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 placed in the iron doors will be show 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 modified 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 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.