Luft46's Blog

Progress so far on the rail items including the Ratio kit

It’s been four months since my last entry and there is a reason, mostly work related.

I quit my job due mainly to a difficult boss, my replacement lasted 2 weeks before she did the same. The play out of all this has dragged out over the last few months and my modelling has suffered. It’s not that I haven’t modelled, it’s just that it hasn’t been very effective. The last KV2 is still unfinished.

In the meantime I have been dabbling with some OO/HO kits. The first is a abandoned wagon in 5 pieces from Ratio that apart from a little filler and some wood strip took very little to do. This came from the front of a railway hobby magazine. The other 2 kits from my stash are both from Dapol being a JCB excavator and a BP tanker. Both are 60’s vintage kits and needed lots of part thinning. In the case of the tanker I am replacing the ladders with etched brass ones. For the excavator the two buckets needed major thinning to look vaguely prototypical. The cab also needed some clear plastic for this which was not supplied.

Images to follow later.

No actual modelling this week. Just going through every box I have and chucking out a few no longer wanted kits. Still lots to do but away for a few days. KV2 will hopefully be finished by end of January but first need to finish the sorting.

Ok it’s bloody hot here in Sydney so not much modelling going on. Another small PSR cycle today.

I’ve faced the fact I may not get the KV2 3 storey finished by Dec 31 and instead of rushing it will proceed slowly now.

I’ve also started that other fun game of going through all my kits to see if any need selling and boxing them up in archive boxes to better protect them from dust and insects.

This of course quickly degenerates into chaos as per below. Due to the heat this is being done in 1 hr max sessions.

Despite appearances there is sone sort of system going on.

That was the cry as I finally managed to get the KV2 3 storey turret tank up tothe point where I could apply Tamiya primer. Mind you I may need another PSR cycle but the end seems possible.

Talking of Tamiya I sent my wife off to Hobbyco armed with the following 2 photos as she was in the city for work to get me another tin of Russian green just in case. Given its the Xmas season I did not want to be left without enough paint.

And lastly from a book a quote describing that special someone we all know whoever that may be.

When you arrive at the point where your AMS to add 12 rungs leads you into the 4th cycle of sanding and you are thoroughly sick of sanding and the diorama base also still needs work. SIGH !!!!

TRIGGER WARNING !

And a bad print from the 70’s that we had and I saw yet again in an antiques shop recently. I thought all of these would have been burnt by the end of the 80’s at least.

Yes another one is done. That’s six for the year now. The only one left is the 3 storey job.

The toon one was relatively simple and I did end up weathering it a bit. Decals were ok but the matt varnish (Lucky) I used tended to chip and peel when I was doing the weathering causing a lot of fiddling to get it right.

I think it would be better on aircraft where the varnish is the absolute last stage rather than on armour.

I always feel the urge to do a little weathering over the last coat of varnish just to make it more grimy and realistic, something I don’t usually bother with for aircraft.

Ok they could’ve been better, I might reshoot with more light later.

Just a few progress shots on the 3 story. I have now got all the steps (12) on, its not perfect but it will probably have to do. I’ll clean it all up , do some primer and work out which if any I redo.

The tow rope is now also done so the only other thing to do is get a new grass mat that has longer grass. I’ll probably add some Russian brown dirt to it to get a better look.

See the pictures below.

I ran into issues with varnishing the Meng Toon version and that is why things have dragged.

Its nearly done, just needs another small round of weathering.

I’ve got one side of the rungs on the 3 storey turret in but as this is the beauty side i have one that i am tempted to redo. Painting and weathering should be easy I hope. On the diorama side of that i wasn’t ultimately happy with the mat i used so it got ripped out and I will need to buy a new one soon.

I

finished this on the weekend and am mostly happy with it. The IR sights are from a ModelCollect kit and I copied the support slab from the Modelcollect kit onto some thin sheet. I debated whether to add the black wires but in this scale they would be fiddly so I left them off.

The whitewash is my first attempt at this. I used AK washable white over a matt varnish. When I initially tested this I did it on a old Airfix He 177 kit over a gloss varnish. This would have been a better idea for the final effort as the matt varnish caused the paint to stick better and so scrubbing off with a paint brush was more difficult. I got caught up with using a matt varnish to seal the decals in and forgot about the effect of using the wrong sort of varnish.

This is much easier than the hairspray method that is featured in the AFV magazines

The last few photos are one of specimens in the Melbourne Museum followed by some serious storage drawer porn.

Not buying anything yet ad everything has a 4 figure price tag but its fun looking!

ok below are some pics from the finished munition schlepper KV2 and whatever else. The mud I used turned out well but a bit gloss so a little matt varnish was dabbed on in parts.