Zeppelin Rammer part 2

Picking up the Rammer again. I left off with painting the plane RLM 82 on top, black in front and RLM 65 on the bottom.  The painting guide shows that there is a camp pattern on top of the wings. It doesn't mention what color, so I just went ahead and used the RLM 65 - 

Since there is no pilot and I'm thinking of making an "in action" vignette, I darkened the windows with a black wash.  I also added the decals. I thought I had a pic, but no. I'll get one asap. 

Now thinking about how to make it look similar to the box art - 

I figured there has to be a website for just about everything - and there is. I search "B-17 battle damage" and browsed thru images until I came across this one, of The All American  - 

The story behind this was that the gunners shot down a Bf-109. It goes on to say the plane flips upside down (out of control?) and the wing slices thru the fuselage front to back. You can read an account HERE .
This is going to be my inspiration.  

Next step was to look for a 1/72 scale B-17. Obviously since I only need the back 1/3, I wasn't about to pay a lot for it. As if on cue I get Megahobby's email newsletter, and after a short look, I found an Airfix Memphis Belle for $17!  Sold.  Since the Belle was too famous to destroy like that, MegaHobby also had a set of generic B-17 decals. I bought those as well. 

Getting the kit, the first thing to be done is cut away anything I'm not using. I made my cut right behind the ball turret.  Then I took a pencil and drew out where I wanted the damege. Then it was time to take the dremel to the plane.
Having cut out what I wanted, I added back in some of the ribbing - 

More details will be needed, but this is it for now. Thanks for looking.

 

Ahab Finale

Well, almost. It seems that I tend to run behind on basing my models. The Capt. is the same. By adding the harpoon and the hand, I was calling this one done.

Now on to the base. For now I borrowed a rustic one from my Doc Holiday build, but I had a few ideas for Ahab to have his own. My first one was to fabricate a whale tooth in a scrimshaw look. But then the part that makes it "look" like a tooth would be the point - the part that would be cut off or hidden by the bust. The second idea would be to make some wood pilings that would be seen  in and around piers. Make sure to check back for that. 

In the meantime, enjoy Capt. Ahab. Thanks for looking. 

The Occupation of Jedha City

The Bandai Star Destroyer build was easy, and with it's small scale I left the painting minimal. I left it with a gray underside and a white and white gray topside. The details were highlighted with some V. Gray wash. 
Jedha City, from JPG Productions, was painted in browns and orange browns and then washed with sepia and brown. From there I highlighted some roof tops in Ivory, and Buff. Then I overemphasized the shadow of the Star Destroyer on the city with Citadels Nuln Oil. Thanks for looking.

Bandai's star Destroyer

This is a kit I felt I had to get after buying JPG's Jeddah City base a long while ago. I know, odd that I would buy a base first... ;)     
This is a pic from JPG page - 

The Ship doesn't have a scale, and I haven't taken the time to figure it out, but it ends up being about 4 or 5 inches long.  The big plus that's normal for Bandai kits is that the detail is tremendous - 

One "Duh" moment I had was that at first I thought I could build it w/o instructions (and prolly could), but don't see any. Then I see amidst all the Japanese writing to "Go to this site for English", which I do and then no directions. Then the box top gets turned over and there they are!  Should should have known it as other small Japanese models have the instructions there as well. LOL Oh well - here's an image in case someone else has a brain fart - 

I left off with the craft drying from a priming. I figure a coat of white and then some light wash to bring out the detail and I'll call this one done. Check back for the finished model. Thanks for looking. 

 

Ahab part 2

Work continues on Ahab, by adding details to the face and eyes. Then I decided to add some detail to the vest he's wearing. I'm following Ian E's techniques of adding layers and it seems to be working out for me - IMHO ;) 

Using this technique take s time, so that's was all that was done on this session.

Picking up where I left off the next day, the illustration shows that Ahab is wearing a striped shirt. So I thought I would try that. Luckily I had a long bristle liner brush by Wamp, I took my time and in the end the effort looked pretty good. The to make the striped be in the shirt rather than on it, I did a mist coat of white, and then with a smaller brush highlighted the tops of the folds and creases. Thanks for looking.

 

Scimitar Bomber

Yet another kit that has been in the stash for a long time. Making it's first appearance in the book, Dark Forces Rising, the Scimitar Bomber is from Kessel Run, and sold through Multiverse Models.  
The 1:144 scale kit comes in 8 pieces of resin and a clear rod for attaching the model to the base. 

The kit comes with an illustrated instruction sheet, but it's pretty self explanatory except for which way around the cockpit area gets attached. All one needs to do is pay attention to the greeblie pattern and is super glued right in place. 

The model is very detail for it's size, so painting it up takes a bit of time. I chose to paint in the front window rather than using the supplied decal. 

While waiting for the paint to dry I came up with a cratered landscape, and planned for a little colony, the subject, of the bombing in the largest crater. It was made with Sculpt A Mold on top of a Michaels pine plaque. It was primed black and then I came back with white primer at a very low angle to highlight the surface textures.  Little pieces of different sized square styrene is all thats used to indicates buildings.

 From there it was just a matter of drilling a hole in the bottom of the craft to accept the larger clear acrylic rod, and then another hole in the landscape.  Some tufts of painted cotton indicates the bombing in progress. Thanks for looking.

Brengun's Zeppelin Rammer

The second kit for the bench probably has to be the smallest 1:72 scale kit I ever built in the form of Brengun's  Zeppelin Rammer. 
There is a little discrepancy between the info on the box and whats being said on the Luft '46  site. The site says:

This project was first proposed in November 1944. The "Rammer" was to be towed aloft by another fighter (most likely a Bf 109). Once released, the pilot was to ignite the solid-fuel Schmidding rocket, accelerating to 970 km/h (602 mph) and then launching its 14 R4M rockets at the target. A second pass was then made, this time making a ramming attack with its reinforced wings. It was calculated that at the attack speed the aircraft could cut cleanly through the tail section of a B-17 without great loss of speed or stability. After attacking, a gliding landing was to be made on a retractable skid.

Looking in the box, Brengun gives you enough parts to make two Rammers. The back of the box gives you 3 paint schemes, sort of indicating that it saw service. I chose to create the 3rd option - The Trudi -  from late in the war. The second two apparently were named. The middle one is Anna. 

What Brengun lacks in attachment points, it makes up for in detail. The plane has quite an extensive amount of PE for such a small plane. while the Luft '46 page says that it had a rocket motor, the Brengun box says it was a glider, and no rocket motor is included. The plane is also supposed to land on a skid. While there is also no skid included, if you look closely at the panel lines you see this off panel on the bottom. It is the retracted skid. I guess if someone wanted to do micro surgery, that skid could be set up in landing mode.  My eyes aren't good enough for that. 

The cockpit is the first thing that needs to be tackled. For such a small plane it includes a full seat, a stick and a small instrument panel, with 3 indentations for gauges. The insides was painted gray with a dark wash. The seats were highlighted with VMC Red Leather, and then washed with Citadel's Agrax Earthshade. the foot pedals are painted silver according to the directions. Too bad 99% of it won't be seen after the canopy goes on.

Closing up the fuselage and getting rid of the seam line, the only other thing that has to be done is glue the vertical stabilizer to the tail.  The wings are one piece each - 

Putting the remaining part together I should have attached all the PE. But I got carried away and started painting. The scheme I chose was RLM 82 (lightened a bit) and a black nose. The instructions say the underside of the wings are to be RLM 83, which looking it up is also green, but the painting guide on the box shows, that I think it's meant to say RLM 76 or 77. I have 76 and that's what will go on there. Check back for the PE installation and my idea for a little vignette. Thanks for looking.

 

The canopy is only sitting in place in this pic.

A clean table and a new kit - Ahab

With my current projects all finished it was time to jump into my stash and come up with my next projects. One of them is Capt. Ahab from Green Monkey Models. This one is a very nice kit with a more than passing resemblance to the actor Gregory Peck who was Ahab in the 1956 movie, Moby Dick. 
Without giving away any spoilers I remember seeing this as a kid and having nightmares Re: the ending! LOL 

 The kit comes in four resin parts and 1 metal rod which is part of the harpoon. 
It doesn't come with a base, but I have something in mind for that.

First thing done after the primer was to give everything a base coat. Thanks for looking and check back. 

Boba Fett and the Tatooine War Bird

This model is another model from deep in the stash. I remember buying the model from the Buy and Sell section of a forum. The sculptor was Chris Lynch, and looking at Boba's size, I'm guessing it's around 1/10th scale. I have no further info on it. Even doing a web search, that title gets exactly 1 hit from a guy on a Star Wars Models website who had it listed on his "wants" page.  It's not from one of the movies, but maybe a comic or some book?

The kit came in about 10 parts. Boba's body and the bird; Boba's head, his two arms and rifle, the two sand people heads, a gun in a holster, some bag that had no apparent place to go, and the two parts of the birds restraint. It also came with a length of cord, and a length of "pleather". The resin was mostly in good shape, but it did need a little work.   I didn't think to take a pic before starting, but here we are with most of the parts attached - 

The bird was tackled first. With it supposedly from Tatooine, I figured it was to blend into a sandy, rocky background. So the bird was made up of browns and other neutral colors.  I figured the model needed a splash of color, so blue was added to the bird's crest and around his eyes. This color choice will come in handy later.

The ground work is just Dark Sand and and an orange ocher

Next turning my attention to Boba, I started filling in the colors that I remembered.  There was a few times where I had to look up exactly what color went where.  At this point I also painted in the Sand People heads with Iraqi Sand and White Aluminum for the metal parts. Around their mouth was a brown leather color and the bottom of the mouth looked really dark. I ended up painting it a German Gray. The blaster was painted with VMC Gunmetal, and then highlighted lightly in silver. The silver was also used to create the scratches around his armor.
It was here I thought the bird needed a little more color, so I took the Cavalry Red I used for his gauntlets, and highlighted the birds feathers.

 This is where I left it for the day. 
A few days later I was back and it was time to finish up Boba. The first thing to do was paint the backpack. Here's where a little indecision came in. He seems to have changed his uniform between ESB and ROTJ. In ESB his back pack was mostly green (also green gauntlets), but in ROTJ the backpack was more colorful including an ocher color, a red, and even blue!  So to harmonize the model, the red is the same color as the gauntlets, and I reduced the saturation of the blue by adding black, and then I lighted it by adding the gray from his jumpsuit 
While this was drying, I glued in the restraints to the birds collar. When the CA on that dried, I wrapped the pleather around the collar, and then according to the line diagram, around the saddle horn and back to the other part of the collar.  I dipped the cord in Citadel's Agrax Earthshade, glued it in a loop and then just hung it around the Sand People heads. 

This was another model I could fiddle with forever, so instead I called this one done.  Thanks for looking. 

Miss Pumpkin Witch Finale

Just a few touch ups, and then glue the arm and hat on, and I was done. Not coming with a base, I just cut a little disk of foam, and then added some grass to it. Then with some Aves, I fashioned another pumpkin on it's vine and added it to the background. Calling it done. Thanks for looking. 

Miss Pumpkin Witch

After every build I usually clean up around the desk, and I notice this little mini which had fallen on the floor and got covered by a box.  She's Miss Pumpkin Witch, from The Predastore. 
Since Halloween is right around the corner I decided to move this model to the front of the line.  The 1/35 mini is part of the pin-up limited edition series. Mine was number 18 of 200. The model comes in 3 parts - the body/pumpkin, the arm with the knife, and the hat. 

As usual it's starts with a two tone priming - 

And then a base coat. What you're seeing here are the stocks before trying a smoky color. That ended up not working and decided to just take it easy and make a very pale purple stockings - 

 Here we have a few highlights on the pumpkin, skin and dress. I also started detailing her face. WOW it's tiny!  Thanks for looking.

Medusa Finale - The Scales

Well, I sat looking at the scales for 2 days, before deciding to go ahead and use them. I don't know if I mentioned it, but they came from Fallout Hobbies.

They are cut from a adhesive backed paper. You get 3 different sizes of scales. I used the smallest ones on her back, and the middle size on her thighs.
The first thing I noticed was that the adhesive works very well. So I stuck a section to my pants a few times to reduce tackiness. 
Next is to get the stencils evenly over the model. Fitting it over compound curves turns out to be a bit more tricky than I expected. 

I decided that I would go to the Chameleon Colors and used one that turns from green to blue, and sprayed. The paint went on w/o incident. The instructions say to pull slowly, with even pressure as to not rip the stencil. However nothing was said about pulling the paint off. despite reducing the tackiness, that's what it did in a tiny spot on her back. Thankfully I was able to repair that. 

Now I'm gun shy. Do I say "Nope" and just repaint the back with flesh and forget the scales. Nope I move forward and add the scales to the thighs. But beforehand I to the stick the stencils to my pants again. I put them on, spray, looks good, and in pulling the stencil off, more paint goes with it.  Arrrgh. I make that repair, and then for the thigh that's on the "back side" of the dio, I put the scales on backward - tacky part outward, spray and that worked. 

So it's done and I'm still not sure I like it. I will post again if I decide to get rid of the scales. 

 

Medusa part 6

The stencil for the scales hasn't arrived yet, but I'm finished with her besides that I couldn't resist a few pics. Now, I'm reconsidering even needing the scales ...
Thanks for looking. 

Spiderman Final

I finally took pics of the finished Spiderman as he hangs on my wall.  It's in a rather empty section of for now. But I was thing of getting some pin striping and make a little web behind him. 

Thanks for looking. 

Medusa part 5

I finally heard from the scale stencil guy, and I should have it Tuesday (I'm writing this on Monday). 
Hopefully my next post will show the finale. 

But for today, I did some more work on the snakes on her head - changed some colors etc...  and basically cleaned up the paint job. I added some layers to her hair which was really short of detail, and touched up any oops' with the paint. 
I also wanted to detail her eyes but every time I complete a part, I would clear coat it. The next step would be the eyes, but something else drew my attention, and I tackle that. Thanks for looking.

 

Medusa part 4

The scales haven't arrived yet, so I continue to work on the base. 
Turning my attention to the little pinholes, I was lead to this stuff my a model railroad guy - it's Chinchilla Dust. Evidently they like to take dust baths and the particles of this stuff is *tiny*!

It's in a mayonnaise sized jar, and it looks like I'll have it the rest of my life. Because the particles are so small that just a little bit of PVA glue, and then a sprinkle of this stuff, covers the pinholes without creating little mounds on the model. 

The white areas are the Dust.

From there, I let the PVA set up for a few minutes and then took some watered down paint, and was shocked how the dust absorbed in the paint and instantly changed colors, unlike regular sand.  The down side, if it really is one, is that some of the particles are "glittery", so if you just a dull base, you need to over coat it with a Matte Clear spray.

 Next, I went back to painting a few more of my snakes. I took a look at a few  different species and tried to match their patterns. 
Before ending this session I also added a few dead leaves (from the vine) to the base. I had added some Realistic water to help the wet look, and just stuck the leaves to the Water. 
Thanks for looking.