Hobby Boss KV1

For years I turned my nose up at 1/48 scale armor. Quarter scale was strictly an aircraft scale and I was a 1/35 scale purist. At least I was until I went to Iraq. There was no room to really do much building where I was and no time to spend on any lengthy projects. There were lots of small scale kits that had been donated and sent to Morale Welfare and Recreation (MWR) facilities over there so I gave them a shot. I got absolutely hooked. They are much simpler and it's possible to start and finish a project in an afternoon if don't not get too fancy with it. Even though they are simpler, the level of detail is excellent on many of the kits.
This is the Hobby Boss KV1 kit. Hobby Boss has been producing a great line of 1/48 scale armor kits for quite a while. The detail is almost as good as the 1/35 scale kits and they don’t have the pesky die cast hulls like the Tamiya kits.
I built this kit pretty much straight out of the box. The only exceptions were an MV lens in the headlight and K&S wire mesh on the engine intake grilles.
The tank commander figure was pirated from the Tamiya Soviet figure set.
This is the first winter camouflage scheme I’ve tried in a long time. I read up on the hairspray technique and about a dozen other methods and in the end opted for a little more straight forward method. First I sprayed the entire vehicle with a Soviet green (a mixture of Tamiya IJA Green and Flat Green). Then I masked and oversprayed flat white, leaving a few spotty areas and thin areas.
I chipped both the green and white winter camouflage with a soft #9B pencil which worked very well. I followed the chipping with a very thin wash of black and burnt umber artist’s oils and turpentine. This also served to soften the pencil paint chips a little. If I had chips overdone in any area it was easy to scrub them out with the wash. I crated the mud with powdered pastel pigments and mineral turpentine and placed it around the running gear and tracks. The pastels are regular stick pastels that I powered on sandpaper and collected in a clear film canister. Two 98 cent sticks give me more pigment than I will need for many projects. The nice thing about the low cost is that I can fill several containers with many different shades and custom mix the colors and tones that I need. To apply the “pigments” (it’s really just powdered pastel chalk remember) I set the model on its side or end and carefully dribbled and spread the dry chalk where it needed to be. Then, I carefully added turpentine by loading a brush with the solvent and lightly touching it to the powder. Capillary action took the liquid through the powder mix and set it in place. If I needed to adjust the placement I could push and nudge the “mud” how it needed to go with the brush.
All of the washes gave the kit a little bit of a sheen so the whole shebang got a heavy coat of Testors Dullcote. This also helps keep the pastel mud in place as well. The treads were given a light go over with the same #9B pencil I used for the chipping as well as a silver artist’s pencil to simulate wear.

Tamiya N1K2 George

I do actually build aircraft from time to time. This is the Tamiya N1K2 George in 1/72 scale. I added the Eduard photoetch set which added a lot I thought. The cockpit in particular was very nice. The kit comes with a single piece canopy. It would have been a sin to cover up all that beautiful Czechoslovakian metal so I cut the canopy hood out and set the front and back pieces and placed the center section of Falcon vacuform canopy in the open position. The two canopies didn’t fit very well, but it accomplished what I was going for which was to show off the instrument panel and all the other details.
The kit went together nicely and was very straight forward. I painted it with Tamiya IJN Green and post shaded with heavily thinned base color heavily tinted with Desert Yellow.
I chipped the paint around the traffic areas on the wing, leading edges and around access panels with a silver artist’s pencil.
I used black oil mixed with burnt umber thinned with turpentine took care of recessed and panel lines. After giving it a few days to dry thoroughly I used pastel pigments on the highlights.
The decals were set with liberal amounts of Mirco Set and Micro Sol followed up with a coat of Testors Dullcote.

Lulubelle - M3 Medium Tank Study

Ok, I'm elbow deep in the Academy M3 Lee kit right now. I really thought it would be a much quicker project than it's turned out to be... but that will be another post. Like I've mentioned in past posts, I usually spend at least as much time and money in research on a project as I do on the kit itself. Books, magazines, and in this case videos. Some of you are familiar no doubt with the classic 1943 film Sahara. It starred Humphrey Bogart, Lloyd Bridges and a host of other lesser known actors but the biggest star was the M3 Lee tank (named Lulubelle)that carried the actors around the desert. Humphrey Bogart's character (Master Sergeant Joe Gunn - cool name) loved the tank and I fell in love with it too. My wife gave me a copy of the movie on DVD for Christmas a few years back and besides it being a drop dead cool movie it's a beautiful study of a wartime M3. I captured a few screen shots of the tank so let me introduce Lulubelle...

Here are a few overall views of the vehicle;

Like I said, Joe loved that tank....

Nice detail shot of the inside of the side doors.

Lulubelle's derriere. Note the square air cleaners and the flared exhausts. There are also angled end pieces shielding the air cleaners.

Another shot of the side door interior. There's also a good view of the rear view port and one of the 75mm ammo containers with .45 cal ammo drums for the Thompson stowed on top.

A closer shot of the rear view port and ammo stowage. That's the turret basket behind Bogey.
Some views of the cramped fighting compartment from the right side door. That's the breech of the 75mm main gun on the right and the turret basket on the left.

The radio man's position. Note the two bow mounted M1919 light machine guns. At least one of these were usually removed in M3s that deployed to North Africa.

The driver's position.

A very nice shot of the interior of the drivers view port.

A few shots of the early vertical volute spring suspension and the T 51 rubber block tracks.

Note how well used and torn up the rubber block tracks are.

This shot shows the contours of the turret and commander's cupola, a considerable problem with the Academy kit. Also note how the direct vision block covers are open.

A few nice closeups of the turret showing the texture of the cast turret and cupola.

Japanese Type 97 Light Tank

I love to do Japanese projects and this kit came with a full interior so it was the best of both worlds. This is the Fine Molds Type 97 Te Ke light tank. It's a reissue of a somewhat older kit which they upgraded with a simple interior and individual link tracks.

The interior was the big draw for me on this kit, especially on such a small vehicle. It was basically a single main piece that came on a separate sprue along with a few other simple parts that made up the interior, steering mechanism and a single simple piece for the engine. The interior is rather spartan and devoid of intricate detail but it allows the modeler to either represent a simple but effective "through the hatch" interior out of the box or can be a wonderful springboard for superdetailing.

The overall fit was excellent on the kit and the molding detail was very good as we have come to expect from Fine Molds. There were some aggravating ejector pin marks on the drivers hatch and the turret hatch that took a lot of work to get rid of. There was a lot of detail that needed to be sanded away and recreated.

I added the turret gear teeth for the traversing mechanism to the turret ring. I used notched Evergreen sheet and simply bent a strip around the opening in the hull.

The kit also came with a nice photo-etch fret and markings for quite a few different vehicles. I chose the 2nd Recon Regiment that served in Burma. The kanji on the turret reads "Senpu" or whirlwind. According to Taki it is a personal marking and not a unit insignia.

I built the kit straight from the box with the exception of an MV lens on the headlight and a few wires in the fighting compartment and engine.

I used Tamiya acrylics thinned with isopropyl alcohol. I post shaded with heavily thinned acrylics and followed up with a wash of black artist oils mixed with raw umber. Once that was thoroughly dry I followed up with several applications of pastels.

Fine Molds deserves a lot of credit for this kit. The interior was a fantastic addition. Let's hope that they will follow up on this offering with more interiors for their line of IJA armor!

A Tale of Two Stuarts

Captured enemy equipment is one of my weaknesses. Ask anyone I served with in Iraq. I love using captured gear and rarely pass up an opportunity to add to my collection. Maybe it’s one of those many things I should be lying on a couch telling a psychologist about but anyway, I get a kick out of it. When I ran across these photos of early M3 Stuarts I just had to model them. One of the things I love most about modeling is the research that I can pour into a project. I usually spend at least as much money on books and other publications as I do on the kit itself to research the subject and get it as right as I can. The captured Japanese Stuart is one of the several that were captured by Japanese forces after the fall of the Philippine Islands in 1942. These tanks saw action against the British in Southeast Asia and again against their former owners when we retook the islands in 1944/45. I don’t have any detailed information on the photograph of the German Stuart other than that it was formerly a British Lend Lease vehicle. I’ve searched in several books for photo credits and have so far come up empty. If anyone has the where’s and when’s of the German photograph I’d love to hear from you!

The Japanese Stuart is the first kit I really dove into after getting back into the hobby. The Academy M3 Stuart kits are all really quite nice, especially when compared to the aged Tamiya kits. While they are not without flaws, there isn't much that can't be fixed or at least covered up. The nicest thing about them though, is that they are a nice base to start from and satisfy all those advanced modeler syndrome (AMS) yearnings.

The German M3 “Honey” was the second captured Stuart I tackled. I built this a couple of years after the Japanese one and had perfected a few new techniques and uncovered some different photoetch sets. One flaw with this kit I uncovered that I didn’t notice when I did the Japanese tank was the sand shields. The way they attach to the fenders and sponson just isn’t accurate. It took some serious reworking and scratchbuilding (thank you Evergreen Plastic!) to get them close to correct. They still aren’t quite right but are now somewhat better.

On both projects I started with the M3 "Honey" kit and added a Tiger Models Designs interior along with some Eduard and Verlinden photo etch. While the Academy kit comes with a full interior for the turret and fighting compartment it is pretty basic and is actually an interior for the M3A1 which is configured quite a bit differently than that founds on the early M3s.

I have to give props to Tiger Models for the resin interior (great job Joe and Karl!). I've used a lot of resin products from different companies over the years since this one and TMD is head and shoulders above the rest. Quite simply the best out there as far as quality and accuracy.

With the Japanese Stuart I preshaded with black then gave it a base coat of Olive Drab lightened to scale with Desert Yellow. I masked and added the Japanese camouflage then post shaded with heavily diluted base and camouflage colors. I used Tamiya acrylics thinned with alcohol. I weathered with oil and enamel washes and finished with pastels. The turret insignia is a decal from the kit with lots of MicroSet and Testors Dullcote. The bustle rack is scratch built with Evergreen stock and wire mesh. I also replaced the engine intake cover with wire screen from K&S.

I used the Tiger Models resin interior set for the German Stuart as well. Just like before, it was a pleasure to use. The castings are crisp and the attention to detail is fantastic. This set came with a sheet of lead and some solder wire as well that came in handy for various bits inside the fighting compartment. The instrument dials are from a 1/32 aircraft decal sheet. The gear teeth in the turret ring are from notched Evergreen sheet, the kind model railroaders normally use for HO scale siding on buildings. Stuarts are a challenge since the teeth below the turret ring point downward. To make the teeth you simply cut a thin strip of the plastic sheet and bend it to form the ring. On the Stuarts you have to bend the thin strip longitudinally though which requires a little more finesse. (Many thanks to Master Builder Karl Van Sweden for that little tip!)

The period photo showed of the German vehicle the vehicle with the original British desert camouflage on the lower hull and what appears to be German Panzer gray on the upper hull and turret. For the exterior I used Tamiya XF-63 as a base and just mixed it until had the right feel. (I refuse to get into a debate on what constitutes “correct” Panzer gray – Pat Stansell did a great job of that in issue 46 of MMiR. Props to him for that.) I post shaded with my Panzer gray mix lightened with Tamiya Buff and a little white. I did the lower hull with a mixture of Tamiya Buff and Desert Yellow, mostly buff though.

I had a real problem finding decals that worked on the German Stuart. I ended up using Balkenkruz from a 1/72 scale FW190 kit for the crosses on the sponson sides. Wilt a slight bit of trimming they fit well. The cross on the rear engine access hanch was from a 1/48 scale Fokker DVII decal sheet. Both the sponson and rear crosses were soaked with Micro Set and nestled right down to the finish. A coat of Testors Dullcote made them look painted on. The cross on the front hatches was hand painted.

I weathered the German Stuart with opposing washes of thinned buff on the upper hull and thinned black artist oils on the lower hull. Once that dried thoroughly I treated it heavily with pastels. One thing I learned working on military vehicles in the desert is that dust is omnipresent. The desert dust can cover a vehicle (not to mention the human body) in huge amounts but it sets on a vehicle a certain way (hard to describe, but distinct nonetheless). So, you can’t just take a powder puff and cover your model in pastel dust. Short of taking an armored vehicle out into the desert yourself, the best thing is to study photographs, study photographs, study photographs and then when you’re done, study photographs some more.

The tracks on both vehicles are the beautiful individual link tracks that come with the kit and are the best on the market as far as I'm concerned. Much better than the AFV Club tracks which have those pesky sink marks that need to be scrubbed off with a sanding stick. I wish Academy would market them by themselves.

Both this and the Japanese Stuart were terrific projects. Unfortunately I’m not aware of any other Axis countries using captured Stuarts. I’m just hoping someone will uncover long lost photographs of one in Italian markings! Or maybe one of these days I’ll actually do a Stuart in US markings just to be different.