I am not enjoying myself too much!

Its never as finished as you think.

A busy day at WMD HQ with a major session of gardening and some model making slipped in just to ease the pain of the gardening. I feel as though its more like Autumn with the number of leaves down on the ground and if I hadn't of been working so hard and getting warm (hope Mrs Woody reads that part) I would have been exchanging the T shirt for a fleece!

Model wise the tyres for the Zvezda K 5350 Mustand truck were painted yesterday and the wheel rims were painted today. When painting small components I try to afix them to something so that they can be
airbrushed without getting finger prints on them.

In this case a spare piece of plywood with small lengths of masking tape attached so that the sticky side is facing up acted as the base. I keep the lengths of masking tape short as if you try to do one long length the air from the airbrush will get underneath ala Marilyn Monroe and the masking tape and whatever is attached to it will start flying about. A coat of black primer which will also act as the top coat was applied and the wheels along with a few other bits were left to dry before being given a coat of matt varnish.

I have tried many matt varnishes over the years, some successfully some not so leaving what is more like a sheen to the item sprayed. At the moment I am using a product from MIG called Lucky Matt Varnish and it is great. It is so matt you almost expect a black hole to appear when you apply it to something!

I saw it at a model railway exhibition if anyone remembers those. I almost didnt but it as it was about £7 but you do get a lot and it works. I will be using it again.

The K5350 chassis has aslos been primed. There are a couple of bits that I missed but given the complexities of all the nooks and crannies that is not surprising.

I primed the chassis because I thought I had finished the construction work on it. However as the title of the post suggests it wasn't! Looking through the sprues for a couple of parts yet to be fitted to the cab I noticed on Sprue G two parts left. I knew this sprue was mainly engine components so looked through the plans. After a short while the two parts were located on the plan and then attached to the model.

I think the above photo shows the two parts in question very well! It does make sense to check back on sprues and I never throw them away until the kit is fully complete just in case. If you are wondering, yes there is a sprue with the bell on the bridge of a model ship out there somewhere just not here!

On the T-85 tank the tracks are just about there!!!!! Yey! I will however delay any further celebrations until that model is finished as it is bound to throw up some more issues!

Tyred of the tracks of my year!

 A bit of a play on words but as I revealed a few posts ago I have recommenced the MiniArt T-80 Light Tank with trying to get the tracks together. Slowly they are coming together but I am getting tyred, sorry tired of them and it seems like it's been going on a year! Hopefully another one or two swear jar contributing sessions should see both sides finished. As you can see from the picture below one side is done and the other side two thirds or so finished. They are not the best of my modelling but so long as they stay together that is all I need. A good dose of heavy mud weathering should hide my incompetencies! I have found the best way to put these together is to get short runs of about six links together and then run some liquid cement along the top. Not a lot but just enough to go into the joints. Where the tracks have to bend around the drive wheel or rear road wheel I then join several shorter glued lengths whilst the joints between the tracks are still soft and bend the length around the wheel and use some tape to hold it in place. Left over night the tracks should hold their shape as can be seen from the photo below.

 Hopefully, what this means is that I can paint the tank body, wheels and tracks separately which will make that process a lot simpler - I hope! You will also see that three Russian tank crew have arrived to see how their DIY tank build is going. When I bought this kit the main selling points were the price and the inclusion of five figures. Two remain to be assembled but I have to admit to being quiet taken by these figures which are posed well, have good detail and go together easily - unlike the tracks. Whether my painting skills will do justice to them remains to be seen but I have undercoated one with some paint left over from painting the tyres (see there was a connection in the title to this post) of the Zvezda K5350 Mustang truck.

The tyres are molded in a shiny black vinyl which makes the tyres look as though they have undergone a full on valet and detailing. So far as I am aware, apart from the Red Square parade in Moscow, most Russian military vehicles are usually out in the field getting dirty and the tyres take on that grey look as the rubber weathers and oxidises. To recreate this effect I used Vallejo Air light grey with a few drops of German Grey from the same company and a few drops of thinner to enable it to be sprayed using my airbrush. Once dry a coat of matt varnish was sprayed on to seal the paint and give a base for weathering. 

I placed one of the yet to be painted wheels in the tyre center just to see how it looked and it looked good so I took a photograph. It was only when I came to edit that photo that I noticed two things.

Firstly is that despite cleaning up the wheels from where they were joined to the sprue I need to do a better job - you can see two spots on the wheel rim towards the bottom of the picture. Secondly there is a rotation arrow on the tyre pointing the direction in which it should face when placed on the vehicle. I would no doubt end up with tyres facing the wrong way had I not spotted that so always useful to look at what you are building through a picture. You will spot things that you never notice when you just look at the actual model with the naked eye.

WMD out and about!

Mrs Woody is off this week which gives me the opportunity to leave WMD HQ and go and visit a few places. Following the various restrictions and general desire to stay safe going out is still very much a novelty. It is strange to be in places where there are other people in large numbers and it is almost a case of reacclimatising yourself to those types of situations that we just did up until 18 months ago.

Monday was a trip to the coast not that the weather was inviting but never the less we saw the sea! Tuesday Mrs Woody went off to a spa day with a friend of hers whilst I took the opportunity to have a 27 mile bike ride with good friend, fellow modeler and artist Mr Beecham. Always a good ride with plenty of chat on a variety of topics and we even found this on our travels.

Many of the old K6 Classic Phone Boxes have been bought by Parish Councils and whilst many have become libraries or a place to house a defibrillator some have become used for some very novel purposes such as this with its flower display. Hmmm. Wonder if that would fit in the garden??? Certainly make an interesting model on a modern day model railway layout.

Near to home we stopped for a refreshment stop which was the £3.50 lunch at a local CoOp, other lunch deals are available! I thought I had done well with a BLT, Pepsi and a Wispa duo chocolate bar. Having made our purchases and no doubt swelled the days takings for the CoOp, we sat outside on the bench kindly provided by said purveyor of lunch deal. The bench was actually made out of plastic molded to look like wooden slats and sitting down you could tell the sun had warmed it well - lovely! As I tucked into my BLT from the comfort of my heated seating area, I placed my Wispa Duo beside me on the bench looking forward to that moment of chocolate indulgence. The BLT was great and reaching down for the Wispa I found this.

Yes! I should have really thought the storage arrangements for the Wispa through a bit more! Far from being the chocolate delight I had hoped for it had turned, in the heat of the sun and the radiant warmth of the bench slats, into a liquid flat pack! I did take it home and refrigerated it for several hours but to be honest it was not the same when I ate it and it had lost its duo status to become as one! For some reason Mr Beecham found it all very amusing!

Todays jaunt out was to the National Trust property Belton House in Lincolnshire. One of the flag ship properties (never sure how a house can be a flag ship but there you are) of the Natuonal Trust and very popular today. The house and surrounding properties are fantastic and the gardens and grounds wonderful. 

There is even something a little cheeky in the grounds!

A sandwich and hot sausage roll from the cafe took care of lunch and near to there were the gift shop and second hand book shop. There is something about a second hand book shop that I find difficult to resist so whilst Mrs Woody searches through the crime/mystery murder section (I still ask myself if I should be worried!) I take a look at the more technical sections especially on transport. Todays finds were these two for the princely sum of £6 for the two. 

 

I lived on Malta for several years at a time when the buses were painted multi colours (some photos in a YouTube video here) and were basically locally coach built bodies on lorry chassis which resulted in a fascinatingly unique transport system. From what I can gather when Malta joined the EU they had to upgrade the buses in 2011 and at one point had ex London Transport bendy buses. Many of the old buses were scrapped but there are a number still kept and now serve with a vintage bus tour company. I am always fascinated by the railways of Ireland so the book on the Londonderry and Lough Swilly Railway should be a good read.

In amongst all the above I have done some model making with the Zvezda K5350 Mustang truck. Not a great deal but it has the start of wheels which I guess is important for a truck to have! No doubt the 1/35th scale troops will think that getting their truck mobile will be 'wheely' great! Sorry! Couldn't resist that awful joke. However I had to have some laughter as at one stage I did have brake cylinders on the wrong way round but after a lot of head scratching, in-depth consultation with the plans, a further contribution to the swear jar and the consumption of a refrigerated former liquid flat pack Wispa Duo it all came right! This is what things are looking like now.

 Its getting there!

On the 009 gauge model railway layout front, I think I may have come up with a cunning way to realign the track without having to buy a new point but more on that another time.