Visions of a future build

[Crazy-Creator-5601]

You may have noticed that I haven’t posted anything of my current project, but I am already preparing the next one titled “Boldness in adversity (D-Day, June 6th, 1944)”.

In fact, besides still working on “dragon teeth” reserved for The Battle of the Bulge - I am producing a dozen of the big ones - I am also preparing and refining the R677 Bunker of the 88mm PAK 43/41, which came in a very strange conformation which did not completely correspond to the one on WN61 or Fox Green for the landing soldiers.

Here are a few preliminary pictures of what I am doing. Since the rooftop of the R677 had a funny shape, by no means realistic enough I covered it all with Light Weight Plaster by Woodland Scenics by pouring it summarily over on its top simulating the terrain which actually covered the roof. I fixed it by spraying it with a mix of Craft glue mixed to Aliphatic glue and water. I sprayed the mixture from above with a sprayer. Due to its nature, once wetted the material starts to show tiny bumps like on a natural terrain surface. This will later be further refined with actual terrain surfacers and vegetation.

The protection wall, although already built in hard plaster, lacked the necessary details which I could not add on that material. So, in order to finish it and define it a bit better, I added a very thin layer of air drying clay mixed with water and despite being thin, it tended to stick to everything requiring additional lukewarm water and a spatula to be evenly spread along the side and upper surfaces of the wall. I also used a water filled paint roller sponge to make it smoother. Once this was finally achieved I pressed a medium sized wooden stick into the clay to simulate the horizontal shapes of the concrete stones, then, with a smaller stick to which I cut its rounded ends, proceeded to do the same for the vertical imprints. Tomorrow i will proceed with the outer facade of the wall and do the same. The upper one seemed to be smooth, so I just passed over it with a large spatula applying rotating movements and then a full downward pass to completely flatten it.

You will notice that the rear is completely open and lacks the interior retaining walls and the iron doors that protected the entrance. The fact is that the seller of this model included a base, while all my other Bunkers lack that, which makes it possible to place the artillery piece into it more easily.
No big deal, but due to the floor attached to the upper walls I need enough space to “push” and “pull” the large PAK 43/41 into his frontal cradle as well as the crew manning it and until they are finally fixed I cannot add these details beforehand.

Once these will finally be placed in, the iron doors will be shown in the open position, but to their rear there will be two massive protection walls placed into an overlapping position.

I hope you won’t be too disappointed with this change of pace in my current work, but soon enough you will see my initial steps in building all the vehicles contained in “The Last Warning” as well as their painting and decaling, followed by the assembly of all the soldier figures with their painting and decaling, so please stay tuned since there will be lots of stuff coming up.

Until then, please enjoy these first glimpses to future builds.

[Crazy-Creator-5601]

Just for your information. The wall that came with this bunker was too short and stepped, while the one protecting the current bunker was by far more massive, and make no mistake, even modern pictures of the site do not depict it as it really was, nor do the after battle photos published at the time, since after the battle engineers partially dismantled it, reducing it in size.
Today this is what you actually see. I instead followed the original plans for a regular Regelbau (hence the R) 677 which clearly shows the protection wall to be of a much larger and massive size.

Here are some of these pictures.

The only thing that I will have to further modify is the rear massive wall.
Obviously someone messed up the original plans to an actual R677.
In every blueprint and actual picture it is evident the the rear sustaining wall was as massive as the rest of the bunker and had a kind of outlooking “wings”. This won’t be a major modification. I will only have to widen the rear part of the wall and reshape it into a pair of concrete triangles. Not much of these will be seen, except maybe the upper roof part.
To the front of the rooftop, once again, like on the Longues-sur-Mer Bunker, I will have to place a very small parapet built with a square rod of balsa wood cut in its width to match both the embrasure and the protective wall. It will then be covered in plaster and painted like the rest of the Bunker. Also a minor modification.

But all this is reserved for the future. Currently I will just finish the protective wall. But the outer wall doesn’t really have to be exactly detailed as the inner one, since most of it, just like the entire bunker will be covered by the surrounding terrain, except the rear entrance.

I will keep you posted as soon I will make further modifications during the building of this second diorama.

[Crazy-Creator-5601]

I couldn’t resist, no, I simply could not resist the temptation to somehow figure out how the big R677 Bunker would look in its own original colors.
Mind you, it’s not finished by any means of the term, but it starts to take on the character I wanted to give it to it.

I will still have to paint the interiors simulating limestone which is a mixture of a tannish gray, or the other way round, a grayish tan.

The current exterior of the bunker has been prepared not just with paint but rather with a Concrete terrain material by AK Interactive which is rather coarse and together with concrete color also contains sandy pigments which exactly simulate the material in scale.

The roof has been already covered with a simulated terrain.
I started with plain plaster which I freely wetted with water which resulted in the material forming sorts of tiny solid bubbles.
To fix it I used a liquified glue mixture freely sprayed all over it and did let it dry.

Once certain that it was fully solid, I applied AK Interactive Terrain Dark Earth, which resulted to be by far too dark, but had further consolidated the previous plaster layer.

I then opted for Light Earth but again, this resulted by far too bright to be soil on which grass and vegetation would have grown.

I therefore proceeded to take Woodland Scenics Earth Underground and with a rough dry brush dapped the entire rooftop with that liquid paint, but did not proceed in a regular dabbing as usually done in dry brushing, but rather dabbed it in some and leaving the rest alone.

Once completely dried, I repeated the operation with less paint but covering all the rest of the bright spots still surfacing resulting in a very irregular brownish color as can often be seen in fresh soil.

I intended to further detail the outer side of the protection wall, but since it will be covered with soil and vegetation almost to the top, I left it as is, while the interior and the top also received a further concrete cover, resulting in a very gritty aspect of the wall.

I also prepared the iron doors to the rear with a new product by AK Interactive called Rust Effect (AK11264) which includes two bottles, one contains a 35ml special acrylic iron paint (rather thick) (AK11266), while the second has an 18ml bottle containing an Oxidizing Agent (AK11268).

First, one paints the object with the basic iron paint, lets it dry and once it is ready gets the wet treatment with the oxidizer brushed all over the now painted object, preferably in long, regular brush strokes and possibly from the top down.

Then one just waits. At first it seems that nothing is really happening, but after an hour or so one can clearly see subtle rust traces all over it and this is what you will see to the rear of the Bunker.

This too is just a momentary arrangement because both doors need further details that did not come in the box and so I will have to create them myself, such as levers, latches and hinges, but for the moment this is it, since I now want to proceed with my current project.

Still, more must be done with this particular R677, like the roof parapets and the complete weathering and aging of the bunker, but I also gave up in further expanding the rear wall since again, the sides will anyway be covered with soil and vegetation.

In the meanwhile I also have to attend various medical appointments for tests and examinations and in two weeks I will also have a final cataract operation on my left eye and therefore I will be a bit absent from here.

In between though, I count to keep you informed with my further progress with “The Last Warning” which will set my mind elsewhere than my usual medical boredom.

So without further ado, here are the most recent pictures of the R677.

I just realized one very sad thing and it is that this particular R677 is by no means an exact duplicate to the original.

By comparing it with the Italeri 1/72 scale counterpart, which is a much simpler build in styrene and exactly reflects the one on Fox Green there is simply no comparison.

First of all, the embrasure is enclosed into a much higher facade, this one is too low, second and again, the problem with both the protective wall and the rear of the bunker which makes this one a completely wrong build, but unfortunately except from the one that comes with Italeri there are no 1/35 scale R677 in the marketplace and so I am stuck with this awkward and very strangely modeled thing that came from a British producer.

So please do not hold it against me if it is not as perfect as I wanted it to be.
To restructure it from scratch, being in hard ceramic would be mission impossible and it would be by far easier building one from scratch, but since I am not an architect nor an engineer I wouldn’t know how to proceed.

Should anyone know someone who actually produces a correct one in 1/35 scale I would be eternally grateful, since otherwise I am reduced to place this misfit into an otherwise precise diorama, and since it is rather massive, it would also immediately attract attention to itself and many familiar with the site would immediately criticize my choice of placing this one there.

Anyway, I will study the problem and see if I can somehow build one from scratch with foam plates which I will eventually reinforce with plaster, but it would require some time and there is no guarantee that it would actually be looking like the real one.

This saddens me at no end, since I had great hopes after having added the corrected protective wall, that it would nevertheless look more real, but it simply doesn’t.

I will report back at a later date about whether or not I am managing to build one in the right size but this would add much more work than I had expected. I hope you will understand.

BTW: even the wall I attempted to reproduce seems a bit exaggerated and doesn’t slope down as the original one, but that was due to the original shorter and stepped one built underneath it which didn’t allow me to do otherwise.

Be well and rejoice in dwelling in your own creativity.