another long absence from the Blog...

Hello everyone, I've been away from the blog for a long time, but have not been idle.  Since the last post I have still been working on armor, armor and more armor, and I'm still at it.  So you can see, this is what I've accomplished throughout the fall...I'll come back in time and bring you closeups of the different models I've built, some I've already posted about.

Armourfast Su-85s

My armored insanity had continued all through the fall, after the Armourfast Cromwell, I went to work on a pair of 1/72 Armourfast Su-85s. I won't bore you with lots and lots and lots of build pictures, assembly, painting, more painting, instead I'll fast forward you to the finished product.

Cromwell

So I've shown you my Jagdpanther, which was the first 1/72 model I had built and painted in years, soon followed by a pair of Fireflies with inaccurate skirts. What came next?

Well, I was undecided on whether to build the one Cromwell I got, and a pair of Su-85's. A lot of my facebooks are British, so the Cromwell won out by a landslide. I had thought I would build it as one for the Irish Guards in 1944, but as I soon found out, the Irish Guards did not field Cromwells, only Sherman V's and Fireflies. What to do? I promised!  Well, I found out that the Reconnaissance regiment of the 7th Armoured Division was the Queen's 8th Royal Irish Regiment, and they fielded Cromwells. But the markings? It wasn't as easy to find. Google searches gave me plenty of pictures of the badges worn on hats, sweaters, polos and neckties and pins, but not the tanks. Finally after persistent searching, I found what I needed, the marking for the 7th Armoured, a red Jerboa mouse on a white field, and a simple Green over blue square patch with the number 45 in it.

Back to work!

For this one, I wanted to do something different. I wanted the recessed details accentuated, and that way the raised details would pop out more. So I've tried pinwashing for the first time, then more chipping, and then weathering.

Decals... Cromwells had tank numbers on the turrets, but not three digit numbers like the Germans, oh no! A T followed by a six digit number. So not having such decals, I tried hand painting that, which failed, the numbers were a little bigger and spaced out further than the numbers on the other side of the turret, unacceptable. So I painted these over and ordered decals, and white stars in circles.

Those are on the way, so it is here that I must leave you, the reader, as I wait for decals.  In the meantime, I've started assembling two Su-85's and researched some suitable slogans to paint on the hulls once the time comes for that.

Until next time...

OH!! The unit badges aren't decals, I did manage to paint that part in by hand.

My armored insanity

The Jagdpanther did not turn out badly, and I was happy with it, so I decided to go on.

The next project was a pair of Armourfast Sherman Fireflies. Now, I already had four Fireflies in the stash, which I had bought perhaps twelve or thirteen years ago, after playing Call Of Duty 3, which included the Falaise Gap battles... Hill 262 and The Mace. I'll never forget those!  So I had decided I would build and paint Sherman Fireflies, perhaps for a diorama, Hunting The Black Baron.

Life got in the way, so I never built them.

Then I got this new pair of Shermans, and went to work. It took me several days, a fair amount of research into unit markings, these absolutely HAD to belong to the First Polish Armoured Division in August 1944.

To the best of my knowledge, there never was a tank in either the First or Second Polish Armoured named "Pigus" with a dot over the s. And so I'll bore you with a story about it.

My folks are Polish. I'm first generation American. I work from home sometimes, and while working, I listen to the local Polish language radio station in Chicago, and there is a commercial for a family law firm, where a dog is making whimpering noises, and the announcer says, in Polish, do you hear how Pigus is whimpering? He is family too! Now be ashamed of what you did to him! And went on how the attorneys of this firm can help protect you and your family from being taken advantage of. By the way, Pigus is pronounced Pee-goosh. 

Hence the name on the model.  So the Fireflies were done, what came next?  That's in the next post.

A change... for now.

Hello again, it's been a long time, but I have not been idle.

After spending some time painting toy army men, which I will get back to, maybe in my next post, I've started building 1/72 armor. How that started was an email asking me if I might be interested in some 1/72 tank model kits, of course I would be! So I swapped out some old Airfix 1/600 ship model kits... I already have lots of 1/700 Japanese warship model kits which I might get to at some point, maybe, possibly. In return for the ship models, I got a pair of Sherman Fireflies, a Cromwell, a Panzer Mark III J, a Jagdpanther, two Su-85's and an Airfix Panzer Mark IV, and some other goodies.

They soon arrived and I thought, I should at least build one. So I decided on the Jagdpanther, mostly because the later war German camouflage looks interesting and because in the past, that was a lot of what I did.

Well, the bulk of the kits were Armourfast models, which don't come with decals, so I had to order decals, and more decals, and more decals.

It took almost a week, but the Jagdpanther came together.

This was the first piece of 1/72 armor I had built and painted in years, but fortunately for me, I had a lot of help from all the youtube videos out there on how to build and weather them... and some Mig, Testors and Vallejo product.

I hope you all like it.

I like short posts, so I'll stop here and go on with the next post

Ancient Gallic Panzer Brigade

Well, they're finally done!  The other night I made one big push and got all three chariots finished, got the yokes mounted, did some final touching up, and stained them with the Army Painter strong tone.  Then left them overnight to dry, but while they were still wet, I managed to get a few pictures in, so here they are at long last!

This is the Gallic chieftain on his chariot, wearing chainmail, the chariot trimmed with red to make it stand out

and the chief's posse

another chariot, three in all

the sculpting wasn't the best, but they painted up well enough

The chief with his ornate shield, there are actually three chiefs in my army

The driver's face showed up darker than it should be though

on your marks...!

they see us rollin', they hatin', patrollin', they tryin' to catch us ridin' dirty!

So last night I've gone right to work on the final two elements of my Gallic army, the cavalry.  The army list calls for two stands of 3 cavalry. I have some Italeri figures, but too many of them wore trumpets on their backs, and since I had gone with HaT figures for the chariots and crew, and for the Gallic horse in my Carthaginian army, I decided to go with HaT figures again for these stands.  Managed to get the little bit of flash removed along with mold lines, and started blocking in the faces and hands, and the clothes... more plaids, groan...! 

Eye Candy

So, I have three more or less completed DBA armies, the Republican Romans are definitely complete, so are the Carthaginians... though the bases need a proper flocking, and the Macedonians, though the army would only be suitable for battles with the Persians, Greek city states and northern tribesmen, I do not have any friendly Persians in the army or elephants, so not India I guess.

To entertain you all, I've set up an exhibition of sorts, so you can see the Romans, Macedonians and Gauls engaged in combat.  Hope you like them.

I have also added some of my Airfix Imperial Romans being ambushed by Gauls.

I should have warned you, lots of pics here.

Until next time...