Friday, November 1, 2013

Fixer Uppers

Just this last week I received a further infusion of stuff for my WW2 and more modern projects.  On old friend, Glenn, was divesting himself of some (mostly) Airfix odds and ends, some of which came my way via Brian.  Truth to tell, it was a bit of a jumble (no less welcome for all that), plenty of kitty litter (I'll explain anon) and other bits-n-pieces.

1.  Part of the kitty litter, a rather nice Leopard I tank.  Keeping the basic camo pattern, I repainted the brown as a lighter, yellower colour, and bordered the colour edges a darker green (I thought).  The ink wash over all rather darkened the whole thing.  To do: weathering, especially traffic dust; tracks.  These are very loose, so I'll probably glue them and try for the drape effect between the return wheels.
 2.  More kitty litter: Panthers, Tigers ... oh, and a StuG.  The guns of the panthers need replacing so are getting cotton buds fitted over a toothpick inserted in a hole drilled into the front mantlet.  That should keep them firmly in place.  The Stug will be transformed into a StuH 42, with a 10.5cm haubitze.  These tanks needed road wheels refitted as well (thanks Brian or Glenn for ensuring all the 'bits' were there!).   
 3. PxKpfw IV:  I already had one short of road wheels (the green one) so I reckon one of these will have to be cannibalised.  I suspect it will be the green guy that will suffer what happens to a white member of the crow family: dismembership.
 4.  Artillery.  I thought I got only bits of the 5.5-inch, but in fact it was all there ... in bits.  I haven't glued the gun on yet, but the rest is there.  I'm still toying with replacing the gun barrel with that of the short Soviet 152mm gun with the shark-gill muzzle brake... The thing would need extra wheels adjacent to the existing ones, though...  The other is  ROCO gun, by the look, but have no idea what it is a model of.  A German 15.0 cm piece maybe?  At any rate, it will probably fetch up in my 'modern' Imagi-Nation of Tchagai.  The extra gun barrel will form the basis of a scatchbuild of a similar weapon.
 5. Anti-air and Anti-tank:  A rather nice 8.8cm FlaK 18 (the shield was included but I forgot to include it in the picture.  The loose 'leg' will have to be glued into place owing to a missing 'bit', although, as I have another one of these also with a missing leg, some cannibalizing might be in order.  The other two little guns are from an Eidai kit.  They seem to me very small for 50mm Anti-tank, but I'm wondering if they might be acceptable as 28mm taper-bore weapons.  Any advice on this?  At least one I acquired years ago of these got a change of shield and fetched up in my Russian Army as 45mm Anti-tank...
 6. Trucks - transports or technicals?
I couldn't resist seeing what one of these handy looking lorries would look like mounting an anti-aircraft gun. The temptation is strong, but I have a feeling that we might instead be looking at a mobile rocket battery with these two  vehicles.  What sort of rockets?  Good question...
 It might turn out to be a small rocket company with a platoon of SAM and a platoon of Saggers, or something.  The white truck need a windscreen frame repair...
 7. Light transport.  Little work required here, just some wheels re-attached, a schwimmwagen outboard drive glued on and the kubelwagen is wanting a new windscreen.   The lead motorcycle turns out not to be German, so will fetch up as a badly needed SMG m/c platoon in my Red Army.




8.  A very heavily munted Matador truck.  The cab and tray have been reglued back on, and a broken front axle repaired.  It will probably have to be reinforced somehow.  One of the rear leaf-suspension assemblies has gone the way of journeyers to the New World (i.e. 'west'), so the remaining one will probably be removed, and the both replaced with a cruder but sturdier wooden arrangement with a wire axle driven through it and the wheels put on.  Prime mover for the 5.5-inch, perhaps?  Very likely.  The Tchagai army, post WW2, will no doubt have a acquired a battery of those fellows...


9.  A M16(?) half-track in pretty good condition, give or take the wobbly off-side front wheel.  The left front wheel did have to be re-glued, as normal.  The thing with these sorts of vehicles is the fragility of the front axles in particular.  Certain Japanese kit manufacturers solved that problem with wire axles, which had for wargamers the essential virtue of robustness.

10.  My very first Churchill, excepting the Matchbox bridge-laying chappy I got second hand a zillion years back.  Fortunately all 7 detached road wheels came with it.  The trick will be to get them back on...
 11.  Non-historical Armoured car.  Airfix aficionados will recognize this vehicle.  Nearly 40 years ago, not knowing better, I bought 3 of these new.  Since then I have acquired at least as many more.  What to do with them?  Actually, they can be rebuilt (if you're not too finicky) as SdKfz 231 or 233 types, with 20mm turrets or 75L24 guns mounted in an open fighting compartment.  The guns and their shields can be built (scratch-building trails and wheels) as PaK40 anti-tank guns, or as 7.5 cm field artillery.  I made a couple of the latter years ago, then changed my mind and remade them into PaK38s - not a good decision as it happened.  They are now Pak40s again, with cotton-bud gun-barrels.

 Such a pity, though.  The vehicle as designed has such a cute menace about it...





12.  Panther, panther... a bit of work needed to re-attach road wheels and redo the guns.  The guns will be cut to length, and muzzle brakes attached.  The muzzle-brake characteristic of the Panther I find difficult to scratch-build well.  It will be my usual method: carved from the ink reservoir (emptied) of a ball-point pen.  You shove one end into a pencil sharpener and give it a few twists.  Then just in from the 'sharpened bit' you carve a couple of square slots diametrically opposite each other.  A couple of mm beyond these 'slots', cut square through the barrel.  Taking the slots as being on either 'side', trim a sliver from that circular end top and bottom.  There's your muzzle brake.  It won't win modelling prizes, but it will look the part.
 12.  Tiger, tiger... These were fine, but for the horrible tracks.  A few road wheels needed sorting, but they were little problem.  The near vehicle's track is much shorter than required simply because the thing bust when I tried my usual trick of stapling the ends together (with a bloody munted stapler, be it noted; my own good one has  disappeared, done a bunk, vanished into the sunset {i.e. gone west}).  I think this bloke will have to be mounted on a base, and the gap disguised by landscaping (a strategically placed clump of grass, foliage or rock, maybe).   Each of these tanks will also receive a turret bin.  Tony...?!
 13.  StuG III or StuH 42?  I'll have to fetch a missing road wheel from somewhere, otherwise this Airfix StuG III vehicle was reasonably intact.  Looks as though a return wheel has gone where the young man was told to go (yep: west) as well.    The gun was, as usual, broken off.  Again, 'I outs wi' me hand drill, knocks a hole in the gun mantlet, eh, and shoved in a bit of toof pick.'  A short, carefully calculated (20mm) length of cotton bud forms the barrel of a 10.5 howitzer.  Again, my pen reservoir muzzle brake will complete the model of a StuH 42.
Plenty to go on with, then!  It took an evening or two to get these vehicles in their present condition. Another evening or two should see the repairs completed (I hope) and then we can start with the repainting.

21 comments:

  1. Ion

    Wrong scale I know, I have three Roco Minitanks Tiger 1s free to a good home (part of my pre EQ demolition clear out).

    If you want them , or know of anyone who might, would love to hear. Seems a shame to just 'throw them out'.

    Robin

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    1. Thanks Robin. If you you get no takers, I'll accept them. Failing I find a use for them I daresay I might be able to find someone who's interesting in giving them a home. I'll enquire...
      Cheers,
      Ion

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    2. I 'advertised' them several months ago, so I guess if I was going to find a 'take' I'd have done so by now. 1/86th scale isn't that common these days, so it's a 'niche' thing, and as I said i don't want $$ for them.. it'd just be good to see them go to a good home.

      Email me if you want them. I can drop them off at Woolston some time.

      R

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  2. By the by: if anyone is curious about the formatting of this post, I accidentally posted it originally to Emperor and Elector. Sheer absence of mind. Not the appropriate forum for this posting I thought. So I simply copied the whole thing across to this blog spot, and deleted the (two! I made the same stapid mistuke twice!!) postings from E and E. For all the blistering blue language with I gave vent, I was pleased to find the error so easily rectified.

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  3. Cripes Ion, you will have your hands full there!

    I probably can get you some Pz IV roadwheels to stop the scrap monster if you would like.

    I really like the plastic trucks as they have a nice Bedford RL look about them. As for the rockets I could source some 2.75 " types off huey gunships or the US Calliope long tube types (Minus the frame) if you are interested.

    I think the White halftrack is the International Harvester M5 type from Airfix with the now rare canopy top. Very good to have that.

    Looking forward to progression posts.

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    1. >>I think the White halftrack is the International Harvester M5 type from Airfix with the now rare canopy top. Very good to have that.

      Hmm, I acquired some new(ish) Airfix halftracks some time back, many years after the last time I had any. I thought to myself, didn't these used to come with a canopy? I thougt I was imagining it :)

      Wonder why it's not in the recent releases?

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    2. I believe rumour has it that the mould was broken for the canopy during one of the many moves that Airfix had when the company was letting them out for licenced production.

      Other lost moulds include the Series 2 British Commandos, the desert outpost WW2, and the base of the forward command post.

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    3. I didn't know about the canopy - I was thinking of using it on that vehicle, and it would become a staff radio vehicle or something. I did think the Brit M5 was the same as the U.S. M3, just with different armour. At any rate, I guess attaching the canopy will give the vehicle a certain antique eclat.

      I rather think I would be very interested in getting some more road wheels (and return wheels if you have any spare), and those rockets you mention sound as though they'd save me some trouble as well. Thanks. My email address is ionadowman@yahoo.com - we can discuss further?
      Cheers,
      Ion

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  4. Enjoyable trip through your new acquisitions.I look forward to seeing what you do with them all.
    Cheers
    Alan

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    1. Well, the guns are nearly done... My Panther collection is now 16, and my Tigers 6 Airfix and two or three others. To think, about 10 years ago I gave away the Tigers I had to a friend...

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  5. Ion, regarding the Eidai 50mm PAK 38s I think you are better off using them as 50mm guns rather than making 28mm squeezebores out of them. While Eidai stuff can be quite "flexible" in their interpretation of scale, the PAK 38 is quite a small gun and I think that the Eidai model is quite suitable to represent it. Of course there are much better models available in metal and PSC do some very nice ones in 1/72 scale. That being said, I am sure that whatever you chose to do will turn out well and look good!

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    1. H'mmm.... I was hoping to 'get away' with using them as 28mm squeezebores as is. I'll look those things up. It so happens I have a couple of metal PaK38s and the size difference and design is huge. Years ago I made a couple of those Airfix SdKfz 234/4 guns into PaK38s (as I thought) cutting off the gun barrel from the gun assembly, shortening the barrel and reattaching it. The trail and wheels I scratchbuilt. I was quite pleased with them, actually, until I discovered that they looked almost, but not quite, entirely unlike a PaK38! At any rate, even reduced in size, they were much larger than these wee guns.

      I guess I'll have to think about them some more. I don't want to waste them...
      Cheers,
      Ion

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    2. Oh, btw, I have found the missing leaf spring assembly for the Matador - let me know if you still want it.

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    3. Yes please. I think I might have the rear axle assembly, and certainly have the wheels. I can always reinforce those suspension assemblies... Also BTW I recall I have several of those Airfix Squeezebore guns in the soft plastic that came with the first generation Afrika Korps figures. Having a bunch a small wheels. I'm thinking of attaching them (somehow), and using those. They would certainly look more like the real deal.

      I did some measuring and discovered that the oberall length of the Eidai ATGs is not overwhelmng short of the proper scale, but unfortunately several of the other dimensions are, by about a third. The height is pretty much spot on, though.

      Bur here's a thing: I have discovered that the Germans produced, in limited numbers, a 42mm PaK 41 - another squeeze-bore type. Most of the images I found for it were a similar to - but not he same as - the PaK35/36 37mm gun, using the same wheels. But another image showed something very similar to the subject of this discussion - and with the same wheels! I begin to think I might have solved the problem.

      So, PaK 41 I think they will become. Strictly speaking, Paras should get them. Although few than 200 were ever made, and production stopped about mid-war, I gather there were still at least 40 still in service come November 1944.

      There you have it: two 'platoons' of PaK 41 AT guns.

      Now I'll need to get me some paras... Uh'mmm... I used to have lots... :-(

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  6. That is an impressive haul, very nice.

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    1. Indeed! Thanks to Glenn and Brian, a substantial addition to my German Army inventory, in particular. The Urdu-phone State of Tchagai is beginning to develop a rather eclectic inventory as well... :-)
      Cheers,
      Ion

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  7. Massive! Always good to see things from the bone yard being restored

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    1. I just have a soft spot for damaged and abandoned, unwanted and unloved, I guess... :-)

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  8. some interesting items there. hopefully they'll all prove useful even if it is as parts

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  9. You're mystery gun is a pak40 made by Nitto Kogaku in the 1980s and like all their stuff undersized by modern 1/76 and closer I think to H0. I have one too and old Crown brand stug 3 and some undersized nitto 234/2 which are dwarfed by my matchbox Puma only usable things are the 4 half tracks which by themselves look ok, these were a range put out of snap together vehicles undersized and v basic detail seperate to their 1/76 kit range which are great , I like their kits and of course the Fujimi remakes.ps like your airfix squeeze guns.

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  10. I believe those little guns also came in packages under the Eidai banner (which might have had some affiliiation with Nitto - or the design was pirated), along with kubelwagens, kettenkrads and the like. Those at least were more or less 'to scale.' I think I'll simply replace the shields and use them as tapered bore guns as proposed. The existing shields might have other uses.

    Thanks for your comment, Lewis,
    Cheers,
    Ion

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