SimonT - 1/72 MasterBox Mk1 Male

Tim Marlow

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Great work here. Groundwork and details coming on a treat. I know I’m late to this, but Wilkes do dark brown match pots, called Chocolate I think.....I use it mixed into papier mache, fine sand, and PVA as my standard basecoat for wargames scenery...
 
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Steve Jones

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"not sure i am going to get to the finish line on time with this" - Would you have it any other way Mr T?:smiling5:

Resin work looks really great. Looking forward to seeing the items painted up.:thumb2:
 

SimonT

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mk1-051_2018-10-29.jpg
base now has soil and the various bits'n'pieces added - boxes, rifles, bits of planking and the duckboards etc

barbed wire still to sort out

it looks like it has snowed but that is the still wet Wilko water based varnish that I have liberally painted on to help retain the dirt
 

Steve Jones

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Nice aerial shot Simon. Will you be doing an aeroplane flying overhead taking photos??
 

SimonT

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Thanks Steven
Steve - no planes. Got enough trouble trying to finish it as it is :rolling:

This has been drying out all week. Sprayed it with primer and it showed up various cracks in the groundwork

Filled the cracks with VJ red oxide paste then sprayed the entire thing with a heavy coat of matt black then picked out the tank in Tamiya khaki. It then received some highlights of khaki mixed with light grey
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the base then got a first dry brush of Tamiya flat earth

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JR

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Morning Simon.
Looking top class, its great when the base starts to dry out and starts to give a sense of depth .
John from a very foggy morning in Linc's.
T
 

SimonT

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Cheers John - starting to get there but fast running out of time for completion

mk1-059_2018-11-6.jpg
base got dry brushed to within an inch of its life - first with Tamiya buff then medium grey followed by JA Grey and finally a little white. The ground in the area of the Somme is very chalky so after looking at various pictures of chalky soil I decided on the above colours
The craters got a wash of black as they will be getting some water in them and the soil would therefore be darker

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the tank has had a black wash and now looks terrible. I don't know why I bother doing the airbrush shading as I always loose it when it comes to adding a wash :rolling:

Lets hope I can recover things and get the finish looking a bit better
 

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Hi Simon, great idea on the barbed wire. Will definitely use that on my next 1/35 build.

Hi Jim - I'd spent a good few hours with some really thin wires trying to tie evenly spaced knots in it without success when I saw the mesh and it just hit me that it might work


Morning all,
had a go at scratch building a Lee Enfield .303 last nightView attachment 317144
needs a bit of tidying up and some bits adding but generally just about passable - this is version three. One was too thin, two snapped in half

At one time I would have had a working bolt and removable magazine - it is rubbish getting old :disappointed2:

Not many Lee Enfields in kit form, had to carve my own as well...later I wittled down the barrel as it was too thick.

CAT0070.jpg CAT0072.jpg

It was going to be a one off so didn't make copies.

The moon surface is looking good and this time you're finishing it. :thumb2:

Cheers,
Richard
 

JR

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Simon..
There's nothing wrong with the beast, maybe some larger light chalky dried mud towards the top and center and some darker wet mud towards the lower track run.
Think you've got to the stage of looking at it too long like we do.
John.
 

SimonT

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Nice one Richard - I cast a few off mine and added three to the base. Unfortunately two of them seem to have been swallowed up by the mud!

John - agreed, the tank will need mud. Haven't started on that yet apart from an application of VJ red oxide paste in places

I have managed to get the next two days off work as we are in a period of calm before the storm - there is now a better chance that I might get this to the finish before the deadline

Have spent 2hrs+ highlighting individual 'chalk' stones on the base - watching old footage on the Beeb showed that the ground in places was well littered with white chalk stones. I have used Tamiya JA Grey rather than white as that looked too bright

Also started picking out details - ammo boxes, rifle, duck boards, wriggly tin panels.......
 

Jim R

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Hi Simon
Groundwork looking good. Watched a TV programme on Passendale so I recognise realistic mud. (The programme was heart wrenching to watch - unimaginable suffering)
Jim
 

SimonT

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Hi Jim - thanks. It is amazing anyone survived WW1 when you see the old footage

Spent most of the day working on this - one or two problems but mostly good

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this is how it is currently looking after a lot of detail painting, dry brushing and the application of pigment across the whole base (this was some stuff I got from Diether Etzel - i think it was designed to replicate a soil type in a particular part of South Africa but it was ideal for this as it is brown with flecks of white in)

Last thing was adding the water. This is from Precision Ice and Snow. It isn't cheap. This is the first time I have used it. Comes as two clear liquids that you mix together in equal amounts. It is a form of clear silicone rubber. I tinted it with a little of the same base pigment and poured it into the various holes

Since it is a thin liquid it is of course self levelling, which is great. What I didn't expect was the amount that it creeps

mk1-067_2018-11-9.jpg
I poured directly into the bottom of the hole but as you can see it has crept up the sides.
Nothing I can do about that - just hope it doesn't look too bad in the end
On a couple of the smaller holes this was a real problem as it crept up and over the sides of the hole and escaped - stuck some base pigment into the overspill and I think that has stopped it

mk1-065_2018-11-9.jpg
this hole crept all over the place

mk1-064_2018-11-9.jpg
mud applied to the tank

this is the base earth pigment heaped on then soaked with X20a Tamiya thinners to fix it in place

there was an unexpected side effect of doing this - the white elements of the earth pigment tended to separate out and sit on the surface which is why there are white dots all over the place. Since it is chalky ground though I think I can get away with that

the tracks - since this is an abandoned vehicle my reasoning is that the tracks would soon rust so they were painted VJ track primer then a wash with rusty pigment followed by the earth pigment

the exhaust staining turned out a bit heavy handed - the thinners had not entirely evaporated and the black pigment turned into liquid rather than just a light application of soot. Will try and tone this down today

you will also notice some grey streaks on the sides of the hull - again due to thinners not totally evaporating (trying to do too much at once) and turning the pigment into 'paint' rather than dust so that will need sorting out as well. I am hoping that my AK streaking brush and thinners will be able to brush it out into a better streaky effect

Hopefully the water will now be starting to set - takes around 24hrs then 48hrs to fully cure - need to keep the base horizontal until it sets which limits what I can work on
 

Steven000

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Looking very good Simon! :thumb2:
That 'precision ice and snow' can be aplied in 1 time or in small layers? I had a 'creep' with 'Vallejo still water' as well...

Cheers, Steven
 

SimonT

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Hi Steven - I just applied it in one pour.
One hole is about 6mm deep the other it must be at least 12mm.

It seems to have worked ok.

It is a cold cure chemical reaction rather than exothermic like you get with resins. So far no signs of shrinkage and no air bubbles

Have used VJ still water before - it took ages to dry out. This stuff set over night.

PI&S is not cheap though - £15 for 200ml
 

Steve Jones

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I'm glad you put 1 72 in the blog title as it is difficult to remember how small this build really is. The base has worked out really well. You must be very close now:thumb2:
 

Jim R

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Hi Simon
I reckon it is looking very good. You've certainly got the desolation, distruction look of a WW1 battlefield.
That water is odd stuff. Being silicone it never goes hard, stays rubbery. Looks good though but the way it creeps up sides is a nuisance.
Jim
 
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