Tamiya’s old 88 kit, a royal pain in the rear to build, but a nice looking kit. I used the kit supplied figures, although they’re ancient, no sense in tossing them. The bunker is scratchbuilt, using blue insulation foam, ran through the table saw and then through the compount mitre saw for the angles. The stairs are also foam. Sandbags are scratched out of self hardening clay, and did crack a bit when they dried (real old clay) Got pics of flak installations where the sand bags are actually that size! [:0] Sand is craft sand from Michaels, netting is cheesecloth. Enjoy, comments welcome!
I painted the bunker Quaker Grey craft paint (Delta Brand) and added a straight black artist oil wash. As soon as the wash hit the foam, it’s like it almost turned it into real concrete!
Thanks guys for the comments!
tediam, didn’t do anything to the foam except lightly sanded the edges. The saw blades smoothed everything out when I was cutting it, and the sandpaper smoothed it out more. That’s it.
When I was cutting out the stairs and separating the cutout, some areas actually chipped, but it was for the better, 'cause then it looked like broken concrete!
kelly it was your work that I was looking at when I went to bed this morning at 12:30AM. It’s now I:55PM in the afternoon,and lo and behold, I’m looking at your work? Just incredible workmanship, and very generous tips on how it all happens. Thanks for sharing your work and secrets with us. Semper Fi, mike
Thanks Mike!
I really love showing and letting others know how I achieve these little scenes, any ways of achieving effects, etc. We all learn from each other on how we do things, and in the end it makes all better at our craft. That’s why if I find a way of doing something, or find a cool little product I’ll share it. Like with Russ and the wedding cake columns for his FAMO, he phoned me, told me about them, I went the next day and picked up some for myself!
i built that same kit, it seemed alright, the figs were pretty good, but i hated the fit of the gun to the mount and the little thing on top and around the barrel, i have to redo it cuz it lost some pieces… it was in my first dio but it turned out really bad…now its a “orphanage” if u will for all the figs i have with out homes…its just a big pile of figs, guns and in the middle of it all is the 88!
Great build!!! Everything i saw from you so far is outstanding!!!
That construction foamboard is excellent stuff to work with,besides all of the usual
plus this type of foam offers to modelers it also makes an otherwise heavy dio much lighter but doesnt lack in strength. Lovely work Kelly.
Thanks again gang, and thanks to Russ for getting me onto the site, I have so many “homes”, some of which there isn’t much activity, but here, whoa! LOL Yah, the foam board is lovely stuff, my “Last Days” dio, the entire base is the foam board, just painted up…and man, it’s nice and light, and super strong too!
D-D, I know your sentiments exactly, when I installed the barrel, no matter how hard I tried, the whole barrel sits a few degrees off of centre, when you look at it from top down, it sits a bit to the right. I wasn’t planning on using the shield, but with out it, it’s very noticable, so I had to use it to hide it up a bit.
Oh, I forgot to mention how I did the paint for this build. The whole gun was spraybombed with dark grey Auto Primer (a very good substitute for Panzer Grey it’s so close it ain’t funny) then I airbrushed on Dark Yellow. Took a knife and started scraping here and there to reveal the grey underneath, to give it a severe chipped look.
