Luft46's Blog

This was the recent parcel I got from BNA. The Krupp Raumer is calling loud to me.

The rest are destined for various dioramas.

This is the Japanese Me163 kit by NC Models boxed by Hasegawa

Its a nice kit with no discernible faults so far. I got a canopy and wheels mask set from Dead Designs last year and finally thought I’d have a look at the kit.

What I had forgotten is I had already started this kit. Usually when I do this I put the kit into a box with other part done kits in the hope I might finish it one day.

The kit was as you see it here

I had intended to have the skid up going by the white Milliput at the bottom. I reviewed that and removed it and am going with the undercarriage down now. To date the body is now all together with the wings test fitted BUT there will be no modelling for a while as its heatwave territory in Sydney and I’m away next weekend so will post when I’ve made more progress. I had also thought about doing some airbrush practice but that’s just not on.

Looks like its reading TV etc for the next while.

Normally at the end of a year I post a review of the years completed kits. That wasn’t necessary for 2020 as I finished nothing.

I did work on many kits just none got finished which like many people for the year I struggled with external events.

For Christmas my probably future daughter in law bought me one of those metal model kits. I’ve tried finishing two of these in the past with both being chucked before completion.

Seems like third time is the charm and I finished it yesterday. The little tank for Lt. Gruber is almost paint ready bit I’ll save that for another day.

I’m off to sharpen an axe and that is not a metaphor just a job that needs doing.

Who knows what’s next on the bench of doom!

I got this yesterday in my favourite bookshop and given the predicted heatwave for this weekend I may get a bit of it read at least.

In this year of Covid I have not done much productive modelling, lots of started kits but nothing finished.

In part this is due to reading more as a break after work for the long commute from the study to the rest of the house. The first photo is my collection still left of books I bought 2 to 5 years ago and the second is books from the last 2 years. As you can see there are still quite a few left even after 8 months of solid reading.

And the pile from the last 2 years.

As shown by the shots below I decided to clean up my working area by moving everything to my other workbench. Nothing else has happened apart from the sprue containing my missing part arriving from Das Werk arriving so that maybe I can at least get this up to where it needs painting at least.

Currently I’m busy on 1:1 scale gardening and after carting dirt, making up new garden beds from IKEA like kits etc the job of tidying the model bench is just a Bridge Too Far.

Despite having more time due to mostly not commuting progress has been slow at best.

This has not been a good modelling year in terms of productivity but lots of kits have had some work done on them. Below is progress on the Das Werk Borgward Wanze in 1.35

This is a relatively simple kit as long as you don’t lose a major part like I did. Still doing work in spite of this and it is not a bottleneck for the reasons above.

And a visitor recently at night

Nothing happening for the last two weeks. Just not motivated and its way too cold in my garage atm.

This is very much a step by step process. and assembly can be slow as you wait on parts drying or setting up. You can skip ahead and do some subsections as this will help in preparation for the current section. This was particularly applicable to the fitting on the magazine holders. I would assemble all the magazines very early on and use this to check the fit for the placement of the receiver units that go inside the main housing.