A bit of everything!

It was one of those nice days where I did a bit of everything. An early morning cycle ride saw my total mileage for this year so far reach 3368 miles. During the day a bit of gardening, a good chat with fellow modeller and good friend Mr Beechham (he with the artistry skills (see here) and who can beat me up hills cycling!) who was passing and then a start on the second baseboard for my 009 narrow gauge railway last featured here. Its always been my intention to extend the layout and today seemed as good a day as any to make a start especially as the gardening was done early so that Mrs. Woody would think I had spent the whole day productively employed on non model making activities! Splendid! The base board will have a river flowing through it - that is a model one rather than a real one - so appropriate pieces have been cut out of the baseboard. It will also have a canal wharf at the end and construction of that part will take place over the next day or so. At the moment my few hours of wood butchery (I am no carpenter) have seen several pieces of wood forced and coerced into this.

Surprisingly for my limited skills it is the same width as the existing board and appears to be square. How long that will last is something that you could wager on. 

Having cooked Mrs. Woody's dinner, more positive points gained, I decided to tackle the Zvezda K5350 Mustang truck. In the last post I outlined that I was going to top coat the bench seats and the bed of the body using the hairspray technique to allow me to create wear and scuff marks. I used an old can of hairspray that I bought years ago for a similar project and sprayed the bench seats and bed of the body. Even doing it outside there was still a strong but pleasant perfumed aroma wafting around the garden for a while which no doubt confused our feathered friends. Having let it dry for 15 minutes I top coated the various parts plus the inside of the cab with Vallejo Air Russian Green which seems to be a perfect match to the coloured painting guide supplied with the kit. The nice thing about Vallejo Air paints are they are ready thinned for airbrushing. No messing about with pouring paint and thinners out into a jar and getting the right mixture which usually ends in a swear jar moment. Just pour into the airbrush and spray. Nice! Being acrylic, the airbrush can be cleaned in plain water. Nicer still! The other good thing about these paints is they cover well and usually one coat does the job as shown in the picture below.

Letting the paint dry for about half an hour I used a selection of stiff brushes, a tooth pick and some water to start to rub and abrade the paint where I thought wear and scuffing would take place in real life as troops sat on the benches and walked over the bed of the body. Thirty minutes or so got me to where I wanted to be. It can be easy to end up stripping away all the top coat bring you back to where you started so less is best as they say. Whether I have achieved that or not is something that is in the eye of the beholder. However I am pleased with what I have achieved and though it all looks a bit stark at the moment once varnished to seal it, a coat of weathering on top will tone it all down and harmonise the effect. Well that's the plan anyway! Now what shall I cook for Mrs Woody tomorrow? Not much in the cupboard so maybe a bit of everything!

Prime Time!

Prime Time! For some it is that excellent hit by The Tubes back in 1979 and if you wish to reacquaint yourself with it or even see a golden oldie if you were born later then click here! For Mrs Woody, Prime Time is either watching a murder mystery or reading a murder mystery. Should I be worried???? Any way she had a bumper viewing session today of aforementioned programmes so I used the opportunity to have some Prime Time myself and have managed to do some priming of the Zvezda 5350 Mustang truck as well as a bit of other painting and a bit more assembly. Most of the cab components are now assembled and most have been primed in Vallejo black primer which gives a great finish. They will get at least overnight to dry before I do anything else.

Look at the detail on the doors - you could almost put your 1/35th scale map in that door pocket.

I have. as previously explained in an earlier post, primed the inside of the body. This contains wooden seating which although in the traditional military manner would be painted in green along with all the rest of the truck, would actual wear when troops were sat on them. Equally the wooden floor of the body would be painted green but the paint would wear and scuff away in the places where troops would walk. To replicate this in model form there is a technique involving hairspray. Basically you spray the wood colour, protect it with a coat of varnish and then before you spray the top coat a coat of hairspray is sprayed onto the areas you want to show the paint underneath the top coat. The top coat is then sprayed and left for a short while to dry. Then using a stiff brush or a cocktail stick and water the top coat is abraded and this reveals the paint underneath. If you get it right it should look like natural wear and scuff marks. It is sometime since I did this so it will be interesting to see what I manage to produce. If nothing else I should have a sweet smelling truck! At the moment the inside of the truck body looks like this.

Putting it all together at the moment the truck looks like a real wreck but its coming together - really! So long as nothing untoward and mysterious happens to me that may have similarities to a murder mystery book or TV programme this kit might actually get finished this month! Now there's a challenge for myself!

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????

Outhouses and seating arrangements!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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!

Why don't I take notice of myself?

An odd way to start this post but in the last post I did highlight that I needed to do as I was told and follow the instructions for the K5350 Mustang truck kit produced by Zvezda to the letter. I did but still managed to get in a pickle. Probably down to me becoming over confident in what I was doing and whilst I was following the sequence in the plans I was not fully taking notice of the drawings. This resulted in two mishaps. Firstly the rear dual drive axles and suspension were upside down (compare the photo in this post to that in the last post and you'll see what I mean) and secondly the frame mounts for the fuel tanks were the wrong way round. Luckily after years of ending up in situations like this I did manage to rectify matters with only a small amount of damage that was repairable and a modest contribution to the swear jar. You would also think after all these years that I would learn! However, I once read that the art of a good modeler is how well they cover up their mistakes! Not sure if that makes me a good modeler but I have had plenty of  practice at putting my mistakes right! 

Well the chassis according to the plans is now complete. Strangely, completing the chassis, according to the plans, does not include fitting the wheels. These are fitted as the very last stage and given this and my previous posting on doing as I am told I am going to stick with the plans! Not only working smarter and not harder as I get older but also becoming more obedient although I doubt Mrs. Wood agrees with that last part! 

Musical entertainment to cover up the swearing was provided by a compilation album, The Very Best  of The Electric Light Orchestra or as those of a certain age know them as ELO. As that classic Mr. Blue Sky played it might have been blue sky outside of the Room of Gloom AKA My Man Cave but inside it was somewhat dark and cloudy over my workbench as I put things right on the kit! Guess having got the kit back to where it should be I am just a Wild West Hero!

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.