WMD out and about and an experiment in filming!

Todays post is mainly imagery. Not much modelling done as here in the UK it is a Bank Holiday weekend - the last before the 25th December - (I am not mentioning that word yet but no doubt by September there will be adverts for it!) so I have spent a bit of time out and about.

One thing I did do whilst back at WMD HQ was to film some operation on the USA Switching layout that I last talked about back in April. The WMD Trainee Film Crew attempted filming a local driver undergoing training on switching duties! Some of the better clips are in this film which you can watch by clicking on the white arrow head. The Trainee Film Crew will have to do better next time but at least its more exciting then watching paint dry - just!

One of the places Mrs Woody has wanted to visit for some time are the walled gardens at a place called Easton just off the A1 in Lincolnshire. Usually Mrs W's choices of places to visit are very good and she didn't fail in that in finding this place. 

Up until the early 1950s there was a manor house which unfortunately and like so many others, was demolished. The gardens survived but became derelict until restoration work started in 2000. They are now lovely and there are 12 acres to explore. The website has full details and you can visit it by clicking here. In the meantime a selection of photos below which always make you wish you could model the landscape as exquisitely as nature created it!

With all that grass you have to included some modern way of maintaining it and this is one of two robotic lawnmowers - nice! Now if only Mrs W could see the virtue.....

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.

RIP Sammy cat.

 

There are some days which are not so good. Saturday was one of those days. Sammy cat, who has featured in previous posts, was diagnosed back in October 2020 with a mass growth in his mouth. He was given a few weeks to live. He defied all odds and without pain or suffering as far as we can tell survived for nearly 10 months. On Friday he was fine in the morning and demolished his breakfast. By lunchtime he had hidden himself away and by the evening Mrs. Woody and myself knew we had to make a decision and that was to be kind before he really began to suffer.

We don't know much about Sammy's early life as like most of our fleet of cats he was a rescue cat. He had a fantastic personality and a call which sounded like he was saying Hello. He used to do that a lot when he carried a catnip sock in his mouth. We buried him, with all our other departed cats, under our apple tree with that sock. He also had a habit of jumping in the empty bath tub when I was cleaning my teeth. I had to turn the cold tap on and he would go to the other end of the bath and start digging! 

In his latter years he became very friendly and despite what some people may find horrifying, it was not unusual for him to go to sleep in the middle of the bed. He did take up some room and had a rumbling purr that resounded through the mattress but was that comforting throb that sent you to sleep. He often beat the alarm clock and had a persuasive way of getting you up to get his breakfast. 

When I say he had 'clicky' ears other cat owners will know what I mean. Cats love their ears being stroked and generally rubbed. Sammy's ears 'clicked' when you did that.

He will be sadly missed by both Mrs Woody and me. Unfortunately we have lost a cat a year for the past three years so I am hoping that for at least a few years we may stay lucky with our remaining fleet. However, as with all such matters, the sun went down yesterday and rose this morning and the World continues but just a little bit differently for Mrs. Woody, me and Sammy's cat friends.

Building big and little kits.

The WMD on the road tour continued today with a trip to Wollaton Hall near Nottingham. Mrs Woody wanted to see the T Rex exhibition where the first full T Rex skeleton (named Titus) to be shown in the UK since the early 1900s is on show. I told her I was not going to be compared to a dinosaur as she might not actually see any differences and they might not let me out thinking I am an exhibit! However we still went and it was very good and I was not detained. Had a long chat with one of the attending experts who had various facts at her fingertips that answered all my non-sensical questions. A look round the rest of the Hall saw us in The Salon, a room which was used as a set in the 2012 Bat Man film The Dark Knight Rises. 

Now this would make a classy modelling work area and you could hide away your kit and pretend things were tidy by pulling down the roller top.

We then had a look round the formal gardens with views across the very large park and lake where many families were enjoying a day out just like before the pandemic. There is even an archeological dig going on in the grounds (click here for details) where a gentleman explained to us all that was going on and we then drifted off onto the subject of the USA and their history at which point he revealed he had been a Sherriff's Deputy for some time in one state!   

Now to the building big kit part of this post. Without wishing to offend paleontologists (which means I am probably now on their most wanted list after another T Rex ) the World over, their craft has similarities to model making, just on a big scale! They in effect find a big kit of bones and then put them together to make their kit come alive. I have to admire them though as there are no plans, no painting guide and if a part is missing you can't just write off to the manufacturer asking for a replacement! Getting a replacement part is one thing I have been considering with my little kit build of the MiniArt T-80 Russian Light Tank. As you may recall the kit stalled back in April and part of the reason were the tracks. They fell apart in my hands and were a nightmare to assemble and I am still not sure if I have enough intact parts left to finish the necessary track lengths hence possibly writing to MiniArt. For some reason that I really have no idea of I pulled the box with the parts out last night and started again with the tracks. They are still a nightmare but I have made some progress. I think a little at a time is how I will proceed but this could all still end up in the never to be touched again pile of kits!