GazzaS

It's looking slick, John!

Thank you, Peter. Doing the tracks wasn't so bad. It's just one of those things about armor. Best thing you can do is set yourself up to minimize swapping tools as you go. For instance... nip them all of the sprue with your nippers first. Then do all of your knife work, putting each part into a new pile as you go. Then... if you think necessary, do the sanding step, and drop each completed piece into a wide mouthed container. It can be very therapeutic, really. Get up... have a few minutes to stretch or a drink... Then sit down to the next sprue. My stash is only 5-6 years of modelling. They are all good kits, nothing too old or known to be troublesome (except for two Revell kits). The wife supports my hobby, and my bench area is just off the livingroom... So I'm pretty lucky.

Thank you, Phil. I've also done the IIIH and Brummbar... both by Dragon. Neither turned out as good as I had hoped... so they'll be on my 'build again' list eventually.

Thank you Kai, I think taking zinc and Vitamin D3 everyday minimized the effect of the cold. Speaking of schemes, what do you think of this one? Sadly there is not a caption to help identify the unit. I'm still thinking of this one which is on the box top: But I have plenty of opportunity to change my mind as I go back to work tomorrow. These were all converted from Flammpanzer... so they're not very numerous. The tracks are almost done... I'll do a small update later today, hopefully.

Thank you Rob! I thought of that too, but after it was too late to do anything about it. I've been a big fan of the Marders, too. When I was a kid, I think the only one I could find was the Tamiya Marder II. Which of course is the other Marder II... thank you for the confusion, OKW! There is more info on this particular variant here: https://tanks-encyclopedia.com/ww2/nazi_germany/sdkfz-132_marder_ii.php Sadly, it's the best site I've found so far, even though it doesn't tell you a whole lot.

Bummer about the ladder, Frank.

Craig, it's been a long time since I saw this build. I'm glad to see it progressing so well and looking like a B-17D. Definitely looking forward to the metal skinning.

Einfache klasse!

Thank you Frank. Great images.

Holy shit, Methuselah! Er.... I mean Happy Birthday Martin!!

Thank you Kai. The old fashioned way... basically is just gluing everything together and painting it as one solid thing. But... I have sanded the axles a bit and put each wheel on each axle to try to soften up the mating surfaces... so, I will go back to trying to keep the tracks and wheels separate from the hull. My stash is somewhere from 50-70 kits. I will clean it up one day and take a picture. But mostly Dragon armor with about 7 figure kits. I have a few different Marders... so crew is required. I haven't decided on a color scheme, yet. The first one you saw on the first post is Großdeutschland division and one of the gray ones is also GD. The one you like is an unknown unit. There is even a plain dunkelgelb scheme, but also unknown unit. There is even one from a training unit. I am pretty certain that I will do one of the yellow schemes. The main reason is I want to do a diorama with a enemy panzer also (partially, or in full) on the base...and the enemy vehicle is definitely a 1943 vintage. Who knows... I might find a scheme from a picture. But now I much separate and clean 192 track links. Each link has four sprue gates. By clever molding, the ejector pins are all on the sprue and not on the track. And they are small tracks. Glad to have you along!

Do I have to give you the finger twice in one day?

Thank you, Wolf! I'm not a big fan of building cockpits. Though I find it much more rewarding when it has more painted parts or good decals.

Hello friends, Now that my 109 build is waiting on parts, I've started this Kit. It's a fine kit with small flash and lots of parts. Some would say over-engineered. But... there are sacrifices we must make if we want to build certain kits in certain scales that aren't made by somebody like Mr. Tamiya-san. There are several versions of the Panzer II. This one has four large road wheels on torsion bars instead of the usual five small wheels on leaf springs. So, when you look at the pics you'll have to mentally adjust to the smallness of the thing. It comes with a nice instruction booklet: With nice, uncluttered instructions: There are several Panzergrau schemes: And one more three-color scheme: ...representing some of the Wehrmacht's most famous units. Over a period I've build up the wheels and last night I started on the tub. It's a flat-pack tub, but fits together nice and square. The Wheels have plastic caps that you would expect to work like Tamiya's Poly caps. But they don't. My original plan was to attach the wheels uncemented, glue on the indy-link tracks, and then pull off the assembly and paint it. But that won't happen. The plastic caps hold on tooth and nail. And to remove them, they either have to be twisted... or wedged off with a knife blade. No matter... I will do it the old-fashioned way There are no figures in the kit. But I have two options: So, come... watch and listen as I curse my way through another build. I curse mostly when I drop parts... or when they are ejected into space by tweezers. Even at this early stage, I have had to resort to a toothpick with a gob of blutack on it.

Thank you, Peter! Yeah, those ship sets will knock your socks off. I have a detail set for the Hobby Boss SMS Seydlitz.... I paid a staggering 250 for that puppy!

Not ovid enough??

Thanks for that one, too... leftover data stencils! I love it!

Are you surfing the seas of antiquity today?

Nice start. Love to see what some guys can do with 1/72... but I just dislike the scale.

That is some nice, comprehensive masking around the pylons. I like that yellow, too... or is it orange? Does the IDF have a paint chip chart?

Ok... whose WIP is gonna be first to get the 'seal of approval': 💦🍆?

🖕

I think of Tamiya kits as a release from more *ahem*... intensive kits. Don't blame you one bit, Peter! I will be watching!

Looking sweet! If you can foil that tank... it would be epic. Even if you could only do it to the purely cylindrical parts.... It would still look better than any metal paint.

There was a big discussion about this on TOS. Some people were highly troubled... the rest of us weren't bothered. Hey.... I finally got my single finger salute emoji. 🖕 Let's see how long it lasts. 💦🍆.... ummm perhaps should be edited?