I’m building a small diorama of a 7.5cm Pak 40 antitank gun, using an old Tamiya kit I had in the stash. I decided to depict it as a dug-in emplacement, using a reprint of a German Fieldworks Manual as a guide.
First I cut a slab of styrofoam on the table saw to fit a 8x10 picture frame. Then I routed out the center to form the rough outline of the dug out position;
Next, I cast some rock slabs using a Woodland Scenics rubber mold and placed them around the position to act as a basis for the dirt piles. Then I cover the whole scene with Sculpt-a-Mold (Celluclay) for the groundwork, using a old wheel from the spares box to make the tire tracks;
I then paint the undercoat colors for the ground surfacea and then cover it with thinned white glue, sand and static grass;
Next, I paint the static grass and add some clumps of taller grass, some shrubby trees and dry brush/wash the ground in various earth tones. Most of the crew are straight from the box, with a bit of modifications to get them in the proper poses. The trees are made from tree roots, sprayed with Super 77 spray-glue and covered with dried oregano leaves.
Nothing is finished yet. I still have at least one more figure to build, then dusting, various equipment to be added, and building the side boards to cover the bare foam on the edges. The gun itself is sprayed in overall Polly Scale German Dark Yellow with the camo being brush painted with oil paints, colored pencils, oil and acrylic washes.
I need to find, or build, some ammo crates. There will be another guy carrying a crate up from the rear, as soon as he gets built.
Concurr… NO artilleryman would ever stand in the path of recoil… Well, that’s not true either, becasue I’ve seen guys catch a gun-breech with their chests, so lemme modify that to say that no SMART Artilleryman would stand in the path of recoil… That bit of safety is practically hammered into a gunbunny’s skull… If the gun fires and the Jesus Bolt fails, it’s a bad day for that loader…
I think you folks are seeing lens compression here, that loader is a good 3 scale feet beyond the recoil limit of the gun. Here is a top view, and as you can see, he’s not about to become fish paste;
He’s not that dumb…
Also, I just noticed the gun isn’t in it’s proper placement, it’s out of it’s wheel ruts and a bit back from where it should be. If it still bothers you all, I’ll move him back some more, but IMHO, he’ll be just fine, though I need to close his hand around the round, looks kinda cheesy as is…
I love this how to for ground work. Is the styrafoam from the same stuff hardware stores carry.
Did you also use a Dremel tool or something to route out the pit?
Anyway i think it turned out great, i love the mini dio’s[tup]
The styrofoam came from Michael’s Craft Store. It’s a bit more brittle than the stuff they use for ice chests, but any foam will work. The pit is routed out with a 1/4" drive, round-nose, wood-cutting burr, (the kind with the big, pointy teeth on it), set in my drill press so I could cut the foam to an even depth. I then just move the foam around while the bit is running, to route out the cavity.
No, it’s not “lens compression”… The “Path of Recoil” isn’t the same as the recoil limit… The path of recoil is anywhere directly behind the tube out to about 10-20 meters… When I referred to the “Jesus Bolt”, I wasn’t making it up. There’s always a possibility that the single bolt that holds the tube in the cradle could fail and the tube will come out of battery with lethal force and kill anyone standing behind it. If that bolt fails, you had better have made your peace with Jesus because he’s the only one who can save you (Hence the term, “Jesus Bolt”) then… A cannoneer will always stand a foot or so to the side of the path of recoil… Your guy is almost there, but not quite. It also looks like the assistant gunner has just closed the breech, so there’s a round in the tube…
That 7.5cm Pak 40 antitank gun dio, looks amazing.[tup] Seriously, it looks fantastic. However the Pak seems a bit too clean. For example the tires went over dirt and when the gun shoots off a round dirt and dust is bound to be kicked up. Perhaps you could add a bit more pastels. Otherwise, this dio looks great.[:)]
The reason it is so clean is that it has not been weathered yet. No single part is finished. The whole thing is only about 60% complete. There are more figures to be added, more shrubs, plants, dirt, forest litter, equipment, weapons, ammo crates, foliage camo, spent shells, garbage, …and finally…dust, yet to be added. The figures still have a way to go before they are finished, they haven’t even been dullcoated yet.
Given the choice between the possibility of the Jesus Bolt killing you and the sure thing of a bullet from the opposing force, I’ll take the safe position behind the bullet shield and take my chances with the JB.[;)]
Looking good so far…nice emplacement…nice camo…all this talk about recoil…let’s just say there isn’t a round in the chamber yet—looks like the guy is about to ram one home anyway…
In and of itself, a dio of a jesus bolt knocking out part of a gun crew would make for a striking and interesting diorama. You could probably sell it to the Field Artillery branch, and they could put it on prominent display at the place where they turn ROTC officers into arty guys…fair warning…
Not much done overnight, working on a ammo carrying dude at the moment. Jeez…do Trumpeter figures blow chunks or what? This guy is worse than the old Italeri figs. Frankenstein boots, baseball glove hands, undersized and wrongly positioned pockets, dorky helmet…at least he is close to the pose I want. Carve off the pockets and scratch some new ones out of putty, reposition the arms, needle file the hands into shape, chop down the boots…he might make the team after all, I don’t know yet. Gotta find the dimensions for a Pak 40 ammo crate…surely I have them somewhere.
In case anyone might want it, here is the drawing for the emplacement;
I thought about adding the Panzerdeckungslochern und Munitionslochern, as shown in the drawing, but I wanted to keep this dio small, the added trenches and ammo pits would have made it too large.
Ah… I don’t know, but it looks like even the genuine German Field Manual sketch has the guys lined up like bowling pins behind the gun shield. [sigh] Maybe that’s what the Gott mit Uns on the belt buckles are for…[;)]
Thanks for the sketch… I was gonna ask ya about one… I got a PAK 40 that I “blew” the barrel on in the pipe.
I ain’t all that concerned about the crew placement, it was just FYI and I was bored waiting for some groundwork to dry and thought I’d share a little first-hand Redleg info… I was a Redleg for the first 8 years or so of my Army career… Ya can take me outta the Artillery, but ya can’t take the Artillery outta me, knowwhutImena?
I did notice the right trail looks like it isn’t all the way out to the trail-lock though… But it’s only visible from the “God’s-eye view”… I’d be interested in your static grass technique… I use the stuff, but it’s always so uniform, it looks like the someone mowed recently… Are you “stacking” it in layers or what? Also, what’s your blend? Or do you paint it after it’s dry?
Right now, the only thing that is glued down is the groundwork, everything else is just temporarily held in place the Blue-Tack sticky putty. I didn’t check the gun’s placement when I photographed it and it is not sitting properly as intended. But it still barely fits. Makes me wonder what a “Schwere PaK” was at the time this manual was printed…a 37mm PaK 36?
I followed the sketch dimensions (in meters) exactly while forming the pit. I have a 1/35th scale ruler, (a handy thing to have, BTW), which I used to trace a paper pattern, that I then transferred onto the foam. The gun sits symmetrically in the pit, but the trails are not quite fully extended, an error I did not note until too late. It isn’t really noticeable when everything is positioned properly. Looking at a photo of the trail locking mechanism though makes me realize that it could not be locked in place without being fully extended…oh well…
What’s with the Germans and their red grease fittings anyway? All the stuff I saw in Germany was that way too.
The grass is formed in two stages. Part is static grass and part is Woodland Scenics Tall Field Grass, or something close to that name. Most folks plant the tall grass clumps first, then fill in the surrounding area with the static grass, but I prefer to do it the other way around, this way I don’t slob glue on the tall grass while I am planting the static. All static grasses come in various hideous colors to begin with, (see above photo #5), so I bought a huge container that was on sale for 1/2 price because of it’s weird color at the LHS. Once dry, I AB it a dark green to start, then dry brush it in progressively lighter shades of green oil paint, ending with a light yellow. Everything is really brightly colored right now, this will all be muted down with a light dusting of a khaki color when I’m done.
Apart from afor mentioned Jesus bolt, that loader better have his catcher mitt on. From the evidence of the ejected casing at his feet, there is a good chance, if there is around in the tube and he is holding the next shot, that casing is going to come out flying at him when the gunner opens the breech! A well trained crew can open that breech on recoil and that casing will come out flying.
That just my two cents worth of input!
Great concept, I’ve been toying with the idea of doing a gun pit for a M105 Gun.
