forum.ww1aircraftmodels.com
WW1 Aircraft Modeling => Under Construction => Topic started by: Dirigible-Al on January 16, 2025, 07:13:32 AM
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I discovered the joys of making WW1 aircraft in the early 1990's. With no internet I relied on shops stocking WW1 subjects and that restricted me to Airfix, Revell and Smer with all but the last one being 1/72. That said I made multiple builds of the same aircraft albeit in shockingly bad quality as having no internet I had nothing to compare them to. When the internet became accessible I got into the hobby a bit more seriously I decided on 1/48 due to the now greater availablity of kits and started to build them to a better standard. This left an awful lot of 1/72 scale aircraft that I had no interest in. Many I gave away to the kids of people I worked with at the time, the ones they didn't want I luckily never chucked, they got banished to the attic. A couple of years ago I had an idea to revamp some of these in dioramas where the quality and inaccuracies wouldn't matter but have not followed it thru due to always being on some other project. One of the planned revamps was to make a Mesopotamian crash scene using a rather broken Airfix R.E.8 and some Imperial Camel Corps and Arab rebellion 1/72 figures I chanced upon a while back. I intend to put together a Camel Ambulance as seen in the picture below. I believe the figures I have can be made to look the part as they do not have over dynamic poses or be moulded into fixed firing positions. The camels will be a challenge as they seem to be cast in to different sizes with the heads of one lot being vastly bigger than the other. I may have to do some sculpting here which I haven?t done before. Although the R.E.8 is broken this is not a bad thing as it had no rigging or interior detail so I would have had to take it apart anyway. This GB will kill three birds with one stone as it will get a fair bit of stuff out the attic and used. I will finish the Zeppelin first but I should manage to do that this weekend.
Onwards and upwards, Alan.
(https://i.imgur.com/Ykq8GvJ.jpg)
(https://i.imgur.com/7xtxSNa.jpg)
(https://i.imgur.com/ijVEffq.jpg)
(https://i.imgur.com/okjCwO2.jpeg)
(https://i.imgur.com/LBKpA7Q.jpeg)
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Wow that's really interesting!
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'Cambulance', fun!
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What a great idea ;D
(I may have to rethink my own choices for this GB since they seem pretty vanilla compared to what's appearing) :-\
Paul
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Now that is a fantastic idea Alan, really looking forward to this!
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I am looking forward to the further development of this great idea!
RAGIII
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What a great idea, Alan! I hope it goes really well as it's a classic part of WW1... Lawrence of Arabia and all that... This fella, 1/35 Verlinden is sitting on my desk giving me the evil eye to finish him...
(https://i.ibb.co/82fM0YS/IMG-5301.jpg)
Well... maybe when I retire!
Regards,
Marc
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Thanks RAGIII, Nigel, Paul, PJ and Antonio. I love the look on the face of your camel Marc, he looks really pissed off! Mind you they never struck me as happy animals like dogs.
After a lot of tinkering I have made a plan for the layout. I wanted it to be no bigger than a A4 sheet of paper and I think this layout will work within that size. You cannot see it on the plan but there is a ridge Infront of the plane. To put the RE.8 in that position it would have had to been spun round so I will remove either a wheel or half the undercarriage, whichever is more realistic.
Thanks for looking in, Alan.
(https://i.imgur.com/gIfhmrB.jpg)
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I'm looking forward to it, it looks like a lot of work. Explicitly in 1/72.
Very good idea, looking forward to more pictures.
Servus
Bertl
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Good planning Alan, you are getting me excited to see how this one comes along.
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Looks like an excellent layout Alan. I look forward to the next update!
RAGIII
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I'm really looking forward to seeing how all of this develops, I'm always up for some 1/72nd fun.
Warren
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I'm getting more and more curious about this Alan!
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Thank you for your comments Antonio, Warren, RAGIII, Nigel and Beryl.
Unfortunately I haven't been able to put it any significant time on this because of unexpected events and my spare time is now going elsewhere.
I started on the Harry Tate, typical Airfix kit with very thick plastic, push rings, ribs too prominent and no interior detail whatsoever (the pilot and observer were glued on plastic tabs that protruded from the sides). I had built it out the box as well. The join seams are also very noticeable.
(https://i.imgur.com/JEpEbw1.jpg)
(https://i.imgur.com/IYV9D0i.jpg)
(https://i.imgur.com/9Mz365Z.jpeg)
The naughty bits that protruded were cut out and filler was put liberally around it.
The cockpit opening is completely the wrong shape and it's sides have the scale thickness of Tiger Tank armour. I cut a large section out so I could heat mould a new one in hot water using plastic card and a balsa pattern. Using that big opening I carved out a lot of the plastic from the sides and put in the wood formers and thier rigging using plastic card and fuse wire. A floor board was put in where the observer goes and a couple of planks in front of where the seat will be. The top former was made a bit thicker than it should have been because two of the cabane struts attach to it (and it was at least that fat before anyway)
(https://i.imgur.com/q1Rcz1P.jpeg)
(https://i.imgur.com/nhWA1q9.jpg)
(https://i.imgur.com/jTQiozg.jpg)
There are a few differences in the underside of the engine between Harry Tates and the Airfix kit doesn't cover any of them but conveniently the kit does have a very shallow bottom making it easy to put this one on. I also thinned the hideously thick plastic air intake and removed all the oversized nuts that are on either side of the nose. I put the nuts back by drilling holes with the thinnest drill bits I have, putting stretched sprue thru them and cutting them close to the panels, although they are now a lot smaller they still look like Scania wheel nuts but having broken three drill bits doing this I don't have the heart to take them off.
(https://i.imgur.com/Xb0R4K2.jpeg)
(https://i.imgur.com/5TUaSad.jpeg)
(https://i.imgur.com/IYycLg9.jpeg)
(https://i.imgur.com/JyiMCLG.jpg)
Lastly I worked on the cockpit. Seat was scratched and whicker detail painted on. The picture looks like it is glued to the floor but it is actually quite high up and sits on top of two plastic card beams spanning chord wise. Instrument panel is plastic card with photocopied dials cut out and glued to it with fuse wire rings put atop them. Pedals, joystick and connecting tunnel is all stretched sprue. I think I have put enough detail in the interior, it might be noted that although this is 1/72 the size of the opening is about the same as some of the 1/48 kits I have done. If I am wrong and after closing it up it still looks like it needs something I can't see it being a problem because of the huge opening.
https://i.imgur.com/NertXV4.jpeg
(https://i.imgur.com/5HRaKWd.jpg)
(https://i.imgur.com/3IymNsr.jpg)
Seat belts have been made out of masking tape but will go on later.
Thanks for looking in.
Alan.
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That's a lot of work Alan but it's paid off, the interior looks great and you knocked that old kit in to great shape. I hope you can find the time to continue with this, it's a fascinating project.
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Just catching up here, Alan - great idea for a project and looking forward to following your progress.
Cheers,
Gary
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Outstanding progress. I Love the details you are adding to this one...only to crash her in the end ::) Lovely work!
RAGIII
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Hello everyone, sorry there's been no updates but I got thrown one of life's curveballs since starting this which has meant changes and that has meant bench time has gone down to near nothing. I got some spare time today and decided that whatever I do I will post anyway. A day on the RE.8 would probably show little difference so I hit the figures.
I have probably painted too many Camel Corpse figures and definitely not enough Arab Revolt figures and the camels, though partially done, are not worth showing at this moment. I haven't painted soft plastic figures for a while and it has it's challenges. It is too bendy so handling them meant the paint kept flaking off. To prevent any more of this I stuck drill bits up their bottoms and they behaved themselves then. Cutting the flash off and trimming them was difficult because anything less than a surgical blade left bits hanging off them and they were hard to clean off. Although that was what I used a heated needle also worked well. Of course a file is out the question because it just turns the plastic into fluff. These were all hand painted white then once dry all the colours went on. I finished up by putting washes over them (basically the same colour as what's to be covered but darker). And here they are!
(https://i.imgur.com/ElFz2oZ.jpg)
(https://i.imgur.com/haHtxcV.jpg)
(https://i.imgur.com/TxgpEQl.jpeg)
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Excellent progress Alan. Those flexi plastic figures are a pain to paint but you are doing a great job.
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Cheers Nigel.
Sorry I haven't been able to get to this. I have managed to put a few more things together today though and here they are. The RE8 will go on with a collapsed undercarriage with one of the wheels busted thru the bottom wing and the wingtip of the same wing will be torn off. I was going to take an aileron off too but after cutting them out I discovered they were roughly the same scale thickness as the armour on the Bismarck. It would have been too much work at this stage to thin all the wings down. The prop will have to be broken too. This is only light damage but enough to show it crash landed and has no hope of taking off. An advantage of not having too much damage is that the rigging stays the same, I think it would have been a nightmare trying to get the rigging right unless the whole top wing was off.
All the bits between the wings are now on so the top wing can go on. I made the windscreen out of an empty packet of pills. It was almost the right shape but got a little persuasion with some heat. There is a compass under the windscreen made out of copper. Gun sight is a piece of brass tube with 2 turnbuckles and some aluminium foil wrapped around the pilot's end to make the tip fatter. The cylinder guards are just paper. I will do the broken parts of the wing with paper, as you can see I have cut a section out and cut off the wingtip. A bit of tidying up and a few washes of paint are needed now.
Thanks for looking in, Alan.
(https://i.imgur.com/oVLzGVh.jpg)
(https://i.imgur.com/FyN4yri.jpg)
(https://i.imgur.com/tALBwzY.jpeg)
(https://i.imgur.com/65lLmqG.jpeg)
(https://i.imgur.com/xXzYziR.jpeg)
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Good to see this one back on the bench Alan, I hope life's curve ball hasn't disrupted you too much. Those details look good and I will be interested to see how you do the torn off wingtip as I have a crash diorama coming up soon......
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I like how the project is heading , looking forward to the next update AL
Alexis
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Thanks Nigel and Alex for your comments. The Camel Ambulance part of the diorama is now finished as are the people bar one or two tweets. I still need to do a few camels sitting down because the Arab Revolt figures are all standing and an impression must be left as to how they got there.
The Camel Ambulance was to be pulled along by one of the other camel riders but I thought it best to have a couple of A.R. figures leading it because that is what they most probably would have done on seeing it arrive. There was nothing appropriate amongst the A.R. figures I have so I adapted a couple of WW1 German Infantry figures with a scalpel, a hot nail, some masking tape and a bit of filler. One has turned out very shiny but I will fix him before it all goes together.
The ambulance was made from plastic card with a frame of copper wire glued to it. Some masking tape was added as the bed and part of the structure underneath. Folded masking tape was put inside the stretchers to simulate blankets. I wrapped cigarette paper soaked in PVA around the frame because it is super thin and when it dries it becomes crinkled. There was also an unexpected bonus of it being partly transparent when it dried allowing some of the frame to be seen thru it. The crosses were made from an old decal found in my spares box. Luckily Hawker Hurricane has two 'H's.
I now have the Harry Tate and the desert base to finish. Thanks for looking in, Alan.
(https://i.imgur.com/csBxqd2.jpg)
(https://i.imgur.com/iF7AXCF.jpg)
(https://i.imgur.com/YpzzYyC.jpeg)
(https://i.imgur.com/CG2dYhu.jpeg)
(https://i.imgur.com/kTGs905.jpg)
(https://i.imgur.com/j7MIPgC.jpg)
(https://i.imgur.com/lhTw7ib.jpeg)
(https://i.imgur.com/8ZGDA8D.jpeg)
(https://i.imgur.com/Iezfz3w.jpeg)
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Very neat! Excellent figure transformation.
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Lovely work all round Alan, this will be such a unique and interesting diorama I am really looking forward to seeing the end result.
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Firstly sorry for not being able to finish this on time. At the start of this group build I thought it would be no problem and even considered sneaking in a second project if possible but my personal circumstances changed and the result was loosing most of my bench time.
I managed to do all but finishing touches and corrections on the base and thought it worth showing. I started with a block of inulating foam because I want to push impressions into it where parts of the RE8 skid and as long as it's not sealed with oil based paint or non water based glue this can be done. The terrain is based on a scene from a film set in mesopotamia that I saw a while ago and it looked like an alien landscape. It must have been a lake or river bed dried up and it resembled acres of grey crazy paving. Out of coincidence I saw an advert today set somewhere in Africa looking similar. I stumbled on a technique for crazy paving by accident when I soaked paper in white glue, formed it around the model and painted it too soon. Basically if you paint acrylic directly on white glue you get crazy paving. After experimenting I found you get different effects depending on the viscosity and depth of the glue. Thick glue gets you wide cracks, thin gets narrow and watery glue gets lots of weird small paving. I wanted a bank/raised area and made this by putting a mix of water, bleach, glue and blue paper in a liquidiser and just pasted it on. I had to do this 3 times as it shrinks a lot each time it dries. When I was happy with it I mixed wood dust from a sander with white glue and pasted this on the flat parts. The foam was painted with dark acrylic and the raised area with white poster paint. When dry I masked off the raised area and brushed the PVA on the bed making most of it thick but not entirely even. I then sprayed a very thick layer of lighter acrylic over the glue, I put so much on if I had tilted it the paint would have run off. It was then left for a few hours. I got the undercoat a little too dark by mistake but I can live with it. The raised mud/rock area got a brown wash but unfortunately the effect that was supposed to be achieved went wrong because the cheap poster paint did not seal the paper mache and it just evenly soaked in rather than run off the raised areas leaving light and dark parts. I didn't want to paint the whole thing white again and was worried about spoiling some of the crazy paving so when it dried I gave it another darker wash then when it was dry I dry brushed it with light brown. It ended up darker than I planned but once again I think it is good enough.
I just have a few touch ups and tweaks to do on it but hope this is of interest to some of you. Thanks for looking in, Alan.
(https://i.imgur.com/EPE5oVp.jpg)
(https://i.imgur.com/5tUaNVa.jpeg)
(https://i.imgur.com/ZtjXcLp.jpeg)
(https://i.imgur.com/2B17Osg.jpeg)
(https://i.imgur.com/Jn73vR4.jpeg)
(https://i.imgur.com/25I1NYS.jpeg)
(https://i.imgur.com/A2LkBlF.jpeg)
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As a diorama person, this is all of great interest to me :) That dried river/lake bed looks very effective, especially as you achieved it without buying commercial products designed to make these type of effects easy! Excellent modelling. The base looks really good so far, looking forward to seeing this all come together.
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This is already looking great and I can't wait to see the end result Al.
Willem
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Cheers Nigel and Willem,
I managed to put a few hours in today and have enough progress to post something.
There will be a few Arab Rebels on foot in the diorama, I don't want to have them there without giving an incling of how they got there or the impression that they happened to have just come out of a nearby pub. There needs to be a few rested camels in the scene, problem is the Strelets 'Arab Rebellion' kit has no camels. The Australian Camel Corpse kit does but only has one rested camel. I have to make at least 10 of these, now the obvious way would be to use something like Siligum to make two half moulds around the camel and pour resin in it. The problem with this is it would make exact moulds and I don't want a load of identical camels. If I had a 3d printer no problem, but I don't. I solved this problem by making a couple of half moulds out of Super Sculpy, then baking them to make them hard. Once out of the air fryer and cooled I stick the camel back in it, cover it with Vaseline, then Super Sculpy again and bake the other halves. What I now do is squash the Super Sculpy into each half (not forgetting the Vaseline) and slide a knife across it to get a perfect half with a flat internal edge. The two halves almost glue themselves when put together. Now the advantage of this is the Super Sculpy is flexible, plus when taking them out some warp or stretch a bit making them different by default. This gives me a chance to tinker with it and make each one slightly different to each other. Then it's in the air fryer again. When they come out the air fryer they are for a few seconds, while they are hot, still flexible so it gives me a chance to make a couple of last changes. And that's it. I will add some bits of kit to the camels and have them different colours to add to the diversity. I did try Das Clay in the moulds and car body filler but neither was as good as using Super Sculpy though a couple of these will make it to them diorama. I also tried various different things for the moulds with silicone sealant being OK but I never got both halves exactly right with that stuff. I hope this is of use to someone.
Alan.
(https://imgur.com/a/o9TjQjo#Zw53kMv)
Using pins to mark the edges of the Streets mould.
(https://imgur.com/a/haxgZvp#Lk1f4iG)
First mould came out black because of oil in the fryer.
(https://imgur.com/a/haxgZvp#S6K5OdF)
Squashing Sculpy on the first half with camel inside.
(https://imgur.com/a/haxgZvp#TGrMyHD)
Second half moulded.
(https://imgur.com/a/haxgZvp#i0KSVBL)
Two halves now done.
(https://imgur.com/a/haxgZvp#1OLjCR1)
With two halves cooked in goes the Sculpy.
(https://imgur.com/a/haxgZvp#YmeBaEJ)
A few castings done and cooked. White blocks are silicone moulds but these weren't used.
(https://imgur.com/a/haxgZvp#X8H5LgB)
Four more or less done.
AAaaar, pictures didn't come through. Give me a few minutes and I'll try again.
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(https://imgur.com/a/o9TjQjo#Zw53kMv)
(https://imgur.com/a/haxgZvp#Lk1f4iG)
(https://imgur.com/a/haxgZvp#S6K5OdF)
(https://imgur.com/a/haxgZvp#TGrMyHD)
No idea why Imger isn't working, they must think I've been naughty. These pics are compressed.
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Brilliant idea to produce the camels in this manner. The airfryer? Really?
I guess it must have raised and eyebrow with the wife...
Cheers,
Willem
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Some very creative work going on here and nice to see plenty of old fashioned modelling skills as well
Paul
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Great work Alan. I wondered what air fryers were for, now I know! ;D
There will be a few Arab Rebels on foot in the diorama, I don't want to have them there without giving an incling of how they got there or the impression that they happened to have just come out of a nearby pub.
This brought Ali-Baba's Camel by the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band to mind. I don't know if you're old enough to remember them......?
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Cheers Paul.
Hello Willem, the wife doesn't know about it, nor about me putting glue, bleach and toilet paper in the liquidiser to make Papier Mache.
Hello Nigel, I do remember the Bonzo Dog Doo Dash Band but I don't know about Ali Baba's Camel song, I will have to Google it. The Monster Mash is what pops into my head when I think of them.
I have put most of the RE.8 together now and need to do a huge amount of cleaning up. The enormous amount of handling I did while rigging it has taken its toll on the paintwork.
Alan
(https://imgur.com/a/jBEbFdE#Soh3ORq.jpeg)
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After a mostly productive day I have almost finished the RE.8 and now feel that I have turned a corner in this. The RE.8 has taken the most time on this build, it would have been quicker to have started a new kit from scratch rather than refurbish a badly built one that's about 30 years old. Just a couple of things marred what would have been an excellent day. While building a track marker out of wood my knife holding hand skimmed off the TM and hit the RE.8. the damage was repaired which was mostly dislodged wires but afterwards I noticed the top wing was no longer aligned. It was about 1.5mm out, I may just leave it at that as it is supposed to be a crash landed plane after all though AMS may take over me at some stage and force me to put it in the jig again. When I resumed making the TM I sliced thru my finger so at that point I left everything for the next session. Only things left on the RE.8 are the Lewis gun mount, the prop and the wing tip damage all of which will be put on when it goes on the base. Still a little bit of tidying up but again no point in doing that until it is fixed on the base. The purpose built damage on this crash landed plane that I have finished is the undercarriage and the lower wing root. The undercarriage was supposed to be smashed on one side but while making it I noticed too much of the wing would have ended up busted so I just removed a wheel, this now leaves the wing tip just touching the ground which is perfect. The broken wheel is supposed to have hit the wing root. I have done this by chopping out a section of the wing and putting in plastic card ribs covered in glue soaked cigarette paper. Rigging on the top wing is zinc coated copper wire and between the wings I used monofilament mostly with some wire. The control wires are EZ line so I don't end up incessantly breaking them. The exhaust pipes are carved sprue.
Thanks for looking in, Alan.
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I like your approach to the intentional damage Alan, it looks good. As for the unintentional damage, that's a hazard of the hobby....!
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Nigel, now all of the unintentional damage is fixed including the missing alignment of the wing. I stuck it in a jig last night, luckily I took it out the jig before mucking about with it and miraculously the wings stayed aligned.
I made a track marker because I wanted to show the plane's journey into the bank, plus I think it would have left some marks on the ground anyway. There are three points of contact on the ground (excluding the wing tip hitting it). The track marks from a biplane would be very different to those of a three wheeler like a Morgan because the tail skid would work it's way outside of the wheel tracks on a turn (and it would do a turn if it lost a wheel). I cannot have two goes at this, from experience when you mess around with painted insulation foam any marks you put in it for the first time remain there forever. If you go over the same thing twice the skin that has been created on the foam by painting it can break off in chunks. Hence I made this highly sophisticated aperatus, as you can see every expense has been spared in its making. It did it's job, if it didn't I would probably have to make another diorama base.
Thanks for looking in, Alan.
Edit: Ironically only half the track marks of the tail skid can be seen on the photo but I promise you they are there.
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All the he bits are on the RE.8 now including the broken propeller from my spares box and a scarf ring made from copper wire. It is now fixed to it's base where I hope it will stay. I just need to add the figures now.
Alan.
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Wow, that's a lot of work to make some tyre marks! Very effective though. The RE8 looks great, very nice work on that.
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Cheers Nigel.
Hopefully this is the last update because the last actual thing I need to build is a mounted machine gun. The Strelets figures came with a machine gun on a tripod but I think this is some sort of generic gun rather than a Vickers or Spandau. I looks most like a German MG 08 so I tried to make it resemble that. A sight was added using copper wire and again copper was used for the tripod and rear handles. I took a disc of paper from an office hole puncher, painted it black and put it on the rear leg as a seat. 2 copper rings were added to the jacket around the barrel at each end and painted in-between (Google image shows some of these covered with linen or canvas). I ignored the water cooler because one of the rebels appears to be carrying something that looks like one so I put him next to the gun. The amo box is made from folded paper and painted. I initially started making an amo belt by cutting loads of really short bits of copper wire and gluing them on a painted strip of masking tape but this got so tedious I took a short cut and using a semi blunt scalpel I put loads of marks in it. I then put a wash of gunmetal over it and voil? it's good enough for me to resemble a 1/72 amo belt.
All the figures are in place now, I hoped to finish it today but putting on reigns for the camels just took most of the morning and I quite frankly need a break from it even though I am only halfway through that. There is a lot of repair work and cleaning up to do too. Dust and bits seem to love it and dried paint now brittle pops off the soft plastic figures every time I move one. Fingers crossed next weekend I will be there.
Thanks for looking in, Alan.
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Love how the damaged wings turned out !
Alexis
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Nearly there...... The ammo belts look fine, your approach worked well for 1/72.
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Cheers Nigel and Alexis.
Despite there being another rebel currently held hostage by the carpet monster I am wrapping this up. Below are bench pictures, I took it out in the garden so I could get good natural shadows for the completed model section but I am unable to post them. I am using the image hosting site, clicking on the picture icon, putting the URL link in-between the two (IMG) things like I have done in the past and nothing happens. Bizarrely the photo compressor app I use compresses half the images upside down. I have spent ages going through image sites and ended up getting the same result, what's more is I have tried rotating the images before and after compressing them. If I do it before they still end up upside down and if I do it after it ramps up the KB's and I can't post it. When I calm down after being properly wound up I will try again to post URL images on the completed model section.
Alan.
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P.S.
See if you can see where the RE.8's broken off wheel and propeller blades are.
(https://imgur.com/a/irYz54K#iKOhidM)