wookiees meng m2a3 build with herman the german

[Coen]

F art
Haha
Cool looking layout!!!

[wookiee76]

Thanks again mike, without wishing to sound like a gushy fanboy, yourself and paul were and are my inspiration to get into this wonderful hobby so compliments from either mean a lot.
That done i have a feeling today may get messy playing with the air dry clay, lets see if my sculpting skills have improved since high school!

[wookiee76]

So thats me done for clayday and the next four or five days whilst i wait for it to dry.

[Coen]

Looks really cool!!

20 minutes with a hair dryer will knock a few days off that.

[wookiee76]

Lol, my hairlines pretty much the same as yours, hence no hairdryer, guessing a fan heater would do the trick?

[Coen]

It may, I've never tried that.
If you have a heat gun it would do the job too, just be careful to not get to close to any wood of plastic with it.

[wookiee76]

I will give it a while under my kitchen heater and see what happens, getting somewhat carried away with the cylon raider at the mo.

[warped72]

Your model and diorama are looking great. Kind nice watching what your doing, gives me great advise on my M3A3 Bradley as it being just my 2nd attempt at AFV. Keep up the great work and thanks Wookie.

[wookiee76]

Ooh dear, dont know if im the person to take advice from, maybe just spot where i've messed up and try to avoid the same mistakes! Thanks warped.
Will have a go at expediting the clay drying process tomorrow then its just a case of figuring out how to get a sandy/deserty texture.

[ladip63]

That is an awesome build wookie. It seems herman has things under control. When I saw in inside of the Bradley. WOW!!! I just might have to try to build one. Time to start buying and stashing again

[wookiee76]

Thanks lynn, so today I get the dio base out of the airing cupboard with the intention of dryimg it a bit quicker and discover that not only is it dry but it has shrunk, which i sort of expected but not quite this much and cracked quite badly. Repairs have been fashioned from more clay and omce this dries totally naturally i will seal and grout it.
First time doing a dio so I'm going to learn quite a few lessons.

[Coen]

That will happen if you made the layers too thick, or you didn't put enough wood glue down on the base before you added the clay. Of you dry it too fast it may happen as well, like in an oven.
It can also happen if the material that you use for the base is too flexible.

The same thing can happen to celluclay.
Lots of glue on the base first and keep the layers to 5mm and you're usually good

Adding a bit more clay to fill the cracks is the best fix.
Cracks are an extremely common thing with clay bases. Easy to fix though.

[wookiee76]

I did try to keep it fairly thin mike, think it was putting it in the airing cupboard that caused it, all fixed now and hopefully should be able to add a layer of grout later today once ive sealed the clay obviously. Would i be right in thinking that adding basic textures like sand and pebbles etc into the grout would be the right approach?

[Coen]

Usually I add it to the clay when it's still wet then add a layer of thinned white glue.
You can add it after its dry though, you don't need the grout. All you need is some decent white glue and water (woodland Scenics make a great premade thinned white glue that dries matte, wonderful stuff) and a few types of sand like materials. Kitty litter (non-clumping), beach sand, sculpting sand for kids is wonderful stuff. A few small broken pebbles (like the crusher dust from the side of a road).

You add a mixed layer of sands and a few pebbles (you don't need it to be thick, just a dusting) then a few more pebbles here and there so that you have some in the sand as well as on the sand.
At 1/35 sand will be imitating a fairly coarse gravel type surface, so you don't want to be too liberal with it. Unless you have some superfine beach sand, and I mean super fine.
The real sand at 1/35 scale is just a relatively smooth surface as the grains are invisible, so the clay base that you built will the actual sand. The pebbles, kitty litter, and "real world" sand is surface gravel and scatter.

[Coen]

Here is an example of sand done too coarsely.
I built this four years ago, before I realised how big sand looked at 1/35. The sand is far too coarse.

[wookiee76]

Thanks mike, thats a great help, i have a variety of things I hope to use to represent and hopefully not overscale things.

[wookiee76]

A little more progress, have finished what are now known as either the hermarines or hermans hermits, depends on how old you are. Also finished repairing the dio base then added icing/frosting, choc chips and sprinkles.

[wookiee76]

Diorama mocked up, base was primed with grey then basecoated with middlestone then desert sand and ivory sand sprayed randomly to break up the uniformity.
The brick walls will be redone in a grey as they look out of place with red brick, have also got some sandbags painted up in good old tamiya buff to stack against the walls if i feel it needs it.


The dead wood is just some dead ivy from my fence, somewhat cheaper than the woodland scenics packet of twigs.

[timtamtung]

looks a cracker with the figures!

[Coen]

Very cool layout!!!

[wookiee76]

Thanks guys, i have repainted the brick work in grey and added some sandbags, definitely looks better in my book and am now adding some vegetation, keeping it minimal though.

[wookiee76]

Pretty much done, just need to paint the wood now i think.

[Coen]

Whapaaaa!!!
Now that looks like something. Nicely told story bud. Can't wait for the reveal shots.

[Nige201980]

Wow brilliant buddy.

[gaz45]

Very nice work mate looks great

[wookiee76]

Thanks guys, just the base to varnish later and all will be done.

[Liamcraven666]

very nice!