Luft46's Blog

For this kit I decided to do whatever prepainting I could which I find useful when doing trucks along with a little internet research. So far the underside frame parts are mostly in black and the interior is in the exterior color except for some detail parts like the steering wheel and gears and seats which all have an initial coat of black. The tyres all have a slight mould mismatch which is very common so these will need a quick cleanup before painting.  The exhaust will receive some Mig rust pigment and the underside will have some Florymodels.co.uk Dark dirt added also. Paints used are my usual mixture of various brands – xtracrylics dunkelgelb,  citadel abaddon black and skull white.

After rather a long break in which the bench was cleaned and tidied its back to building something. Unfortunately the Helldiver didn’t make it past the tidy up so its now sitting in a box below my bench.
The Hanomag was used on Luftwaffe airfields as well as for hauling V-2’s on Meillerwagens. This is a Special Hobby kit in 1/72 nd scale. Unlike cheaper brands like Ace, the glazing is in clear plastic rather than do it yourself templates. From experience this does make a difference.
I will be starting this tomorrow night hopefully.
A Melbourne show special will follow soon.

Every once in a while ie not very often I feel the need to clean my workspace, such an event is currently happening.  Currently all my workbench crap is residing on a big table – see below

What this means is a bit of a reorganisation of my stuff. This and other personal stuff is why I am behind in posting so there may be a bit of a flood in the next few days. While Iwas absent from the desktop I made it to the Wollongong model Show ( Australia) and photos of that will follow.
Ran into one guy and he said he modelled one hour every day before work, I admired his dedication but my schedule is way more random than that and prey to many external factors not least the mood I am in. He said modelling always relaxed him but i find that unless I am a bit relaxed and in the mood that it is a disaster. If you are starting to get frustrated or making lots of mistakes then it is time to walk away from the modelling bench as bad things inevitably happen otherwise.

Talking of bad things this blog is written on an Asus TF700 tablet and all photos are taken with its camera  – unfortunately 3 weeks ago I dropped it on a tile floor with one corner gaping wide open and the screen cracked in many places. It will  probably be replaced by a Samsung Galaxy Tab Pro but as long as it can keep going i will persist with it. There have been a couple of hiccups where it has locked into an endless Restart cycle but rebooting has fixed this so far. And no gaffer tape will not fix it, that was the cause of the restart cycle on one occasion.

No major drama with this so far though the dive brakes etc look like being a challenge.

Somehow I missed uploading this lot of pictures. This was a very quick project done from a random idea. Most of you know of the mythical creature called the ” Carpet Monster ” – he who eats lost model parts. Well the Putty Hog is a cousin. He is the creature that turns model kits into Putty Hogs , of course the Matchbox trench digger helps out too. The total parts list is an old Frog 1/72 FW 190D-9, a hog figure from Disney from that despicable ripoff of the Japanese 70’s cartoon Kimba the White Lion ( and to avoid lawyers I will not name it),  a used Tamiya  putty tube from a friend and putty hog poo  made from Milliput, Tamiya putty and Citadel green stuff. The only real modelling done was to paint an appropriate hole at the rear of the hog on my wife’s suggestion that it didn’t appear real otherwise.

During the week I got this closed up. Now up to stage 2 of the PSR cycle. As always I have used a Citadel paints silver to highlight any missed bits of filling work. Both bombs have fallen off the rack and these will now stay off until I finish painting, should have known better on that. There were no major surprises on joining the two halves, just a fair bit of dry fitting. Filler of choice was Citadel Liquid Green Stuff. This is a better version the the Squadron product that does not smell and does not shrink. The only downside is it’s tendency to dry out unless sealed properly. Now I’ve gotta get  onto today’s work.

Just a very quick update before i go out. The next step is to put the body together. Hopefully tonight. The bomb bay was tricky and i am not 100% happy but as it will only be visible from underneath it will do.

Not much progress today due to other things. Lesson learnt tonight was throw out really old super glue tubes as they will not stick properly. Just starting on the cockpit and engine assemblies in parts 1 and  2 of the instructions.

Just finished painting some detail parts. Off to the footy then some dark washes and highlights tonight.
Actual assembly to start tomorrow.

Above is the Cyber Hobby Helldiver in 1/72 nd scale. It’s basically a Dragon kit with etched brass but very nicely done by the looks of it. I got this from Model Sports just north of Wollongong in NSW. To call that place a mess is to be polite. The assistant had to move two very large boxes before I could get to the models I wanted to look at. The only thing I will give them is that at least the models are sorted by type and scale.
Last night I sprayed tamiya grey primer on where it was needed. As I use acrylics this is a necessary step otherwise it will take more coats of paint.
Gotta take the dog to the vet then time to start painting detail parts