Small steps towards the finish.

 

Its at this stage in the build of a relatively complex kit such as this Zvezda K5350 Mustang truck (there are 474 parts) that things slow down a bit. You need to start painting parts of the kit which will be difficult to do so if the kit were fully assembled and then bring sub-assemblies together giving time for both paint and glue to dry properly and only then can the next stage of the build take place. It can be frustrating but patience is the key word. Try to rush or take a short cut and the chances are it will go wrong. How do I know? Because I write from bitter experience. I have tried in the past to rush and nine times out of ten regretted it and made large scale deposits to the swear jar as well as causing damage to the model being built. 

The current example of being patient is that before I can go much further with the cab I need to add the steps either side. I have not added these before as they are fragile and I wanted to lessen the chance of damaging them by fixing them in position as late in the build as I can. There are only three parts to each step but they are small and need time for the glue to harden properly in order that they stand the best chance of surviving intact during the rest of the build. 

As I spent most of what was a wet Sunday sorting out an ever increasing pile of household paperwork I only had time to construct the steps this evening. However to bring this post towards a conclusion, they are indeed small steps towards the finish! I don't just throw this blog together you know, it took me at least two minutes to think up the title of this post!  

On the musical front, for the past few days working on the model I have been listening to compilation tapes in the 'Now that's what I call music' series. Started in the mid 1980's here in the UK, the format has lasted well. I started with the original album which was just called 'Now that's what I call music' and then started collecting them as they appeared up to about 'Now that's what I call music 42' so I have plenty more listening pleasure in stock. Looking at Google I see the series is still going and is now at 'Now that's what I call music 109' but the music just isn't like it used to be! Oh hum! I do sound old!

Cabin Fever!

 

Well as witnessed by the above photographs and after a fevered evening of work the crew cabin of the Zvezda K5350 Mustang truck is coming together (I don't just throw the title to these posts together you know!). As I have said from the very beginning of this build the level of detail in this kit is astonishing. You can see in the above photos the dash board lying to the left of the cab which when fitted will cover most of the detail in the photo below.

Amazing that you get the heater box and ducting that unless you leave a door open on the cab you will never see any of it once the dash board is in place. One part of me thinks this level of detail is perhaps a step too far but the other side of me has enjoyed the build and it is almost an education in vehicle design to put this detailed kit together. As a side note you sometimes see in a photograph things that the eye has missed. In this case I see I have yet to deal with the two points at the bottom of the front cab panel where I separated it from the sprue and these will need sanding smooth. Will my goldfish type memory remember this for tomorrow? Only time will tell. Now what am I supposed to do tomorrow????

As most modelers do when you reach a certain stage in a kit build I have brought the various parts together to get an idea how the finished model will look.

Progress from now on is going to be slower as the interior of the cab is going to need painting before I go much further with the rest of the build. That will be an interesting trial in swear jar contributions! I will need some soothing music to calm me but for tonight entertainment in music cassette form was provided by 10cc in concert.

Thinking ahead!

There comes a point in building a kit where you have to make a decision as to whether you build the whole kit and then paint it or do you build it as sub-assemblies after which the painting is carried out and the final assembly is done. Each has there advantages but I made the decision early on in this build to paint sub-assemblies. On a complex kit like this it makes sense. Generally I airbrush most of my models and you have to have a reasonable level of access to allow the atomised paint to get to all parts of the model. Sprayed paint by its nature travels in a straight line from the tip of the airbrush to the surface being painted and so if there is a part that you can see but can not get a straight line from the airbrush to it the likelihood is it won't get any paint on it. In addition if the plastic that the kit is molded in is a light or contrasting colour to the finished paint job you can be assured that it will stick out like a sore thumb. In the case of this kit the plastic is light grey and the overall finish to the model will be black and green. Any unpainted parts will show as clear as daylight. 

In view of the above I looked at the construction of the body to the truck. I had assembled the park bench style seats onto the bed and sides of the body and was about to glue the sides on when it struck me that once they were on there was no way I could reasonably get any paint to the underside. I therefore, in my working smarter not harder as I get older approach to matters and actually thinking ahead (an unusual event according to Mrs. Woody), decided to paint the parts prior to final assembly. First stage is a primer coat and there is a lot written about their use on models. Some say you don't need them and others swear by them! For me I generally use one to at least get a uniform base (and hide my poor skills) upon which to paint the finishing coats. For armoured and military vehicles I tend to use black for three reasons. Firstly it is a good base for the greens and other dark colours that these vehicles are generally painted in. Secondly and there is no doubt some optic science behind this, but the eye tends to ignore black so if a part is not fully painted it sticks out less then if the primer were white. Thirdly, on those difficult to reach parts with the airbrush, if you do have a black primer it gives an effect of shadow even if there is no final colour on it. 

I airbrushed the Vallejo primer yesterday and I am giving it a day to dry fully. The photographs below perhaps add some clarity to the above text.

I have also started on the cab. Progress s far has the floor, tow seats and the bunk done Believe it or not there are twenty parts just in the part of the build in the photographs below but the detail is amazing.

A bit of music to keep me sane during the build was provided by a compilation album, Soft Metal. I am guessing there is no soft metal in the truck though! Strange how something as daft as a price ticket on something can bring back memories. In this case I paid £2 for this cassette, second hand from a charity shop many years ago along with a few others. Oh the joys of going through piles of records and tapes to find something of interest - amusement and entertainment for hours! Now all you have to do is type in a title in Google from the comfort of your home and you can download it in seconds but is it as much fun????

Bullseye!

Bullseye as in the darts score of 50. Yes it is the 50th post on this blog, Drum roll please. Probably the only accolade this blog will get is that it provides the ultimate cure for insomnia! Can't sleep, just read this blog for a few minutes and you are off to the land of nod quicker than Mrs. Woody can order the latest 'must have' product that has appeared in her email inbox! 

Back in the land of awake, here at WMD HQ it has been a busy few days. The Room of Gloom AKA my man cave now has shelves along the backwall where I can display my finished models or more likely my half finished models that will become Shelf Queens! I did sort out a few of those earlier this year and they featured in a few posts starting here so hopefully not too many new ones will find a restring place on these shelves.

I used some adjustable shelf supports and fixing those to the backwall was generally a trouble and swear jar free event once I had established where the hidden up rights were and the power cables. The shelves themselves are a furniture board which comes in 8 foot or for those metric buffs out there 2.4m. The backwall is 13 foot long. I decided that a bit of a gap at each end would be useful and to make best use of the boards I would make the shelves 12 foot long. This would mean no waste as one and a half boards would give me that length. For those thinking there are three shelves in the picture therefore there is half a board wasted, I will be adding a further shelf which will mean no waste! The next question was how to join them as the joint at 8 foot did not conveniently fall where there was a shelf support. As the shelves will not have to support any major weight I decided to use wooden dowels. The photos below show the process. 

In my new found older age wisdom of working smarter not harder I did make a drilling jig to avoid having to measure each board. I also used iron-on edging strip to seal the ends of the shelves and provide a sealed joint which came in useful later in this process.

The drill I used was one designed for drilling wood with a good point to it and a collar that acts as a depth gauge.

Once the holes were drilled a dowel locating peg was inserted into each hole. These have a point that when the other surface to be jointed is pressed against the peg it leaves a small hole that both marks the spot to be drilled and then provides a physical 'hole' into which the point of the drill can be precisely located into.

Once the holes in the other part of the shelf were drilled the dowels could be inserted and once the two parts were in place on the shelf supports - far easier taking an 8 foot and 4 foot shelf into a room then a one long 12 foot one - the two were pushed together.

On other fronts, the WMD HQ Deep Store where wonderous treasures bought long ago are stored out of sight of Mrs Woody, was searched to uncover a Hornby 9F Crosti. I also unearthed the TTS DCC Sound decoder that I bought at the same time. More details on the fitting of that another time but it was not a s simple as I though it was going to be! However it was successfully fitted and the 9F hauled an 18 wagon train which mesmerised me as it gracefully and with soothing sounds of steam, went around the loosely laid track on my layout. Wonderful!

Work on the Zvezda K5350 Mustang truck has also been done with progress now up to Section 33 of the plans. This means I almost have a completed bed to the load body. Luckily no mishaps after the various swear jar contributing moments that I had on the closing stages of the chassis build. Still impressed with this kit. The detail and fit of parts is superb.

Music was from two compilation cassettes, Soft Rock Classics and Sixties Summer Mix - Groovy!

Do as you're told!

No. Not a telling off from Woody but that does happen! In this case its a cautionary tale. The instructions by Zvezda foe the K5350 Mustang truck do state clearly that you should build the kit following the numbered sequence in the plans. Up until now this is exactly what I have done and construction of the model has been stress free. Of course being me I knew better when it came to the dual drive rear axle. Rather than follow the plans and cement the axles onto the leaf springs and then add the prop-shaft joining the two I thought I would construct the springs, axles and prop-shaft as a sub assembly and then attach to the chassis. Much easier in my mind and why didn't the guys at Zvezda think of this? I went on my way and put the sub assembly together and all went well. Congratulating myself on my brilliance I leaned back to admire my work. After a few minutes of self indulgent praise I went to fit the sub assembly to the chassis. At this point there was a realisation as to the folly of my idea. There is a tube joining the two sides of the chassis where the dual drive axles go. The prop-shaft had to go under these! There was a swear jar moment and then as luck would have it I managed to dis-assemble my sub assembly before the glue had done its job. 

Lesson learnt without too much damage being done other than to my pride! From now on I will be following the instructions because unlike many other kits these actually are written by someone who knows what they are doing  unlike the guy building this model!

The above incident and other matters slowed me down yesterday so the chassis still needs a little work but here is were it is at.

Yesterdays musical modelling accompaniment was provided by the first half of the compilations double album The First Summer of Love with songs from the 60s. The second part will come later on. 

Cats and chassis

 

Cats and chassis. What have they got in common apart from both beginning with the letter C? Nothing! However as I was doing some work on the chassis of the Zvezda K5350 Mustang truck I saw Chloe the cat finding some shade and relaxing just as cats do in the garden during the heatwave that the UK is going through at the moment. Not a care in the World! Sometimes you wonder if animals actually have the right idea!

Back in the heat of the Room of Gloom at WMD HQ work on the chassis continues with me now up to Section 24. I did come across the one area where the parts fit was not to the usual standard on this kit and that is where the exhaust pipes join as highlighted by the red ovals in the picture below. It is just a butt joint with no locating pin. However with a bit of use of  glue and prodding with tweezers a joint that can be cleaned up once the joint has set hard has been established. A little acrylic putty is probably going to be needed to fully disguise my ham-fisted jointing but it should work out. 

In spite of this I am still overly impressed with the kit. The axles should end up going on today having been built up yesterday and with a few other items that should bring the chassis to the built up stage. Looking ahead in the plans, the body is next which will mean dealing with much larger pieces so my eyes will get a rest!

Musical entertainment was provided by a double compilation tape that I bought in 1986. As the price tag shows £6.99 it cost which back then was getting on for about 10% of my weekly take home pay then, but hey, it has some classic tracks! I can remember buying this when I went to the petrol station to fuel up - the fuel only cost £12 for a tank full! Oh those were the days!

More on the Straight and Narrow!

Whilst WMD HQ has been busy with the garden bench restoration highlighted in the last post there has been some progress with the Zvezda K5350 Mustang model build. The chassis continues to develop and I just cannot believe just how detailed it is. Most of it will no doubt be lost as the cab and body go on but its been a pleasure to build so far. Here is where I have got to - Section 23 on the plans.

Motivational music provided by the compilation album The Greatest Hits of 1993. Was it really 28 years ago that Relax by Frankie goes to Hollywood was number 1? Time flies!

Small and Beautiful!

 

The picture above illustrates the size of many of the parts I am dealing with - they still need cleaning up with the removal of the plastic from where the parts were located on the sprue. You have to admire the guys who developed this kit and that is something we model makers sometimes forget. We admire completed models and praise the builders for their skills and abilities but usually forget that there was an immense amount of skill and ability put in by people into developing, making the patterns and sorting plans out for the actual kit itself. I am still very impressed by this kit so for those at Zvezda I respect you and thank you! Please note the £1 coin is this week's pocket money from Mrs W. Just enough for a small ice cream!

Progress has continued with the chassis so I am now up to Section 21 on the plans. Its beginning to look like a truck - well in my eyes anyway! We will see how progress goes with the impending heatwave coming this weekend in the UK. It could be ice creams all round here at WMD HQ! Well a small one maybe!

Music for the latest build was provided by that great band Level 42 with their album Running in the Family and then to a compilation album from the 80s Our Friends Electric. Strange how you forget about certain songs which were big at the time and the memories that they bring back when you hear them again for the first time in years - oh happy days! 

Keeping on the straight and narrow!

Building a chassis for a model truck is a bit like keeping on the straight and narrow. The chassis has to be straight so that all the wheels touch the ground and everything is level and it is narrow meaning the chances of getting it straight are difficult. Luckily this kit of the Zvezda K5350 is great in that the parts fit so well that you have confidence that it will have a straight chassis even with me building it. I am further amazed by the detail in this kit. For example all the valve blocks for the air brakes are included. Although I am down to using a magnifying glass to clean the joints up from where I cut them from the sprue and to actually fit them, they are there which is something I have never seen on the bigger 1/25 scale kits of trucks that I have build. My build yesterday got me as far as Section 16 on the plans which means I have a basic chassis to which all the other parts will eventually fix to. As well as this progress I also managed to prime the engine/gearbox and fan and surround in Vallejo black primer ready for top coat. 

Cassette tape music entertainment was supplied by re-listening to Sounds of the Suburbs and then moving onto Soft Metal - It ain't heavy (various artists) and 18 Driving Hits (again various artists) Those of a certain age will remember the continued release of complication albums claiming to be The Best Driving Hits, The Ultimate Driving Hits, The Greatest Driving Hits Ever Vol 96 and so on and so on to the point you ended up with 17 tapes all with Free Alright Now and My Sharona and many other duplicates. Those were the days! 

Back to the model where breath taking progress has been made so far on this kit which is unusual as here at WMD HQ progress is usually measured in geological terms! Will this keep up or will Mrs W find some important, must be done now, not to be questioned chore for me to do???? Stay tuned! 

Back to the 70s and 80's!

Well my music choice for today's model making session was Hits of the 70s, An anthology of Supertramp and Sound of the Suburbs! That all added up to about 4 hours of music/model making as the Hits of the 70s tape is a double one.

The time saw me complete the engine and gearbox of the present build of the K5053 and even get as far as starting part of the chassis with the winch which fits in-between the chassis rails. 

The next stage with the engine and gearbox is to get it painted The instructions don't indicate what colour it should be but a brief internet search reveals that the colour is usually aluminum/silver as I guess the components are mostly aluminum! A coat of black primer should give a good base for the aluminum paint that I will be using and then it will be picking out the few components such as hoses and fluid reservoirs in the appropriate colours. Having used a magnifying glass to see various parts of the engine I can see the hose clamps have even been included on the moulding. I continue to be impressed by both the quality of the mouldings, their detail and the fit of them. Despite so many parts the locations are all positive and when you bring sub assemblies together all the parts meet up where they should which given my ability to get things wrong is amazing! Hopefully the rest of the build proves as good as these first stages. There are a couple of small areas at the bottom of the engine where I had to fill a gap in the plastic. For these small areas my filler of choice is Vallejo acrylic putty which literally can be brushed into place, dries quickly and sands easily to a smooth finish. 

I have now completed up to Section 11 on the plans which totals about 50 parts so far. Given that there are 69 sections in the plans and over 400 parts there is still a long way to go! Good job I have a few hundred music cassettes to go through before I even start on the CDs!

Back to reality!

Well what can you say other than the England Team did us proud in the Euros! Penalty shoot outs are not my favoured way of  dealing with a draw and for what its worth a points system of some sorts might actually be better. If it included a recognition for sporting behavior it might actually discourage some of the almost rugby type activities that go on in football today. 

Enough of my thoughts and back to reality! Reality today is that back at WMD HQ we are again sticking bits of plastic together! Yes a kit is underway! I have had a growing itch for some weeks now to actually start building models again after what seems an eternity of garden and similar type activities. Looking back through the blog (which was part of the reason I started this blog in the first place so I could put dates to things and events and it works - Wow!) I see it was the end of March that I last progressed with a kit - the T85 from Miniart. I could have gone back to this kit but if you recall I had almost stalled with the tracks which have some issues. Since moving most of my modelling stuff from within the house to my man cave AKA the Room of Gloom that kit has sat in a box and to be honest I thought about starting it again, I even looked through the box but at the moment its just not doing it for me. So with another breaking of my New Years Resolution of not buying any more kits, I bought the  Zvezda Russian K5350 Mustang 3-Axle Truck in 1/35 scale. The Kamaz Мустанг (Mustang) is a family of general military utility trucks with numerous variants which is based on the 1st generation KamAZ family launched in the early 1980s. A three-person cab is standard across the Mustang range. It has a sleeping berth and tilts forward for engine access. The cab can be fitted with an add-on armour kit. I have wanted to build a Kamaz truck for a long time. They are typical Russian in that they are simple but very robust. If you have ever watched Ice Road Truckers you know that in Canada and Alaska they run trucks on ice roads in the winter. It is also the same in Russia but having watched some videos on the conditions they have to deal with I have to say they do need a really tough truck - have a look at this short You Tube Video to see or just put in Russian Ice Road Truckers into YouTubes search engine.  

First time with a Zvezda kit and looking through the box it looks stunning. Will it look as stunning once my hands have been on it or will it end up a glue bomb once completed? We'll have to wait and see! The kit itself comes in a stout cardboard box which is sleeved by an outer cover with the illustrations showing the truck in action. Inside the parts are all in plastic bags so no loose, flying off into oblivion never to be seen again as the box is opened parts. I like that! The instructions and painting guide look as though some one has actually thought about what to illustrate and hopefully will actually aid building this kit rather than becoming a cryptic set of clues which have several differing answers according to how you look at them! I like that too! Looking at the parts themselves the detail is stunning and having built a few 1/25th truck kits in my time I just wish those larger kits had this sort of level of detail. You guessed it I like that as well! So far the guys at Zvezda have struck a chord with me.

Starting the actual build the first stages centre around the engine. For something that will probably end up mostly hidden the detail is remarkable. There is also something else I like about this kit. So far all the parts for the engine are on the same sprue and amazingly just about all the parts follow on from each other. I have started with Sprue G and it starts at the bottom with part G1 and G2 is next to it and so on. There are a couple of exceptions to fit the part into the overall sprue where a part number does not follow on but its close. If you have never built a kit you may wonder why the excitement of  what probably sounds a logical way of doing things. Logical it maybe but I have never come across a sprue laid out like this. Normally you end up with the parts for something like an engine over two or more sprues and the parts are laid out randomly to minimise the number of sprues. You end up spending ages looking over the sprue trying to find the part that you want. Zvezda make it so simple to find the part. G65 is between G64 and G66! 

Moving on from my overstated joy about this kit, an hour and a half got the first three stages of the engine done.

How do I know that it took me an hour and a half to reach this stage? Well here at WMD HQ we do like our music and have done so for many, many years. Before the advent of new technology, MP 3 files,  downloading, streaming and probably a whole host of other things I don't and probably never will know about we had vinyl, cassettes and CDs. WMD HQ still has a large collection of them all and facilities in the Room of Gloom include a cassette player on which both sides ('You mean you had to physically turn it over?' will probably be the reaction of some) of a favorite cassette purchased in the early 90s was playing whilst I built the engine. Roughly 45 minutes a side which gives me 90 minutes and unlike the football yesterday I didn't go into extra time!

A great easy listening album full of fantastic music which if you are interested is: -

A1	Eagles–	One Of These Nights
A2	The Doobie Brothers–	Long Train Runnin'
A3	Fleetwood Mac–	Little Lies
A4	Hall & Oates*–	I Can't Go For That (No Can Do)
A5	Greg Kihn Band–	Jeopardy
A6	Starship (2)–	Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now
A7	Christopher Cross–	Ride Like The Wind
A8	Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers*–	Breakdown
A9	The Cars–	Drive
B1	R.E.M.–	The One I Love
B2	Lynyrd Skynyrd–	Sweet Home Alabama
B3	Allman Brothers Band*–	Jessica
B4	Rickie Lee Jones–	Chuck E's In Love
B5	Joe Walsh–	Rocky Mountain Way
B6	J. J. Cale*–	Hold On Baby
B7	Timbuk 3–	The Future's So Bright, I Gotta Wear Shades
B8	Steve Earle–	Copperhead Road
B9	America (2)–	Horse With No Name