Tomcat's 1/35 StuG III Ausf.G Diorama

[krusty69]

dude
nice work on the building, I should have been looking at your build. and what it takes to make it look like that.
instead of dreaming of camouflage you now what.
nicely done
bob

[Bissyboat]

The StuG III will close that gap on the groundfloor nicely. Any kill rings to be added to the barrel?.

[Stokesy44]

That's going to be one seriously pimped out Stug! I love Kaizen tracks - please leave the skirts off so we can see the track sag!

I used Kaizens on my Jagdpanzer IV, one hint - when you finally attach them, add a dab of superglue to fix the sprockets and idlers in place with the track pulled tight on the bottom section. That way you can fix the tracks with all the sag along the top of the tracks, otherwise they will loosen up on the lower section and you'll lose that wonderful sag effect.

Forgive me if I'm teaching Gran to suck eggs........

[Tomcat64]

Awesome work there mate

Thanks Gaz

I look forward to seeing that Stug put together. That's an awful lot of AM

Thanks mate - I just hope I haven't bitten off more than I can chew - the end of April suddenly seems really close!

The StuG III will close that gap on the groundfloor nicely. Any kill rings to be added to the barrel?.

Oooh... hadn't considered kill rings...

dude
nice work on the building, I should have been looking at your build. and what it takes to make it look like that.
instead of dreaming of camouflage you now what.
nicely done
bob

Thanks Bob - it's definitely a challenge, but camo-thingies are just so much more fun!

That's going to be one seriously pimped out Stug! I love Kaizen tracks - please leave the skirts off so we can see the track sag!

I used Kaizens on my Jagdpanzer IV, one hint - when you finally attach them, add a dab of superglue to fix the sprockets and idlers in place with the track pulled tight on the bottom section. That way you can fix the tracks with all the sag along the top of the tracks, otherwise they will loosen up on the lower section and you'll lose that wonderful sag effect.

Forgive me if I'm teaching Gran to suck eggs........

Thanks mate - all and any advice is very welcome and I'll be checking back on your JP-IV build on a regular basis! I'd already planned on leaving the schurzen off - I'm not a great fan purely because they hide too much work so I almost always either leave them off entirely or cut out panels so the running gear is visible.

So, not a great deal of progress to report - partly because I got really confused by the instructions for the "Pimp my StuG" kit. Then I realised that the inside sheet of the instructions had been folded the wrong way around and I need to do stage 10 before starting stages 4-9 (of course ) I was also disappointed to find that although the pack is shown as "full interior" it doesn't include the driver's compartment so a bit miffed but went for it anyway - more AM


Aside from that after two months of fighting with Vac-form plastic it was a sheer joy to be working with injection moulded parts again, and I found that I actually enjoyed the standard panzer wheel-a-thon


and that was it for the afv, but whilst my tiny braincell was battling to churn over the interior instructions I occupied myself with painting a couple of the figures; here are Willi and Gunther who will be occupying the upper floor in the ruins




After priming with Ultimate black these have been brush painted using a combination of Vallejo, Scale75, Tamiya and Lifecolor colours. I'd normally do a bit of a production line with a group of figures and paint them pretty much the same way but because I want some variation in the uniform colours I've worked these separately. The crouching figure has been painted up using Vallejo's field grey as a base colour whereas the standing figure has used one of Scale75's versions (slightly greener). The helmets were both base coated with a dark grey and then had Ultimate white wash applied. Both faces have been painted using Scale75's flesh tones. Buttons and belt buckles were picked out using "Nacre" from Scale75's non metallic metal set. Finally both figures were grubbied up using a grime wash and then sealed with a couple of coats of AK Ultra Matte.

This week I'm hoping to crack on with the StuG interior and maybe a couple more figures.

Thanks for looking.

[privatepete]

Hi Neil,coming a long nicely, can I rename you build as "Meinen Wagen Aufmotzen Diorama" which is " Pimp my ride diorama sounds good, that's some good advice from Stokesy44 about the track and how to get the sag just right, keep up the good work

[Tomcat64]

Hi Neil,coming a long nicely, can I rename you build as "Meinen Wagen Aufmotzen Diorama" which is " Pimp my ride diorama sounds good, that's some good advice from Stokesy44 about the track and how to get the sag just right, keep up the good work

Thanks Pete, I put "Meinen Wagen Aufmotzen Diorama" into Google translate to see what it came back with and it said "My car darts diorama"; so I tried "Meinen Wagen Aufmotzen" and it said "My cars Puss" so then to have another go "Aufmotzen" by itself says "Furry" so I can only assume I'm supposed to use the fake leopard-skin seat covers and furry dice!

Anyway - I think I'd better stick to English in case something gets lost in translation so ladies and gentlemen here's the very first episode of "Pimp my StuG" presented in TomcatVision.

First up and not wanting anything too taxing I installed the basic modifications to the upper hull section which included the shelves that will hold the radio equipment and other items in the sides of the fighting compartment


And from the other side also installed the driver's view port


And then moved onto the driver's compartment; first thing I realised was how small some of the pieces were - each of the little nubs on top of this block is an individual bolt-head for the forward hatches. Having seen the size of these I bottled out for today and moved onto the compartment itself (I'll come back to the hatches at a later date).


A couple of items I used during this session; a small pot with a lid to hold any of the small (but not THAT small) items to save pinging them around. I normally cut the lids off these things and use them as mixing pots. And also I use cut down sanding sticks when I'm playing with small components - it just feels like I have more control than using a full length stick.


The initial assembly of the driver's compartment went relatively smoothly, with the exception of the pipe section to the left of this photo which had an airbubble at the angle and broke off as soon as I cut it from the resin block. I've welded it back together with CA and I think it's more or less in the right position


With that done it was on to the cog bin which forms the most imposing part of the front section of the vehicle - the early variants were equipped with a 10-speed transmission but this was changed to a six-speed gearbox in the ausf. B due to problems with the 10-speed box. The main section simply had a big lever and guard to add which was pretty straightforward


The forward section of the unit was far more fiddly and really required at least three hands with tweezers to get sorted. I've been using Deluxe materials Roket Max CA applied with a cocktail stick as this provides a few seconds manipulating time before grabbing. I was also required to drill 0.2mm holes in a couple of the small pieces and as you can see here I didn't quite get it right on one side


I then attached the cross-bar piece via two small PE parts on each side


And was then required to wind 0.2mm wire to form springs... another first... so my initial attempt involved CAing brass wire to the resin component as seen here


I then attempted to wrap the wire around the shaft, but the CA didn't hold it sufficiently tightly and the resin part wasn't up to being manhandled like this, so I went and grabbed lunch. Coming back to the bench I hit upon the idea of using a drill bit of a similar diameter to the resin component and using that as a former


Once the windings were long enough I cut off the excess wire and slid it off the shank of the drill bit


Before carefully easing back over the resin components


And then attaching them in place either side of the gearbox before connecting the whole unit together


I then dry fitted the gearbox in place as I want to remove it for painting later. From research I've done it seems that from late 1942 the driver's compartment was pretty much all left in primer but they were using stockpiled components so an ivory-coloured gearbox wouldn't be out of place


I then added the remaining components for the compartment which went relatively trouble free, in spite of the instructions being somewhat vague about exact placement of parts, and then matched it up with the transmission casing and rear bulkhead from the fighting compartment kit (all held in with blue tack)


And from the other end. The one real exception to the "trouble free" statement was the bar (now brass) at the very back of the drivers section which was a resin rod which pretty much disintegrated as soon as it was off the block and was therefore replaced with brass wire of a similar diameter. Also the instructions show the pipe on the right hand side coming from the top of the drive unit rather than from the "2'oclock" position that it actually ends up being - so apologies to any purists if this is wrong


Finally a couple of shots with the driver's seat and transmission covers dry-fitted as well


It looks like the gearbox should mate up with the driveshaft housing with a little encouragement.


Overall I'm fairly happy with the result as a first time around on this kind of venture although it definitely could have been tidier in places and as always there's things I would have done differently with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight.

Next up I'll start working on the main components of the fighting compartment floor such as the gun-carriage support and can then start painting them up (if I can get the gearbox back out again!)

Thanks for looking!

[Stokesy44]

Looking superb. Just trying to imagine how good it will look when painted.

I always find the inner guts of these things interesting, what it must have been like to crew a vehicle like this in the situations they found themselves in.

[Tomcat64]

Looking superb. Just trying to imagine how good it will look when painted.

I always find the inner guts of these things interesting, what it must have been like to crew a vehicle like this in the situations they found themselves in.

Thanks mate

I know what you mean about seeing the guts of these things - I was thinking exactly the same as I was putting it together. I'm not sure how comfortable I'd feel with the gearbox grinding away in my right ear and all the exposed moving components just a few inches away.

My reference book contains this photo of a mocked up cutaway showing just how cramped it was inside the hull. The loader is out of sight the other side of the breach block

[Tomcat64]

I also found another photo that showed that the pipe down the right hand side is connected in the right place, so it's the instructions that were wonky in this case and not my build (first time for everything )

[Tomcat64]

I've managed to grab a couple of hours each evening so far this week so here's a quick midweek update.

First up a bit of detective work; most of the reviews of the interior set do mention that the instructions are a little vague in places on the positioning of some of the parts


So after a bit of research I decided it went here...


I then built up the gun carriage support - here is the rough build without filler or finishing


And inserted into the hull to see how it all went together - it's a tight fit but it seems to go in ok and effectively covers the potentially dodgy joint between the rear of the gearbox and drive shaft cover


Then it was time to pull out the gearbox - and thankfully it was a fairly painless extraction


And left a big hole in the bottom of the hull


Then there was no avoiding it - more tiny bits of resin to try and sort out (apologies for the poor photo)


So I smothered them with a bit of masking tape to try and avoid pingage


Carefully cut into them with a sharp scalpel - moving the tape as necessary to get access and ended up with this


And after some careful tweezer work here they are in place


I then added the pipework down the left hand side of the hull wall; this necessitated adding the upper part of the rear bulkhead as well to make sure the pipe was lined up


And on the outside I added some initial parts of the suspension to help spot where I may need to fill in any locating holes on the inside


Made a start on some of the internal fitments - here are the three radio sets; each set was a block of resin and a pair of PE supports that needed minor folding


And then it was time to break out the paints; the lower hull components were all primed with Ultimate grey and then painted with Vallejo modelair Ivory. In the pot I was concerned this might be a bit dark even though it is marked as RAL1001 but it I'm happy with the result


Following a check on some more references I decided to paint the gearbox in the other internal colour used at this stage of production which was Grey-Green mainly to add some variety. This was sprayed with Scale75's Grau-Grun from their War Front range, and then the end section details were brush painted in Red-Brown Primer (again from Scale75). It'll need another coat of primer as coverage was a little patchy.


This weekend the plan is to finish off the lower hull components and get that all fitted up before moving onto the upper section. If time allows I'd also like to get a couple more of the figures painted up so I don't end up trying to do them all together at the end.

Thanks for looking!

[privatepete]

Hi Neil some excellent modification and scratch building work going on, love it ,keep up the high standard

[Tomcat64]

Hi Neil some excellent modification and scratch building work going on, love it ,keep up the high standard

Thanks Pete!

[Tomcat64]

A quick Saturday morning update following a few more hours in the evenings this week.

The gearbox was finished off with a second coat of the Scale75 Primer colour and then whole box was washed with Lifecolour Tensocrom Oil to give a well... oily effect...


And the inside of the hull was sprayed with Scale75 Primer colour, then certain details were picked out in black and finally the drive components were washed with oil


At some point during this some clumsy oaf managed to break off and lose the driver's foot pedals The cats are denying all responsibility so I guess it must have been me Although they will be barely visible when the whole thing is closed up my sense of completeness means that I will scratch build these from a couple of bits of .2mm wire and a piece of left-over PE fret. Nothing too complex and I'll paint, cut to length and fit after the compartment is just about finished.


Finally for this update the gearbox was refitted back in place with a bit of fiddling


I want to add a little wear and tear to the driver's compartment and then add the new pedals and his seat and that'll be the front section done. I'll probably install the gun carriage support and fighting compartment floor plates and rear bulkheads before weathering.

Thanks for looking!

[panzerman825]

Great job on the interior. Paintwork is looking terrific. Keep building and having fun. Bill

[Tomcat64]

Great job on the interior. Paintwork is looking terrific. Keep building and having fun. Bill

Thanks Bill!

The fun has continued this weekend but I did wander slightly off plan... more of that later. Saturday afternoon was taken up with finishing off the basics of the lower hull by firstly installing the gun carriage support, rear bulkhead and floor plates of the fighting compartment


As well as painting, trimming and installing my scratch-built pedals in the foot-well of the driver's section


I then painted and installed the driver's seat and drive covers to call this section done


And from the front


So that was it for Saturday. On Sunday I had originally planned to crack on with the fighting compartment, but decided to finish off the remaining components from the driver set so that I could get rid of that box. My workbench isn't the tidiest of places at the best of time but the number of components involved with this project means that I've got at least a half-dozen boxes scattered around and part-built sections on just about every available flat surface so getting a set finished and disposing of the box is a minor victory that I'll take.

So first up on Sunday morning was the driver's dashboard which started life as three components: one resin block, one piece of PE and one printed film


The PE was pre-coloured so I folded that into shape and attached the film behind it before connecting it all to the resin block


I then filled the joins with PPP and painted using Vallejo Heavy Charcoal from the Game Color range. The heavy paints adhere well without a primer if handled carefully so are ideal for small components if you don't fancy getting the airbrush out for fiddly bits. The highly detailed instructions then say "Dashboard fastened on ceiling" so I'll figure that out when I get the upper hull properly under way.


So that was it for the morning session. In the afternoon it was deep breath time and heading onto the forward hatches and their tiny parts. Each pair of hatches is made up of the following pieces - the noise you can hear in the background is the carpet monster dribbling...


The instructions call for drilling holes in each of the hinge pieces to insert wire, and also to sand off the numbers on the hinge base. I found that doing both of these prior to removing the hinges from the resin block was much easier that trying to handle the tiny pieces separately. Each hinge is formed of two parts joined by 0.6mm brass wire, so I pushed the blocks down the wire and then trimmed to length rather than trying to work with 2mm lengths


The ends of the wire were sanded down with diamond files but it looks like I've missed a couple that may need some more attention. Anyway I got all the hinges assembled and then cut the small bolt heads off their block using the masking tape method I described earlier


It was then a case of adding the various parts to the hatch covers - and I'll tidy up some of the mess in here after the CA has fully cured so hopefully it'll look a bit tidier at the end


After making a cuppa I then followed the same process for the other pair of hatches - again they need some tidying up once everything is set and cured and I'll add them to the upper hull just before I'm ready to mate it with the lower hull.


Aside from that I part assembled the remaining three crewmen from the winter Panzer set; ideally I'd like to pose one of them "on duty" inside the fighting compartment so I'll choose which two of the figures I'll use once that's completed to see how much space I've got (not much I suspect). And I started painting a couple of the figures that will be in the street but ran out of time before they got too far.

This week I'd like to continue fitting out the fighting compartment, finish painting the two figures and make some progress on the Tamiya parts of the kit if possible.

Thanks for looking!

[Stokesy44]

Looking good. Really like that driver's dashboard.

paintwork is tasty too.

[Tomcat64]

Looking good. Really like that driver's dashboard.

paintwork is tasty too.

Thanks mate

Not much to report this week as the onset of a man-cold left the mojo severely depleted, but here's a quick update of what I have managed to get done between Lemsips.

I cleaned up and fitted the forward hatches and managed to not CA the hinges


On the underside I'll have to thin down the two highlighted hinges as the internal components are a little too snug to allow a good fit


Fitted some of the fixtures for the rear bulkhead - might need to give that gap some attention once the upper hull is in place. The bulkhead is only glued at the bottom at the moment to allow some flex when the upper hull goes on.


And finally made a start on the ammo bins - the insteriors were brush painted in the primer red/brown


We've got a four-day weekend coming up so hoping to get a couple of afternoons in the den to make some better progress this weekend.

Thanks for looking as always!

[Safir]

looking good keep it up

[Mylightweight]

Amazing work, great skills on the house.

[privatepete]

Hi Neil your doing a exhalent job, love all the extra detail work you are going, keep it up,hope you feel better so

[Tomcat64]

looking good keep it up

Amazing work, great skills on the house.

Hi Neil your doing a exhalent job, love all the extra detail work you are going, keep it up,hope you feel better so

Thanks for the support guys - really appreciate it

Glad to say the man-cold is on its way out and I've had a solid couple of days at the bench, however I've been concentrating on the build and haven't take too many in-progress photos, but hopefully there's enough here to give you an idea

First off I finished up the basic fittings of the fighting compartment which included some twiddly little PE curve bends to make the clips on the rear bulkhead. Slightly frustrating that the call outs for some of the parts in the Czech Master instructions were wrong in a couple of cases on similar parts but everything is there one way or another and in some cases using scrap PE to scratch build a couple of small bits. Here is the upper hull ready for paint on the inside prior to fitting the radios etc


Then onto the last major interior components, this is the gun breech which took about two hours of fiddling to get together - there's a slight gap around where the kit part joins the resin part which will need some attention but nothing too drastic


And here is the gun carriage after about four hours of similar fiddling about. One particular part was recovered from the carpet monster three times during this, but I wasn't going to be defeated - all the bits are there!


And of course we had to dry fit them to see how they went together. The gunner's seat isn't attached as yet because from the research I've done the kit parts are completely wrong (and one of them doesn't match the diagram either) so I'm going to do some fettling with that before I attach it probably immediately prior to fitting the carriage into the hull


And they fit in the fighting compartment too - they'll now be split back out ready for painting


With that done I was just left with the ammo bins but frankly I couldn't face another session with tiny PE parts so I put them to one side and pulled out the Tamiya box from where it's been gathering dust and had a fun couple of hours putting injection plastic parts together for a change. Really nice departure to be able to work with parts without disappearing in a noxious cloud of resin dust. So here's the lower hull with the suspension arms added and the rear components attached- the grill is from the Eduard PE set, the exhaust will stay off until painted.


Then onto the upper hull - the only issue was needing to thin out the driver's view plate as the internal resin part obviously filled a large part of the hole now


And here's the front end completed with armour plates and smoke generators installed. In this shot it's test fitted onto the lower hull as I'd also thinned out the internal fixings for the front hatches to allow clearance Clarence


Out back and the rear deck is done, again the grills over the intakes are from the Eduard set


I then decided to brave some more PE and build the "fencing" around the rear deck for the stowage from the Legend set - here's the PE fret


Ummm... and that was it - no instructions... and a quick search on the interweb came up blank too, so it was just a case of working out where things went based on the lengths of the PE strips, but in the end I got this sorted. Looking at some of the stowage I plan to use I may need to take one of the spare wheel brackets off


Finally I decided to build out the components for the fighting compartment roof, this is going to be detachable so the internal detail I've put in can be seen so the inside surface of the roof got some attention with the filler and sander


Then the outer components were built up; the loader's hatches will be open in the final build and the commander's cupola is dry fitted as well in case I need to remove it temporarily to assist in painting.


That's all for now - hopefully this week I'll get a couple of layers of paint on some of the inner components with a view to fitting the upper and lower hull sections. There will be some filling to do once that's happened so I'd rather do that sooner than later. And I'll also need to bite the bullet (as it were) and finish off the ammo bins.

Thanks for looking!

[Stokesy44]

So much detail in a relatively small kit. I really like gun breach, it looks beautiful against that interior.

You must be having PE dreams at night mate. All those little extras will be worth it though

[Tomcat64]

So much detail in a relatively small kit. I really like gun breach, it looks beautiful against that interior.

You must be having PE dreams at night mate. All those little extras will be worth it though

Thanks mate - I'd be lying if I didn't say that I'd caught myself drifting off in quiet moments trying to figure out how to make some of it all fit together

Quick update from last night - I was obviously suffering from resin withdrawal symptoms as I pulled out the major chunks of stowage I want to use on the rear deck, and the casting blocks were quite substantial


So it was out with the trusty razor saw to remove those chunks and see how they fitted onto the deck (and as suspected I did have to remove that rear wheel bracket)


The piece right at the back is designed to snug up against a "board" but I'm thinking of using that elsewhere so will have to use putty to finish modelling the rolled tarp up against the back of the "cage"


I also managed to get some primer on the inside of the upper fighting compartment, the gun and carriage and the wheels. I've got a bit more sanding to do on those sink holes inside the compartment roof before priming that again though.

Thanks for looking!

[Tomcat64]

Welcome back to "Pimp my StuG"

I've been working on the Kaizen tracks through the week - this is something I've been able to do sitting in front of the TV and just plugging away as it's pretty straightforward but just repetitive.


For anyone that hasn't seen them before each sprue contains two left and two right links as well as a couple of mittelstollen which will be added later once I've worked out the overall run lengths


I assembled them in nine sets of ten to give me an initial run of 90 links in total as a starting point; here's the left hand side sets


And here's the right hand set all put together and sitting next to the Tamiya tracks - it looks like I'm a couple of links short, and since the Tamiya tracks will be intended to sit tight I'm thinking I'll add another run of 10 to each side to allow some sag


This weekend I sat down with the intention of getting the ammo stores finished up, it started well enough with the small bits of resin added to the front of the bins


What happened next though was a pure Coyote session (see avatar); no matter how careful I was or how much I planned it appeared that my fingers all transformed into left-handed thumbs and celebrated in a frenzy of broken, bent and pinged parts with a launch rate that NASA would have been proud of


So... (purists look away now) I took the executive decision that the visual impact of missing a few hinges the size of a gnat's tackle would be minimal and therefore cut a few corners in an effort to retain my sanity and ended up with these ready for priming and painting


And here are the two main panniers painted in Scale75 primer, with RBM cartridges added and the latches folded into place


The folding frames (non-foldable) were added to the lower hull and the lower pannier glued in place, the upper pannier is just placed in this shot, and all the ammo is just loose fitted for effect


That's where I left Saturday and came back to it Sunday evening and with a last longing look at all the interior detail I took the plunge and sealed the top and bottom halves of the StuG together working back along the seams to try and get as good a fit as possible given all the extra junk I've thrown in there


I meant to take a photo of the dashboard glued into position on the driver compartment ceiling but forgot... so you'll have to take my word for it that it's lurking in there somewhere


I now need to work on the final details for the fighting compartment such as the radios and other boxes and assorted equipment


There is one gap down the left hand side of the compartment that I'll need to fill and clean up


And from the outside; the plan is to actually push the filler through from the outside and smooth it down on the inside to try and minimize the amount of sanding inside the compartment prior to repainting and weathering


I also had a strong urge to install the gun breech and carriage into the fighting compartment, but had a sudden and unexpected attack of common sense and decided to leave it out until later as it'll be easier to mask off the compartment for the exterior priming and painting without the arms sticking out through the gap where the gun mantle goes. So I settled on weathering and washing the carriage and adding the gunner's chair instead - the join needs a little cleaning up but nearly there


This week I want to fill that pesky gap and then get the primer and base-coat down on the outside of the vehicle and wheels, test fit the tracks and take a sneaky peak at how it looks inside the building (remember that??). The next couple of weekends are really busy so ideally I'll be able to get this moving in the evenings if I'm going to be in with a shout of getting something finished in time.

Thanks for looking!

[Mylightweight]

I am so excited to this all come together, you must be beside yourself!

Great work

[Tomcat64]

I am so excited to this all come together, you must be beside yourself!

Great work

Thanks mate!

Yep it feels great to finally have it closed up and available for paint on the outside (already primed and base coated - pics later in the week). There's still some detailing to do on the inside but it's starting to come together after a month of very fiddly bits

[Tomcat64]

More steady progress on the StuG pimping front so far this week.

The radio sets have been painted ready for installation next time I take the roof off


I was originally going to use an RBM barrel for this build, but wasn't happy with the fit into the mantle so I picked up an Aber kit instead and much happier with the fit on this


Then it was down to a coat of Ultimate black primer to create Stealth StuG (or is it Bat StuG?)


I then laid down a couple of layers of Vallejo Model Air panzer grey which was incredibly dark. I think this is probably accurate for the full sized vehicle but looks too close to black when scaled down, so I put down a light layer of anthracite grey over the top to try and lighten it a little. This will mostly be covered in white wash when I get there but I wanted something a little lighter to work with, although I've left the lower hull in the darker grey as this will probably be 99% mud


I decided the satin finish would be good enough to put the decals on (just the three Balkankreuze), then washed with a dark dirt clay wash and sealed with Ak Interactive Ultra Matte.


The other unfitted components have been going through the same processes - I need to finish the tyres on the road wheels and then we'll have a look at getting the wheels and tracks test fitted to see what it looks like before hitting the whitewash and weathering.

Thanks for looking!

[ElCapitan]

Brilliant progress, can't wait to see the finished dio!

[Tomcat64]

Brilliant progress, can't wait to see the finished dio!

Thanks mate - me too

Managed to grab an hour at lunchtime and got the wheels finished up by brush-painting the tyres with Tamiya Rubber Black, and then dry fitted all the running gear. Now I like a bit of sag as much as the next man, but I think I might have got this slightly wrong...


So took five links out


It's still a little loose around the drive sprocket, so I might end up taking another one or two links out - anyway here's the other side


And then I just had to see if it fitted into the intended space in the building, the barrel is just propped on for effect here


yup - it fits


And around the back


Really happy with this


So now I've got a month left to finish the detailing and white-wash the StuG and then make winter happen... it's going to be tight but I think I'm in with a shout of having something ready for the deadline

Thanks for looking!

[Mylightweight]

Its looking amazing, its really starting to come together.

[Quax]

Looks great Tomcat, a great deal of blood sweat toil and tears have gone into this but.... when are you going to start building the Stug....?

Paul

[Stokesy44]

Stunning mate. Love the interior, love the paint job and love the tracks.

Superb stuff

[Tomcat64]

Its looking amazing, its really starting to come together.

Thanks mate!

Looks great Tomcat, a great deal of blood sweat toil and tears have gone into this but.... when are you going to start building the Stug....?

Paul

Thanks Quax! I'm sure there's a StuG lurking in amongst all the plastic somewhere! My desk (and other flat surfaces) are all covered in half-finished bits!

Stunning mate. Love the interior, love the paint job and love the tracks.

Superb stuff

Thanks Stokesy!

So as expected the weekend was pretty full with non-modelling activities, so it's been a couple more evenings of working at it this week.

With a quick coat of Ultimate white wash Stealth StuG was converted to Ghost StuG


This was then manipulated with damp tissue, damp & dry cotton buds and a dry stippling brush


Same around the back where the exhaust system and plate has been painted and attached as well - the exhaust was brush painted with the lifecolor rust set


When I've used clay washes and weathering pigments on bases I've fixed them with Daler Rowney pastel fixer to hold them in place. So with a little trepidation I used an atomiser and sprayed the StuG - it did fade the white a little more, but overall very relieved with the effect. I'll lay a couple of coats of varnish over the top of this as well just to make sure but it's allowed me to handle the thing in the meantime without pulling the whitewash off in my hands




I then embarked on painting all the tools by brush, and while that was happening I took the can opener to the lid to see what was going on inside... just one bit of seepage to deal with which was cleaned up with a wet brush before giving the interior a thin black wash to dull it down as I figured working a clay wash around all the little pieces in there was going to be a recipe for pingage


The tools were then attached - the kit included a length of string for use as the tow cable and I replaced this with Karaya 0.9mm cable instead


And as you can glimpse from the previous photo the interior has been kitted out and the floor was weathered with Mig pigments Russian Earth stippled in dry and then manipulated with a wet brush


The left hand side, as well as the radios I've also added the commander's seat and a spare helmet to add to the clutter


Back to the right hand side and the last of the shells had their warheads painted with Tamiya NATO black before adding to the racks. Unfortunately it looks like I screwed up the alignment when fitting those, but it's too late to fiddle with them now so they're staying wonky


Finally for this update it looks like I might be in with a chance of sitting a crew-man inside the fighting compartment. Depending on where the gunner's seat ends up I may need to do a little surgery on his left leg to make it happen but it's looking promising


That's all for now, remaining jobs for this week are sealing the paintwork with a couple of layers of varnish, painting up the tracks and getting started on the final weathering before adding the gun and carriage.

Thanks for looking!

[ElCapitan]

The whitewash turned out really nice!

[Stokesy44]

Nice white wash.

All the interior detail is really showing under the paint and weathering, detail looks great too.

[Tomcat64]

The whitewash turned out really nice!

Nice white wash.

All the interior detail is really showing under the paint and weathering, detail looks great too.

Thanks guys - hoping to get this chapter done in the next couple of days.

At least this week has seen the back of three more boxes (Tamiya kit box, Kaizen track box & Czech Master interior box)

[privatepete]

Hi Neil, absolutely stunning work, the amount of detail work you have packed into such a small space is tremendous, very well done

[Tomcat64]

Hi Neil, absolutely stunning work, the amount of detail work you have packed into such a small space is tremendous, very well done

Thanks Pete - really appreciate it!

I'm still slightly concerned that I've got to try and wedge the gun & carriage in there somewhere too (hopefully tomorrow!); the more I've done on this the more I'm baffled about how the crews worked these things.

[Bissyboat]

Amazing job on the interior.

[Tomcat64]

Amazing job on the interior.

Thanks mate - good to see you back again

It's been an exciting week for me StuG-wise although first up was the more mundane task of adding the mittelstollen to the tracks; here's the instruction on the box lid.


Each sprue contained two mittelstollen, but from my research they weren't generally used on every other link so I decided to do them alternate 4 and 3 links apart, but for those of you longing for a photo of a pot of small bits... don't say I don't spoil you


And here they are glued in place with a drop of TET


The tracks were then undercoated in Ultimate black primer, base-coated with Vallejo metal colour burnt iron and then weathered with a rust clay wash, followed by some dark dirt. One of the pins came out during my working on these but no major trauma and new pin was soon put back in and sealed with a dot of CA (as were all the other pins)


When we last saw the StuG it'd been white-washed so after a coat of pastel fixer and a couple of coats of AK Ultra Matte I laid down a covering of dark dirt clay wash and then manipulated it. I hit the same problem as Stokesy did with his build in that while working the dark dirt some of the white wash started lifting as well, so I'm thinking maybe an enamel varnish may need to be used to seal the first weathering layer in future builds. Anyway it didn't come out too badly in the end


And after declaring that done, I needed to see if I could still open the forward hatches after all the layers of paint, wash and varnish that had been piled on - can I get a "Hell Yeah!" Actually just a small one, the left hand hatch as we're looking at them broke at the hinges but has now been CA'd in place - the other two are still closeable. just some tidying up needed where the wash has bled through


After that the underside of the fenders and the bottom of the hull were liberally coated in Vallejo Russian Mud (this is really thick stuff!)

Then I finally got to put the full gun assembly together


Before dry fitting it into the fighting compartment


And then committing to glue - I actually used tube cement for this to give me some leeway in manipulating it into place using the slot in the roof plate to act as a guide for the sight


Then the last thing I did tonight was add the running gear... and here's how it looks now


I have to say I'm really happy with the way this is turning out, obviously the road wheels and running gear need some more attention to blend it all together and even out the sag in the track but it's coming along really well now. We've got another busy weekend coming up away from the bench so it'll be more evenings next week to get some progress on the diorama as a whole.

Thanks as always for looking!

[Mylightweight]

That's a nice looking Stug!

[Tomcat64]

That's a nice looking Stug!

Thanks mate!

Here it is having a bit of a lurk

[Mylightweight]

[spock1701]

Really great Stug. Whitewash and tracks are particularly excellent

[Tomcat64]

Really great Stug. Whitewash and tracks are particularly excellent

Thanks guys - need to take a deep breath and try and get this over the line now!

[Stokesy44]

Can't beat a good bit of lurking!

Glad you're on the home stretch mate. Looking forward to seeing the finish

[Tomcat64]

Can't beat a good bit of lurking!

Glad you're on the home stretch mate. Looking forward to seeing the finish

Thanks Stokesy - I can almost see how it's going to turn out now... maybe... plans always change

It was a reasonably productive week at the bench in the evenings this week; I first applied a thickish wash of MiG pigments Russian Earth over the running gear


And then after letting it dry to a dust I washed some of it off using wet cotton buds to clean up the wheels and the tracks where they'd been in contact with non-muddy surfaces to get to the house


Then I went back to my pot of Vallejo thick Russian mud to add some more depth to the built up mud as well as a few random splatters around where the crew would have been clambering without wiping their feet first


And up the sides


I gave the open hatches a dry-brush of Humbrol metallic grey followed by a Vallejo black wash, and used Humbrol "smoke" weathering powder applied with white glue to create some soot around the muzzle


So that's the StuG pretty much done except for the rear stowage. If time permits I may go back and add some streaking. The machine gun is painted and tucked away in a box for the moment - it'll be one of the final things to add as I know I'll break it off if I put it on earlier!


Those of you that have followed along for a while may remember an eye-test I carried out a few weeks ago building the MasterBox bicycle. Well it was time to fish that off of the primed pile and throw some paint at it. This is brush painted with the frame picked out in Andrea field grey (shade 2), the spokes in Vallejo metalcolor steel, the leather is Scale75 brown leather washed with Vallejo black wash and the tyres are Tamiya rubber black. The front lamp was drilled out and had a couple of dabs of Vallejo water effect dropped in to form a lens (hadn't tried this before and it may need a couple more dabs to bring it out properly). This is definitely the better side as the PE on the other side looks a bit ropey to be honest so it'll be displayed this way around.


And now being a bank holiday weekend it was time to paint the wood-work - here are the window frames and a couple of doors brush painted in Andrea blue (Shade 2) which Mrs Tomcat describes as Tardis Blue . I wasn't happy with the blue I'd used previously as it just didn't look quite right for me and popped out in photos too - I'm much happier with this. The glass has been cut from blister packaging and stuck in using Humbrol ClearFix


The doors in the previous shot will be used as scenery as the main building doors are solid and need a little more weathering to blend them in but here they are in place and as you can see I resisted the urge to paint the "Police Box" sign on the front!


and then around the back with a support beam


Finally the windows were fitted


And here's how it looks - the bicycle will be tucked around the corner on the right hand side as we're looking at it


So for the rest of this weekend I need to get cracking on painting some figures to populate the place - figure painting takes me ages so need to get a wiggle on with that as I need the figures in place on the outside before I can make it snow. I should also be able to finish off the middle floor now that the windows are in. Oh and the StuG stowage is also on the hit list this weekend...

Thanks for looking!

[Stokesy44]

Its all looking beautiful mate

Love how the Stug is turning out

As for the bike -

And the windows and doors -

Its superb how the little details make the difference, I think propping up the busted door with a piece of timber is genius


PS - another thing that's really nice about the set up. There's no specific viewing angle. You can look at the dio from every angle and its fully realised.

[Tomcat64]

Its all looking beautiful mate

Love how the Stug is turning out

As for the bike -

And the windows and doors -

Its superb how the little details make the difference, I think propping up the busted door with a piece of timber is genius


PS - another thing that's really nice about the set up. There's no specific viewing angle. You can look at the dio from every angle and its fully realised.

Thanks mate - really appreciate it

Had a solid weekend with three days at the bench and inched closer to completion. Finally knuckled down and got started on the figures that will be wandering past outside the building, here they are as they finished up on Saturday - all have been brush painted in a mix of Vallejo, Scale75 and Andrea colours. This is my first project using the Andrea paints and I'm really impressed with them


The machine gun crew


And the NCO


And here he is outside the Tardis to see how it looked


While I was doing the uniforms I used the same colour sets on the first two elements of the StuG stowage - this and the figures were also brush painted with AK Ultra-Matte and it went down a treat (I was feeling lazy and didn't want to set up the airbrush booth)


Grabbed a couple of hours on Sunday morning to install the debris and figures on the middle floor of the building


And also applied the same treatment out the front - the rubble is my standard dio-dump rubble with the bricks removed and some small rubble/stones added


Following some advice from the Friday night crew I also started dirtying up the roof some more even though a lot of it will be covered in snow; the colours are actually popping out a little more in this photo due to the flash on the camera - it's more muted to the naked eye




After taking a look around the local neighbourhood roofs I finished the roof off Monday morning by adding some yellow to represent moss and then toning it all down a little with some dark dirt clay wash


Then got on and finished up the figures by sorting out some shading I wasn't happy with, adding the weapons and finally adding the slings using 1mm masking tape CA'd in place


Same for the machine gun crew - the NCO didn't need any additional strapping as his machine gun fit quite nicely onto the moulded details


The StuG stowage was finished and the other spare wheel thrown on for good measure - will give this all a thin wash of pigments later on


And then after checking the placement with the aid of blu-tack and Mrs Tomcat (always good to get a 2nd eye on these things I find) the figures were committed to CA


Looks like we might be in for some snow soon...


So if I check my planned "to do" list for this weekend it looks something like this:
1. Weather StuG - Done
2. Complete outside figures - Done
3. Woodwork and glazing - Done
4. StuG Stowage - Done
5. Bicycle - Done
6. Rubble and Snow outside - rubble done - still got a couple of hours to try and get the snow started too

Not on the list
7. Weather the roof - Done
8. Install the middle floor - Done
I also made a start on creating some of the clutter for the attic

So a really successful long weekend, and coming up this week and into next weekend I need to try and get the remaining figures completed and painted and then installed along with some more rubble. Then it's just final fettling prior to completion... oooh soooo close...

Edited for a quick update - as hoped for it began to snow this evening My usual mix of Woodland Scenic soft snow mixed up with some Vallejo water effect to produce a paste that was stippled into place and then more snow dusted over the top of the wet paste


I'll need to work some more snow into the big opening where the StuG is going to sit after I've rubbled that area up as well but happy to have got this far now


Thanks for looking if you got this far

[Stokesy44]

Brrrr, looking very chilly mate!