Hey everyone. I cant believe the last time I worked on models was back for the Kursk build T34 I did in the summer. When school started up, I was just bombarded with HW and college apps to fill out. However, my schools marching band season has ended, giving me much more free time, and I just finished one of my college essays, giving a temporary break in the madness. So I got out my 3 current WIP builds to take pics.
*note that these pictures were not taken with my regular camera, just with my laptops built in webcam, so they arent the nest quality. Also, the camera for some reason mirrors all of the images, so my halftrack does not have the steering wheel on the wrong side (mayby its british?) and my tiger’s numbers are correct. The three build here are:
Dragon sdkfz 251/17 ausf D. I got this build way back in december of last year, and started work during the summer. I have weatheres the insidefighting compartment, and still have to add in the flak gun. The 2 halves have ben glued on, so my next step is to mask off the inside to paint the camo (which I need to buy paint for) Then come the roadwheels. This is my irst time doing a halftrack since I started modeling, and I remeber painting the hell of the fine rubber lines on the roadwheels. Im really happy with the dusty look I got of the inside, using tamiya weahtering sets and some water.
This is a tamiya tiger 1. I actually started this as my 4th model build ever, but it was stalled and my sherman took its place. The kit came with remote controlled motors to install so it could move forward and back, and traverse the turret. However, the turret traverse motor is broken, and the motors were very fast. So instead of dealing with trying to ship them back to japan and see if they can even replace them, I think I will just build it as a static kit. I had finished the weathering on this kit, and it had waited all of the wheels to be assembled. However, now I think that I will go back and add chipping and streaking, as my moddeling skills have improved since I last worked on it.
Finally (and my favorite of the three) is a dragon JSU-122. I love the looks of this tank, its a real beast. It went together fine, except the tracks. They were a major pain in the @$$. I was going to assemble them first, then take them off for easyer painting, but found that they would not stick together, so I ended up going the biffa way and gluing the tracks on before painting. I have not glued the top and bottom hulls together, and I will paint and mask off the tracks first, because painting under the fenders would be a nightmare. I removed lots of fenders on this tank for battle damage, and like the way the track sag turned out. I think this one will be heavilly weathered.
Any comments will be appreciated. It feels good to be back modeling!
Hey MG42-some nice stuff there; that Tiger especially looks really well-painted!
I was happy to read that the upper hull wasn’t glued onto the ISU yet though; you might want to seriously consider adding a strip of .040 plastic strip along the lower hull top where it will mate with the upper hull. The reason is that the old Dragon ISU and JS hulls are notoriously too low to give proper clearance to the fenders–you can see this on your build there, where the tracks are butted right up to the fenders; there’s not enough scale clearance there, and it’s really noticeable if you compare it to reference photos.
Here’s a photo of my ISU152 with the modification made correctly–notice the proper scale clearance? If truth be told, you could even go .060, but at that point you’d have serious issues trying to mate up the hulls, especially in the rear deck area–it’s a bit tricky to do it with 040, but it really eliminates that look of the tracks rubbing the fenders…
MG42 - can’t wait to see these finished with some real camera pics…looks like there are some winners in there! [tup] Obviously you’ll have a kajillion (it’s a word, I swear!) other things to do in college, but you should really try to stick with your modelling - especially with your talent…I wish I had. [sigh] Wouldn’t have to be re-learning everything now. Heh.
Herr Doogness - you’re saying all the DML hulls are like that? I have an older JS-2…6804 maybe? (Pulling that number out of my a**) The “UZTM Production” version.
Pretty mucn, as far as I know! You’ll know when you fit the hull top to the bottom–there should be at least 2-3 mm of clearance between the track and the fender where it passes over the return rollers! Check it against references–you’ll see where the kit is “squashed” down. You can really see the LACK of clearance in MG’s photographs of the kit.
As far as I know, DML never corrected them…[sigh] I’ve built two of the JS series–that one included–and have done both with the mod…
Looking good MG42 the tiger is really looking nice and you will have fun weathering the JS there is so much of it to go at and that texture loves the dirt heh.
Hey guys, thanks for all the comments. Im going to try to take better pictures when I get some work done on these tanks, hopefully this weekend. For the problem with the JSU’s tracks, I tried to eliminate the look by removing a lot of the fenders, and going woth a lot of track sag, but you can still tell. The idea of raising the upper hull looks great, except I dont have any styrene or putty in the house. I could use some thin plastic I have, but the lack of putty wont let me smooth it out properly. Also, theres a problem with how the rear hull fits. The upper and lower sections are a bit far apart as is, and raising the hull up farther will make the gap even larger. I doubt I could fix the larger gap even with putty. (I think the problem started when I glued the lower hull together, I think I angled out the rear hull half too far.) So I might have to live with the tracks being too close to the fenders on this build. There is a bit of clearence between the trakcs and fenders, they arent touching yet.
