Jolly Roger: Hex Marks the Spot

 This kit brings back a LOT of memories as I did a few of them in my early teen years. I remember at the time, that I thought it was the best paint job I ever did - most likely with those gloppy Testor enamel paints.

 Anyway this was re-released by Round 2 and is 1:12 scale. Comes with a few sprues of parts and then the deck planking in 2 big sheets. I also comes with a large  sheet of decals. 

Starting right in I gave all the parts a coat of Stynylrez tan primer. There was some flash and the deck and box parts had a slight warp to them, but nothing serious. Things went so smoothly I even used the primer as the base color and started in with some Vallejo Dark Brown Wash.

My first mistake was painting the skeletons so dark. I knew I wanted them aged. But this was too much. Took a lot to get them to a dark ivory or sand color.

The seam down the two sides of the cannon was tough to get rid of. So I solved the problem by dabbing on some Tamiya putty. Got rid of the seam lines and also help the gun have that cast look. My plan was to paint it a mix of deep green and black, then dry brush some bronze over that. I added some of Citadel's verdigris paint here and there. 

 It was then a matter of painting and washing a LOT of wood grain. Only the standing skeleton had color call outs for his clothes, so I just closed by eyes and picked a color for the guy in the box. I wanted them dusty dirty, so I added some gray to the colors to bring down the color value.  But I also ended up with some brown pigment to get them even more dusty. The Standing pirates shirt had decals for stripes, but I just did them by hand.

Speaking of decals they were VERY thick. The standing guy had a headband in addition to the bandana. But the decal was so thick that even after 4 or 5 coats of Micro Sol, I couldn't get it to snug down. so I just pulled it off.  The other place I had a problem was the decals in the squares of the box lid. They too just wouldn't snuggle down into the wood grain. I the end I had to make a lot of slits in the decal film and it still wasn't perfect. Good idea to keep the box lid open. ;)    The map also had a decal, but I didn't want to sand down all the raised detail, so I just painted the map by hand as well. 

With that I was done. Thanks for looking.  

 

Blohm & Voss Ae 607

After working on the Sam-13, I was in the mood for another prototype vehicle.

The Ae 607 was a jet-powered flying wing design conceived by Blohm & Voss in 1945. As it was conceived only shortly before the end of World War II there is not a great deal of available information on it, and for many years it was not included in the known list of late-war Luftwaffe development projects.

This was another of my

All the parts comes on 2 gray sprues, plus one clear one for the canopy. It's very well detailed.

Like most planes this kit also starts with the  cockpit and the intake and exhaust ports. 

  The cockpit gets installed along with the ports and the landing gear bays. Just to be on the safe side I added some Liquid Gravity pellets.

Finally, a small size cockpit that actually fits in it's intended spot...

Trying the top of the fuselage on for size I noticed one big problem. Gluing everything into the bottom, you noticed a curve in the parts. Only when I tried the top on and things not fitting that I realized, yes the interior is curved, but the top is flat!  A lot of dremeling ensued.  The plastic need to be taken down - a lot, and I went thru in two spots, but thankfully the cockpit tub was thick enough that nothing was seen.

After the dremeling, I took a break and assembled and painted the landing gear and wheels. 

The top goes on and the painting starts next time. Thanks for looking.

Mikr Mir's Sam -13

Always on the lookout for the obscure, odd or prototype planes, I found this little gem on the pages of SAMI where the kit was being reviewed.  
The Sam-13 (Cam-13)  was designed in pre-war Russia, and based around Renault 6 cylinder engines. One prototype was built. But this was destroyed as the Soviets fell back against the German invasion of the eastern front. The design was never revisited.

It came with 2 sprues of gray plastic, one (mostly) clear canopy, a fret of PE, and a small sheet of decals. 

The instructions are the typical exploded views, where the exact location of some parts are hard to determine.  The other issue with the kits was that the plastic was pretty fragile. I broke the back off the seat off twice, by apparently leaning on it too heavily. 

There were no locator pins so the parts wanted to wander until the glue set up. 

It wasn't mentioned but with that rear boom, I didn't want to take any chances, and added Liquid Gravity to keep it from being a tail sitter. 

The horizontal tail fin was a tight fit, and I should have done something about it.  While it was drying, it popped out a little on one side and the glue dried that way. :(  Lesson learned.  Also after folding a piece of semi-large PE it jumped, hit the ground and was eaten. I actually laid on the floor looking for it to no avail. :(

With no specific color call outs I used what I had. The gray was Vs Sky Gray and the blue was RLM 24. I did blacken the panel lines a bit with Vs NATO Black. Sitting the canopy on the plane, I was amazed to see that the canopy was a perfect fit - until it came time to glue it on the the fuselage. What happened? :(

But after adding the landing gear I called it done. Thanks for looking. 

 

Earth Dragon

When I pulled out CMON's Demon of Souls, I also grabbed their Earth Dragon. I don't know if there's anything in the mythology about it, or did someone in the office just make it up. But there was a pic of it in the art book I bought with the game and he appears as a yellow dragon with green "gems' in the skin, as well as a black and gold head. I thought I took a pic of the illustration but I guess not. Anyway here it is in primer - 

This came in multiple parts which were assembled in the factory. No effort was made to fix the seam lines. The other thing was that parts of the dragon are incredibly detailed, while other parts are *very* soft. 

I started off with a base coat of an orange color and the black head, planning on going lighter as I went.

Once I started lightening it, I added gloss black for the gems, as I planned to use the GreenStuff World's metallics line. But unlike other metallics who benefit from the gloss black, these paints don't. So I redid all the gems in white. Then once I added the color they really popped.
I thought I had more WIP shots, but no. So here's the finale done. Thanks for looking.

 

Fenrir Showcase

This miniature was used to break my dry spell. It is Fenrir from the game Blood Rage.

Fenrir was, according to Ancient Origins website:

One of the three children of Loki by a giantess (jötunn) named Angrboða, Fenrir plays an imperative, though short, role in Norse mythology.  A wolf of remarkable size and strength, Fenrir has one major story recorded in the Norse sagas, yet this singular story paints a picture of bravery for one god and an omen of death for the rest of them.  Fenrir, unfortunately for the Æsir and Vanir, turned out to be one of the many foreshadowing signs of the end of the Norse world: Ragnarök.

Looking up a Timber Wolf he was painted with more or less the same colors. Being a Norse game, I added some dead grass and of course snow. This snow was the first time I used the snow from Precision Ice and Snow.  Two thumbs up from for for that stuff!!

He painted up easily so there's no WIP pics. Thanks for looking.

Rising Sun's Oni of Blood

This is the second of about a zillion figures from CMON's Rising Sun kickstarter game. While I don't play there are quiet a few of the larger sized Ogre's, Trolls (both know as Oni in Japanese Folklore) Dragons and the like. This guy has been on the desk for weeks. I'd paint him in between other steps and other models as to not waste time.

With so many figures that piqued my interest I was glad that CMON released an art book. The only thing I wished they included even a few lines of what the figure was all about. Having said that I was glad to have a document of what they thought it looked like and what color. Here's the page of the Oni of Blood - 

The figure was well done, but the down side was that it was done is a soft almost rubbery plastic.  It was also pre-assembled, making some places difficult to reach with the paintbrush. Being per-assembled it means that there are seam lines as well as a little flash. With the plastic so soft, it made getting rid of the flash etc... a bit difficult. After a time, I left some flash instead of ruining the figure.

The first thing noticed was the red skin so that where the painting started -

Gloss black was added to those "maces" as they will end up being a gold color. Making a mistake the beaded necklace was painted a tan rather than the gloss black. This will be fixed. 

Heads and faces base coated. Also realized the hands are to be darkly colored

Continuing on, more parts get painted in. He has a number of layers of fabric, heads and gold ornaments that make things a bit difficult to keep track of.

 The gold ornaments are painted the gloss black And the fabric, a dark green color. In the book's image it's hard to make out individual colors - everything looks gray to me. So some I left gray, other items I made a dark green. Then I tried my hand at free brushing a little design. Easy with the flesh color - harder with the gloppy Army Painter Gold I used. I didn't realize until too late that I had Vallejo Gold. :-/

Finally I got to the point where if I went on, I would start ruining things. So I painted the base, glued on some of the red sand I had, and called it done. Thanks for looking.

Took 3x to get the tiny pupils just right.

Rising Sun Miniatures Game

I have been waiting for this one!  as many may know, I don't actually play the mini games. But I do love some of the details that the figures now have - a long way from the old Ral Partha figures. 

This was another Kickstarter offered by Cool Mini Or Not (CMON).  I forget the amount asked, but basically they offer you the game, and then as others join the bandwagon, and the more they make the more free bees (in this case) they offer.  CMON has had tremendous luck with these kickstarters. The last game I was involved with - Blood Rage a Viking game, made more than $1million. This one, if they didn't go over $1 million, they came awfully close.

When all was said an done, I ended up with 4 boxes of game and figures, plus I bought the Art Of book. Their illustrations were terrific and I just had to have it. There was so many of the monsters that impressed me, I wanted to make sure they got painted correctly. 

I just opened one of the Monster Packs and was not disappointed. They are plastic - not hard styrene, but not really that bendy toy type plastic either.  
The pack came with Oni of Plagues, the Fire Dragon, Jorogumo the spider, and Jinmenju, a sort of Tree of Ghosts. I imaged a few of them - 

Oni of Plagues

Jorogumo

Fire Dragon

I can't wait to go thru the rest of the boxes and start painting. Looks like a lot of fun. If this game isn't already available, it should be very soon. Be on the lookout for it. Thanks for looking.

Glencoe Retriever rocket

While I'm letting the paint dry on the Sky Flash, I pulled Glencoe Model's Retriever Rocket out of the stash. It's another kit that I had quite a while and taking a break from resin, it'll be good to work in styrene once again. 

The first thing I noticed was that there is a huge flight deck window. Looking thru the parts there is no flight deck ... nothing.  So two things that can be done is to just shade the windows over so you can't see in, or create a flight deck. 
If anyone actually reads this stuff, and if any of those who know me, knows I have to make things WAY difficult for myself. So I am going to create a flight deck.  The box says this kit is 1:72 scale, so the first thing I did was to get one of those tools that lets you figure out curves angles etc... When that came I figured where the back wall of the fight deck was to be. From there I figured out a floor covering every angle that could be seen from the inside. 
Next I bought some 1:72 cockpit seats.  They came from a Ka-27 jet strictly becasue they had four in the package. The I wanted to make it really busy, so I also bought instrument panel PE.

The PE set is actually 1:48 scale. I didn't mind it being big as I wanted the flight deck to look "busy' and this will definitely do that. 

Let's start building - 

Oops, that came busted.

 Turning my attention back to the flight deck, I think I did a review of Blue Stuff. It's looks like squared off lengths of blue hot glue sticks. It softens when it is put into *hot* water, and is used for making copies of parts. I had a 1:72 pilot mold sitting around for a long while. So I got it out and started making pilots. I decided to use 3 seats, so I will need 3 copies.

Here's on pilot done sitting on the Blue Stuff mold with pilot #2 inside "cooking." The pilot is made of Yellow Gray Milliput. You can use any sort of 2 part epoxy. The one caveat is that for whatever reason Aves Apoxie Sculpt will not work. No matter how long you leave it, the copy won't harden. So far Milliput and Greenstuff has worked for me.  For other epoxies - try it out. If it doesn't work it won't ruin the mold, only waste a little time.
Thanks for looking. See everyone next time.

 

New Aquisitions

Been busy buying again. :P This time around I start with something from my childhood.  Way back there was a series of model kits from... I don't remember who, but I was scenes from Disney's  amusement ride Pirates of the Caribbean. This was long before the movie. 

Next kit is from from Gillman Productions - it's been dubbed as Old Logan. The kit is 5 pieces plus the base. Sculpted by Yeagher, so the likeness is awesome. 

Thanks for looking.