Pizza bases and modelling!

Some more work on the Airfix Dodge 1 1/2 Ton Personnel Carrier. I have started to weather it with some washes of dilute Earth Brown applied to the trailer sides and the canvas top of the truck.

As usual it looks terrible but just give it time. Whilst waiting for it to dry the two crew of the got their helmets on their heads which made them look a little better than having flat heads!

I am going to place the finished model on a base. Some years ago ready made pizzas used to come on a polystyrene type base. Good in supporting the pizza but not so good if you forgot to remove it before placing said pizza in the oven. Don't ask how I know! However when they were removed I did tend to keep some much to Mrs. Woody's bemusement. I still have a box full - we like pizza at WMD! 

I can just get the right length out of the 12 inch base. With some scenic treatment it should add to the model - that is the theory! 

No what's for dinner - for some reason I have a hankering for pizza!

Decal disaster day!

 

I guess you can not realistically expect decals from a near 50 year old kit to still be unscathed by the passage of time as the above photo shows. I had anticipated that they would be likely to be fragile so whilst spraying gloss varnish on the areas of the Airfix Dodge 1 1/2 Ton Personnel Carrier that would have decals applied to them I also gave the sheet of decals a coat to. I just tried these two decals from the sheet to see if my experiment worked but as you can see they will not release from the backing paper without breaking into small pieces.

The theory is that the varnish bonds to the decal preventing it breaking up when soaked to release it from its backing sheet. Well the theory did not meet expectations much as I probably don't meet most people's expectations of a modeller! My next step could be to source some aftermarket decals which might give some similar designs but the cost would probably be £10 to £20. However the WMD HQ stores does have a stock of unused decals from previously built kits and I may be able to cobble something together from these. They wont be right or accurate but they may just be enough for the truck to look interesting!

With no decals to put on for now I did some more painting of the figures. The closeness of digital camera photos does me no favours with these figures showing I have failed to properly deal with the mould lines and the painting is not the best. However from normal viewing distances they look OKish and that suits me! I could spend hours on this kit but fundamentally it was a part built glue bomb when I bought it and the drive train is assembled wrongly so it will never be a museum quality model. Strangely Mrs. Woody thinks I should be in a museum!

Despite the decal disaster tomorrow is another day as they say!

Now I am getting somewhere!

My famous last words - Now I am getting somewhere! Well, whilst a number of things in my life have not progressed much, Mrs. Woody's list of chores for me for instance, I do actually feel as though I am getting there with the Airfix Dodge 1 1/2 Ton Personnel Carrier. More painting of the figures today. Never sure of uniform colours but a search on the internet seemed to indicate that for USA WW2 GIs the jackets were a lightish brown with the trousers a darker shade. Whether that is right or not is almost immaterial as my painting skills will no doubt produce some unrecognisable and horrendous rendition of WW2 fashion! However the truck and trailer are looking more like they should. Amazing to remember that this was a £5 part built glue bomb kit when I bought it late last year at the Slaeford Model Makers Show. 

Even more amazing is that the kit has got this far in just a few months! That really is me getting somewhere!

Detail time!

Detail time for me on the Airfix Dodge 1 1/2 Ton Personnel Carrier involved picking out some of the deails in appropriate paints. One thing airbrushing can not do without a lot of detailed and sometimes impossible masking is to touch in those small items where a contrasting colour makes them stand out such as instrument dials. My choice is to use a small brush just that my eye sight these days requires magnifying glasses to try to get the brush and paint in the right place! 

The seats, instrument dials, lights, mirror, gun and the straps on the canvas have all been detail painted and I have started the figures - I just cannot paint figures but I will give these another go!

I think that Mrs. Woody wishes I was as detailed in painting the house as I am my models! 

If you want to see the ultimate in how not to paint you home have a look at this classic Mr. Bean sketch which as I have told Mrs. W is something even I would not consider - just yet anyway!

 

Whats on the menu?

A wet and cold start to March which pretty much follows on from much of February. I did manage to get out on my bike building on the 320 miles I managed last month which brought the total for the year to 527. Whether March will see that increased much is debatable following the weather forecast that suggests snow is on the menu next week!

On the menu today though was some more work on the Airfix Dodge 1 1/2 Ton Personnel Carrier. the body and trailer got another coat of Olive Green and the canvas top was painted a stone colour. The tyres have also been painted in grey. It all looks a bit bright at the moment but it will all tone down with some weathering. I still need to paint some details in like the seats and instrument dials before that happens though.

Not sure whats on the menu for tomorrow apart from more rain by the looks of it!

Looking brighter!

A wet day at the Rocks by Rail Museum today found me looking for an inside job. That seemed to follow a theme for me with several painting jobs over the past few days and I found myself in the dry of the cafe with the job of freshening the paint. Almost a ground hog day in that the cafe is painted white - just like my rebuilt conservatory! So out came the paint and brushes and following the removal of the Winter cobwebs painting started. I also cleaned up the various sockets and splash backs that had suffered from previous paint jobs where the painters were perhaps a little less concerned about keeping the paint just to the walls!

It may not look that different from the before picture above but believe me it looks a lot brighter - visitors may suffer from snow blindness if I get the whole cafe done!

Meanwhile back in the rain the new garage for Harriot the JCB and the CAT has a the beginnings of a back wall so the future is looking brighter despite the grey skies!

Back home I also had time to start painting the Airfix Dodge 1 1/2 Ton Personnel Carrier in olive drab green. It needs a second coat but that too is looking brighter!

It gets dark before it gets light!

Very philosophical that it gets dark before getting light but in this case I am talking about the Airfix Dodge 1 1/2 Ton Personnel Carrier! I can not believe I built this at the end of December last year! It was a bit of a half built glue bomb bought for £5 at the Sleaford Model Makers Show. It had a host of issues with the chassis but I did manage to make something of it. How good that something will be is going to be subject to the painting. Today I dragged the built kit out of hibernation and started the painting process. Being an American WW2 vehicle it will be olive green but before that is applied I primed the parts with my usual Vallejo black primer. This gives a great base upon which to start painting. Being black, any difficult to get to parts missed with top coat will, or rather should not stand out. And boy is this kit difficult to get the airbrush around! It took me about two hours in total to prime it. It is not going to be an easy paint that is for sure!

The main body of the kit. Luckily I had the foresight not to glue the wheels and several other parts in place to make painting easy - well easier then it would be if they were all in place.

Two hours of airbrushing later and it has all gone dark!

Light and dark.

I went out to the man cave with the intention of doing some airbrushing. The Tamiya Sd.Kfz 234/2 Puma needs its interior painting so I can glue the upper and lower hulls together before I can really move much further with this kit. The Italeri SU-100 assault gun needs to be painted as does the Airfix Dodge 1 1/2 Ton Personnel Carrier. 

The bad news first in that I did not have time to even show the Airfix Dodge 1 1/2 Ton Personnel Carrier the airbrush so that awaits attention on another day. However Mr. Airbrush did get some white paint on the interior parts of the Sd.Kfz 234/2 Puma. Most armoured vehicles were and as far as I know still are painted white inside to try to bring some light to the interior darkness. With that done I can paint the seats and other parts and perhaps just add a quick bit of weathering. It is not as though the interior will be on full display - just what you will be able to see through the open turret hatches.

With that done I moved to the dark of the black primer for the eventual top coat on the SU-100 assault gun. I have done a post or two before on the advantages of a dark primer in painting armoured vehicles but basically it means that you can get a shadow effect and any parts that are missed with top coat do not stand out. The picture was taken with the vehicle looking a bit like a beached whale in the 'spray box'! However it should look OK for the next stage once it has dried over night.

Talking of light and dark brings me onto the conservatory rebuild. There has been further progress as this picture in the light illustrates.

And being desperate to get away from my catering skills (i think they are joking!) they are working into the dark to try to finish the brickwork so they do not have to come back tomorrow! Amazing how versatile a mobile phone is with its torch facility!

A productive day!

A productive day model making wise. The Airfix Dodge 1 1/2 Ton Personnel Carrier has gone as far as it can without paint. The last of the body parts have been added and the figures included have been assembled apart from adding the helmets - makes painting the faces easier after which the helmets will be added.

Next up the Bachmann EWS Class 08 shunter has had a DCC chip added. 

This was not the easiest of jobs as it took a while to get the body off to access the insides. All I can say is that the screws were well hidden not just under the couplings but one under the coupling mount at the front and lets not talk about the hidden plastic clip! Anyway I got in without anything breaking or contributions to the swear jar.

What I was after was the blanking plug which is that small green part at the side of the copper coil on the main circuit board. The blanking plug allows the loco to operate on DC rather than DCC.

Pull that blanking plug off and plug in the DCC chip interface and that is it - plug and play! 

Well almost . You still need to get in the loco and put it back together! I also took the opportunity to add the separately supplied cab steps. Not sure why they are separate but it was simple enough even for me!

After all that a quick test on the layout.

I must have been inspired with progress as I have even started the Italeri SU-100 assault gun that Mr Beecham gave me. It is actually a Zvezda kit, the second they ever produced some time ago, boxed as an Italeri kit. Having already built a more recent release of theirs I can say they were certainly basic in their early kits which is actually nice! A few hours have seen the hull and wheels put together which is quick progress especially for me.

The wheels had a prominant mould line around them which required removal. Actually thinking about it I glued the two wheels together before sanding the mould lines smooth. Doing tow at once fits in with my working smarter not harder as I get older!

No idea if tomorrow will be as productive oir whether Mrs. Woody has othe plans for my time!

Things are moving on at Woody Builders Merchants.

The builders are back tomorrow! Not fully recovered from flu but good enough to get the footings concreted which is good by me. Turns that point of destruction to construction. And they have plenty of material to construct with as all this lot arrived today making WMD HQ look more like a builders merchants! Never mind! As I was once told, you can't make an omelet without breaking eggs! So WMD HQ will look chaotic for some time yet although there will be no omelets to eat unless of course Mrs. Woody decides otherwise! 

 Back in the sanity of my old man cave some more work was undertaken on the Airfix Dodge 1 1/2 Ton Personnel Carrier. This is never going to be a great model. It has major faults, many of the parts are warped leading to a leaning body and as I found out yesterday the previously installed (done by the first modeller butcher) are the wrong way round which explains a lot! However, look from about six feet away and it does not look too bad and is the best I can do without this becoming a major project. Well that is what I tell myself. The underside is finished and given the axle issue will never see the light of day again so I will glue it to a base! Topside there are a few more parts to fit but the cab and cargo bed are now glued to the chassis as well as the gun and its mount being completed.

This would be an excellent vehicle for raiding a builders merchants with all that carrying capacity!

Hooked!

Today continuing the building of the Airfix Dodge 1 1/2 Ton Personnel Carrier it was a matter of getting hooked or rather the lack of hooks. The towing hook for the trailer was broken off and missing and a hook was needed for the winch cable. It was a dive into the WMD HQ stocks of bras wire to find something suitable to bend to shape. They would not be scale but better than what I had or indeed not got. They were soon done and put into their respective places.

Other jobs done included fitting the folding windscreen and the cab doors. I just need to fit the Power Take Off equipment for the winch and the exhaust and then that will finally see the chassis finished. I will be glad when it is finished as it is fragile and not the prettiest thing to look at. Once the body parts are on it should gain significant strength. Top side there are a few parts left to fix including the machine gun and its carrier and some tools so it may get built before Christmas. As mentioned yesterday the builders doing my conservatory rebuild did not turn up yesterday and again were missing today. Apparently they are all down with flu. So, the question is will the builders be back before I finish this build? Given my progress on most matters Mrs. Woody would be backing the builders!

Hiding the evidence!

In case Mrs. Woody is reading this I will start off with the fact that I did some more in-depth cleaning today and then got out into the garden which is more like a muddy field as described yesterday. Today I cleared up the fallen leaves. I tend to leave the leaves on the flower beds. They give some cover and protection to plants and it is amazing what can survive over the Winter and re-emerge in the Spring. They also provide the wildlife with a source of bugs. What is on the grass - I won't call it lawn as it is far from pristine - gets swept up. With the recent wind there are a lot about.

Usually the bags I fill get taken off to the recycling center but with builders on site who did not turn up today and their skip on my drive the leaves got put in there - all five big  bags worth!

Now you may say, that's all well and good Woody but if the wind blows tonight they will all blow out again! Thought of that and with my philosophy of working smarter not harder as I get older I pushed some of the skips contents over to cover the leaves! Not only that but the evidence of my leaves was hidden! The perfect crime! Knowing my luck though, the bottom of the skip will fall out when it gets lifted revealing my activity!

Hopefully Mrs. W satisfied that I have been working hard will not read as far as this so I can say that with a feeling of wellbeing after my days work  I took a well deserved, to me anyway, hour off to work some more on the Airfix Dodge 1 1/2 Ton Personnel Carrier. The front bumpers needed reattaching and when they were broken off at some point before I bought the kit they took some of the chassis with them. The winch that was attached to them was also in pieces.

The missing chassis was replaced with two pieces of square section plastic strip which conveniently filled the gap and once the glue set it was filed to shape.

I also strengthened the chassis on both sides with some plastic strip which will be mostly hidden when the body is fitted. Either that or I can argue that it was a field repair following the activity of a reckless driver.

The winch was also rebuilt. Strangely enough the drum had no representation of a cable so a raid on Mrs. W's sewing kit (I really do hope she has not read this far) saw some black cotton liberated and wound round the drum. I just need to fashion a hook of some sorts to go on the end.

In my inevitable way I temporarily put the chassis, load bed and cab together to see what it looks like so here are some picture of that. 

It is coming on! Just wish my rebuild of the conservatory was! Hopefully the builders are back tomorrow unaware of the hidden evidence in the skip!