PanzerWomble

Wow, you pulled that one out of thebag there ! Looks gorgeous !

Nice one John , found mine took a huge amount of nose weight not to be a tail sitter , clearly you nailed that as well as the weathering .👍

Where the scrap yards are long out of spares, ones you can find have all the lugs broken off and cost £1000's...we can't all afford new cars Martin , some of us still have to run these old clankers ...🤣 Gratuitous glamour shot. ....

Got squirrelled away from the plastic .. Swapping wheels on the GS1000 , off with the old incorrect 1982 ish GSX1100 ones on with original 1979 GS1000 ones. Hardly notice the difference? , don't worry thats my OCD issue .. they had ....er ....one spoke too many 🤣 These wheels are bad These wheels are good Lah de dah

Hmmm .....Is the brake line OOB or a bit of nice scratch building with some line and ferule? Looks great and better than the twisited PE in 1/48 gear ?

Had an interesting chat with someone restoring old 1980's performance Fords. Apparently 3D print is what they all use for old headlight shells and the like .

Catch -22 ?

Progress is romping along , done by Xmas ? Also ..........have you swapped to a new brand of squirrel repellant ? Lil boogars aren't making an appearance so far

I agree , I've not built anything of theirs that I didn't enjoy ; -Wildcat , Corsair , F84 , King Tiger ...that Saint Chamond off top of my head. Parts count is a little higher than Tamiya but not OTT , occasionally some "easy" PE and I never have a problem with fit . What they often don't tell you is what units their decal options represent , but for the price it's a better bet than some of Trumpys offerings IMHO. Even the mouldings/ surface details can be quite delicate , better that Arsfix , but not Eduard level Just picked up their 2023 Devastator , which looks a nice model , masks and all for £34 !

This is the 90mm gun version😀 TBH it was a bit random , it was on offer online at Jadlam cheap so picked it up $20? . Late night browsing their clearance section can be a bit impulsive . The figures cost me more !

Indeed Been sat in the stash since 2023 , whilst I ignored it ....was thinking what to do with it . I picked up those figures from my favourite resin guy in Cornwall shorlyy afterwards

FYI John , I found the canopy main part very weak when I built this , can't remember how -but it split late into the build , luckily they provide spares in the Academy boxing to replace it , if you can live with some inaccuracy .

The start of Part IV of the Xmas build .....it's Xmas ....I'm a cliche ...of course it will be a BotB diorama Wish I could get hold of the person who put in all the ejector pins at Hobbyboss, they are literally 2mm deep in places.

You could drive a tank army through that Good save Martin, like my toupee you can't see the join . Had similar dramas with the Ju88 I did a while back , luckily ICM provide numerous versions of clear sprues so cutting off the old and redoing it all was a pain, but the model didn't get lawn darted .

As Father ted would say

Similar setting here , less force though - I run also tamiya masking paper occasionally , but fit parallel cuts less than 1mm , sometimes 2mm it just drags the material up 😔 Hence my love of Japanese or Brit subjects

Fanks - I use the same film, suspect thats one of the advantages of 1/24 over 1/48 , my Cameo gets upset if you pull the offsets in too much . 😔

👍 I just skimmed both instructions , looked very similar but you're right there are differences .

Tamiya ....from when they were swapping with Italeri , I'm pretty sure it's the same tooling ? It's a shame - as the thing has huge hatches that scream 'nice interior' , otherwise it's kinda a 'brick on tracks '🤣 RFM made a full interior one c/w lift of top panel, but then you're in a whole different world of pain , and personally I don't like they way they do tracks with pins , so thats another $30 for Fruils . On the plus side they've offered post Sept 44 models in the boxing so you can skip the Zimm .

Cracking build so far so....... any advice on doing the numerals ? Spray the yellow then carefully position for the black or vice versa ? It's something I've struggled to get my head around as I generally prefer negative masking but it makes chipping through afterwards not an option. 😔

From my experience , water ok ish , their own thinner used sparingly is better , also some swear by Tammy X20 which is better than water and has less retardants. I've used all three in the learning process . It's doesn't react that well to hotter stuff like MPR self levelling or other things with high IPA content ( it can 'split' like milk does) . Found once I had a good feel for the viscosity, it becomes more straightforward , initially I was put off by me over thinning . You can spray them straight from the bottle according to their blurb, which is ok if you just want heavy coverage , but out of the bottle viscosity varies by pigment density. But this is what I love the best , esp being a big fan of Mike Rinaldis work . In this vid he's put the paint on a bit thick , put it on a bit thinner and it drops off easily. Sorry if I'm being a bit of a proselyte .

Looking great , nice tonal variations .l dont know if you are a fan of Flory washes but used them in the past on NMF and they really pop the dirt and smoke residue effect .