Leopard

It's been a bit of a crazy year. A lot of really shitty things happens and also a bunch of pretty good things... I won't bore you with details but one of the shitty things left me without a workbench to make my models at.
Anyway I'm slowly rebuilding a 1:5 scale replica of the man-cave I used to have in the form of an Ikea writing desk in the corner of my living room.... I'll show you pictures later when I've modded all the features that I have in mind on to it...

This is the first model I built on that desk. It's a Ma.K Leopard, no mods, just straight build and paint.
It's pink though... and that is apparently (I learned this through the Kow Yokoyama FB group) what's called Mountbatten Pink... this is a little lighter but it gets kind of close.

Here are the pics:

Added fire power added

I've finished the extra canon for the Küster and I'm actually quite happy with it. It's hugging the body of he Kuster a bit closer now and I've added a thick hose to it (going from the base to the control box)...

Anyway here are some pics...

Now it's all ready for 'almost final' assembly and than paint (I'm going to leave both Küster and Friedrich partly disassembled for ease of paint).

Added fire power

So as I mentioned before, I've been trying to equip the Kuster with some heavy weaponry...

It took me a lot of time and attempts to scratch this thing together and I'm not too sure.

I like the design. It's nice and bulky looking (heavy weaponry), but maybe not on the Kuster.
Maybe if it would ride a bit lower. Be a bit lower on hull, I but haven't had nerve to take the dremel to the base yet (I will probably wreck the whole thing).

Here's a dry-fit...

Friedrich ready for primer!

The build's done.
The joints were covered with Green Stuff added some final detail to the radome thingy.
Now it will get disassembled to get be readied for primer and than paint...

That's all for now.

Friedrich more modding

I've started thinking of the Friedrich as kind of a forward recon (like Kiowa and Apache Helicopters work together, Friedrich and Küster could do the same)... anyway, I thought the suit needed some kind of radar unit.
So I scratched one.

Here are some pics.
This is where I hit the "it will look ok after paint" moment for the first time. Usually happens a couple of times with every build for me... "will fix it in paint" followed by "will fix it with weathering" then "will fix it in washes and pigments".  ;D

I'm thinking a more bulbous radar unit would be more in line with the Ma.K. style, but then it will get very tall. It's all SG-d tight now anyway (still needs some detailing at the base where the unit goes into the suit)
Have a look; let me know what you think.

Super Jerry Base

A few months ago I finished work on a Super Jerry and it's been just standing there.. so I decided to build it a base.
I wanted it to be an urban environment as I think it suits the paint scheme. I also wanted to keep it kind of simple as the thing itself is busy looking enough...

Anyway here the breakdown so far:
First I build up the core by glueing polystyrene sheets on a piece of chipboard of 15cm square using wood glue.
The tiles on the sidewalk are 2mm thing pieces and the broken pillar is a piece of street chalk I stole from my 4 year old, snapped it in half and drilled some holes into them piece for the 1mm copper wire to go through. This is a dry-fit.

For the tarmac I used a piece of cracked and torn 80 grit sandpaper, also glued in place using wood glue (white glue basically).
I then built up the sides with 1.5 mm thick styrene plate (plaplate to some).

Sprayed it with gray Tamiya primer:

After then putting a few layers of Tamiya black on the sides and covering that with glossy clear coat, I masked the sides off.
I then put a coat of black primer on the top. Not that it needed more primer but I still have a can of Vallejo primer I'm using as paint because as primer I really don't like it... better use it I thought.

 Then I put a little dark gray on the tarmac from a can of Tamiya German grey I had left.. just a light dusting. Also airbrushed the sidewalk and the pillar and some debris.
After I painted the stripe on the tarmac I glued all the pieces in place with white glue and added some small rocks and a little sand here and there.

 Here's how the Jerry will stand on the thing.

Next up there's more painting of details. Some washes, streaking/water marks/dirt and some pigments... stay tuned.

Cheers!

Friedrich mod

So I've been buidling the Friedrich (as part of the Küster & Friedrich set by Wave)... if I can still call it that.

I've been making some... well I hesitate to call them improvements, but changes anyway.

While building this guy I felt like I wanted more room to paint... Kind of a stupid reason maybe, but I thought it might be cool to close the side windows and make the front hatch out of steel. Added a little handle (on the right side so it's easy to reach on the 'hand' side of the suit). and an extra camera on the top (I've been assuming the thing in his chest is a set of optics too)... connecting these to his visor I figured he didn't need no stinking windows (Am I taking this too serioulsy?).

Anyway I used green stuff, vallejo putty and a lot of sandpaper to fill in the windows after I glued then in of course.

It's now ready to paint the inside.

Still thinking about whether to put on the curved bars that usually go there (like on the ketzer) but since it doesnt' have those windows... it doesn't really need them anymore... 

What do you guys think? Did I just ruin a perfectly good Friedrich, or full steam ahead (not like there's any going back on this)?  

Comments are more than welcome.

New build: the Küster

So I started a new build.
I actually started it when I was still working on the base for Auricom Griffon but I didn't want to confuse the bloggery.

The build doesn't really deviate from the instructions apart form some tiny additions (a wire going into the IR unit and a coat-hanger antenna for the processor unit in stead of the looped one).

I used Mr Surfacer 1000 to add texture to some parts, I suppose would be cast steel. Other then that nothing to report so far.

The Kuster came with Friedrich of course, which I'll build next so I can paint the simultaneously.
I have a nice idea for the colour scheme which I'll show you in a later post.

Auricom Griffon Base Restart...

After looking at this thing for a while I realized, I needed to soalve the problem of the model twisting on the base...

I got a tip on one of the forums I frequent about using square tube to attach the model to the base (feeling stupid for not thinking of that myself)... I decided to double back a little bit and ready some of the base. 

I ripped out most of the polystyrene sheets and put in a square bit of styrene tube. I found some metal bar (i think it's pyrite) that fits it perfectly. I attached the tube into the base exactly like I had done with the round tube (using poly clay and plaster)..

In building up the further layers of polystyrene I glued in bits of plastic card that fit around the tube. So bits of card with square holes in them, glued to the tube with SG and to the polystyrene with wood glue (about the same as white glue I think).

This was done to make sure it wouldn't move under the weight of the model.

The bottom of the Griffon now had a gaping 4mm hole in it... so I made it bigger. Put in a piece of the same square tube that went all the way to the 'ceiling' inside the Griffon. Then I fixed it in place at the hole with SG and green stuff and on the inside by using a thin wooden stick to push a ball of GreenStuff all the way up into the tube and stick it to the ceiling on the inside of the tube... hope that makes sense. Anyway it's in there solid.

I put a little weld seem and some bolts on the tube end sticking out and painted it (also put some greebly on the top of previously failed attempts at fixing the model to the base)...

With that done I started putting some filler on the base. I used acrylic filler (which I think is basically thick unpigmented acrylic paint) and mixed it with cat litter.... a total experiment as I had never worked with the stuff. 

Well the cat litter absorbed a lot of moisture from the filler quite fast, making it quite difficult to spread out... it also shrank quite a bit as it dried. 

So, not really what I expected but really good to know (if I ever want to make a rocky dried up desert base..). 

I'll just cake on another layer of the filler mixed with something non-absorbent. Something that will give it a more asphalt structure too.

Then I did a quick dry-fit of the model on the base.. it looks like it just might work. 

Thanks for looking, let me know what you think!