24 March 2009

Last year, after my first house move I was rumaging through my stash and stumbled upon this kit. Turns out it was a present sent by my boss to my business partners' kid, who never really got into the model building.

So I built it up over a 3-4 month period, until I hit the tracks. No matter how I tried, I failed completely, and it was boxed up again for the second house during the summer. On attending the Telford Scale Model World show I picked up a set of Fruil tracks, and a wood base. Here is how she looked in November, after spending a few days constructing the white metal Fruil tracks - very theraputic.

Roll on to March and with the weather now playing ball, I can attempt to have a crack at some of my stalled builds, and this one pushed it way to the front. At last years Telford Show I had also picked up some Vallejo Model Color Acrylics so I tried to airbrush them, but they didn't react very well (lots of spitting). But I persevered and got some semblence of a camouflage pattern on. I didn't use any masking and it shows. I laid down a few coats of Klear, and then applied a Florys Model Dark Brown wash. When I tried it over the bare tracks, I didn't get the results I was after, so I shall have a bash this weekend, to get it a least looking half realistic.

30 March 2009

Here are the results of this weekends work. First I took off the tracks and sprayed them Tamiya XF-9 [Hull Red], reattached them and then sprayed two coats of Xtracylix Flat Varnish over the entire tank. I then loaded my airbrush with some Flory Models washes - Sand and Black mainly and sprayed them. On them drying, they looked way over the top, so I loaded a large brush with plain water and tried to thin the washes. I am still not quite convinced, but it is now quite difficult to use kitchen towels or Q-tips to remove, as they keep catching and ripping off the catches and other. I am leaving it for a while and when I get some Pollyfilla I shall attempt the base.