Lt Gruber's Little Tank Redux

Playing catch up here after several months of slacking on updating the blog; plenty of stuff has been painted, but not much has made it on here! Hopefully now getting a handle on rectifying this...

After the unmitigated disaster that was the Sheridan, I decided to try and calm myself down by building something a bit more straight-forward (and with a far simpler paint scheme...)

On raiding the stash, my eyes lighted on a long-forgotten JB Models Saladin armoured car. Bought yonks ago for about three quid, I'd intended on doing a diorama feauring this, a Saracen APC, a Diamond-T and a civvy motor having a Mexican stand-off at a T-junction somewhere in Wales in the 50s... However, having accepted that that's never ever going to get done, I decided it would make an ideal addition to the 1970s US force in the guise of a Sonderwagen 3 of the Bundesschutzegruppe, and so I set about throwing it together.

The JB kits (now Airfix) are very simple little kits (to the point of crudity in the case of some of the earlier ones, such as this one!) but with a little care and thought, they can be made into pretty convincing little items. I the case of the Saladin, the most obvious omission are the tie-downs surrounding the turret. I fabricated some out of stretched sprue; they're horrendously over scale, but they give the impression nicely. Next up, I drilled out the barrels of the smoke dischargers (madness, but improves the look to no end) and the main armament, and added a canvas sleeve to same. The co-ax .30 was replaced with an S&S piece, and the AA .30 (which is just downright offensive) was similarly skipped and replaced with a Sgts Mess item. Intending to leave the hatched open, I duffed up some basic hatch interiors from stock and more stretched sprue, and with the addition of some stowage from various sources, I was left with this-

A nice coat of what Humbrol had sold me claiming to bronze green soon followed, (nothing like bronze green, but perfect for this scheme!), and it was starting to come together...

Some WWII panzer crewmen in field caps were sourced from Foundry (conveniently also featuring winter parkas on some of the sculpts. Might see about doing another one of these!) Some git came up with the great idea of doing Sumpfmuster in 20mm...

Et viola. One finished BGS Sonderwagen 3. Looks totally out of place in it's bright green paint scheme against the snowbound base, but suitably eye-catching on the table...! The registration plate came out far too large, despite careful measuring. This will probably be replaced at some point, but will be left in place for now.

Cheers
Iain

First of 2015- BRDM-2 Finished!

Happy New Year to all, and best wishes for 2015! So, hopefully Santa brought you all plenty of lead/ plastic/ resin/ figure casting medium of choice, and you get plenty of time to indulge in it...

Over the last week or so I've been able to be fairly busy on the modelling front, and have made some progress on a few fronts.

First up, the BRDM-2 was finally finished off!

Quite pleased with how this has turned out, overall. I know the Guards markings would most likely have been painted out in the event of hostilities, but the version supplied by S-Model omitted the white infil, and as such looked like a sort of "Low-vis" version, suitable for field use, so I kept it in, to avoid the vehicle being a plain green blob....

So that's a total of 1 Russkie vehicle finished, but it's better than nothing!

More to follow shortly.....

Cheers
Iain

The Red Tide Rolls Ever Onward

With the inevitability of a cattle show being held in a Royal Doulton outlet, progress on the 20mm Soviet Motor Rifles continues. Of late, I’ve finished the latest piece from the dread foundries of Elhiem, the Support Weapons pack CWR18, which contains a sniper with a Dragunov SVD, an air defence operator with an SA-7 Grail SAM, and a rifleman armed with an RPG-18, the Soviet equivalent of the ubiquitous M72 LAW. The sniper and Grail operator were both double based, to denote a weapons team, and I knocked out an additional Motor-rifleman, so I could paint two sets of three. Rain Man much…?

I added hoods to the sniper and his spotter, as they were going to be in camouflage smocks, rather than the drab khaki of the rest of the force, to mark them out as specialists...

...which would’ve worked better if I’d remembered to sculpt the spotter’s on before I’d started painting him! The spotter and Grail No.2 came form the NCO pack, as they seemed to offer ideal poses.

Prior to basing up, I took some shots of the figures from the pack, in order that Matt could use them as place holder images on his site until “proper” ones were done (which I’m very flattered to have been able to do)

I thought the helmet on the Grail No.2 looked as if it had a cover on it, so thought that would make a nice change to the bare bronze green of the rest…

…and finished!

Sniper Team

SA-7 Team

Faceless Pawns, er...I mean, Motor Riflemen.

The Gang’s all here!

Cheers

Iain