Sorry no! this build has got to stop, no electrical tools allowed where John Race is concerned, even the duck in his bath is wind operated......The return rollers have quite a lot of taper on them, which was taking a while to clean up, but then I remembered this:
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cordless dremel-thingy, bought from Lidl. My mains-powered Dremel is too fast to use on plastic, even on the lowest speed, but this is quite slow. The rollers are on a fairly long axle, which fitted nicely into one of the collets:
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Holding a sanding stick against them soon brought them down to parallel, which as well as looking better should give a little less tension on the tracks.
Added some more to the upper hull:
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Now it's decision time again - if I leave the driver's hatch open, then I'll have to add the driver, since there's nothing under the hatch except a 'shelf' for his bum to perch on. However, I hate painting figures! The trouble is, they have to be done well, or they look awful. Maybe I'll see if I have some flesh colour, and if I have, try to paint the figures before deciding if hatches will be open or closed.
Thanks for watching,
Pete
For a quick shade, I use transparent paint with pigment mixed in and brush it on with a large brush. Dipping is a lot of wasted paint and the risk of dropping the figure into the paint, if you ask me.On the driver, I used a Vallejo Game Colour wash labelled as "Dipping Formula Immersion, so I dipped the figure, but found the consistency was like treacle, so brushed most of it off with a wet brush straight away. It seemed OK, but for the other 2 figures I think I'll try diluting it and brushing it on.
Steve?Steve. Looking good. I believe the cupola pads are leather pads around the inside to prevent the head hitting bare metal.
Thanks Jakko. The wash was about the price of two cups of coffee for a 200 ml jar, so seemed worth a try. If it was thinner there wouldn't be much waste as it would drip back into the jar.For a quick shade, I use transparent paint with pigment mixed in and brush it on with a large brush. Dipping is a lot of wasted paint and the risk of dropping the figure into the paint, if you ask me.
As for the figures, they should be wearing black uniforms — the field grey on one of your figures would make him a StuG crewman, not a tanker. Afrikakorps olive green would also be an option, but IIRC tanker’s uniforms weren’t made in that colour, certainly not early on when tankers newly arrived in Africa were photographed wearing their normal black uniforms.
Paint them dark grey Or just drybrush the uniform dark grey to highlight it, that’ll also do that for the wires in one go.If I give the commander a black uniform then his headphone leads won't show up.
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