1/48 Tamiya Tiger I Early Production

Having decided to build 1/48 scale armor kits for the time being, this excellent kit was my first in line. Not only am I a bit tired of building aircraft kits, I'm also running out of space on my bookshelf which I also use for displaying my models. I suppose I'll have to stick to 1/48th's for now till I can rearrange my shelf and try to get some more space for future and/or larger models.

Tamiya is known for it's high quality products and this kit is no exception. Despite being smaller than its 1/35 scale counterpart, the parts are very well detailed, there was absolutely no flash at all and no visible pin marks to cover up. With this level of detail, I think 1/48 kits are excellent for building dioramas or vignettes for those who are confined to smaller display spaces.

Here's the building process :

Wheels attached to the famous die-cast chassis. The kit was actually heavier than I had anticipated even after reading all the reviews.

Link and length tracks attached. The tracks aren't too difficult to put together as one of the sprues has a frame which can be used as a guide when building the tracks to produce a sagging effect.

On most of the photos or videos I've seen on the internet, the top part of the track just behind the sprocket wheel has a sharp bend which looks rather awkward. This is most likely due to the shape of the frame of the sprue used as a guide for building the tracks. To give it a more natural looking sag, I switched places for a couple of links.

Tracks glued then held into position with a toothpick and some tissue. 

Build completed. Only the main gun barrel needed some putty work to conceal the seams.

Model primed and ready for paintwork.

There are 4 types of tanks that you can build with this kit but since I didn't have the appropriate paint colors for other types, I decided to go with Tank no.332, sPzAbt 503, Russia, Summer of 1943, which was painted in german gray.

I initially painted the model with Mr.Color 40 (german gray) which in my opinion is a bit too dark compared to paints from other manufacturers and painted another very light coat of dark seagray.

It was only after painting the model that I realized that this particular tank, no.332, didn't have extra track links attached to the sides of the turret. Oh well, too late..

Lastly, photos of the finished model, painted and weathered. All in all, it was a fun kit to build as it wasn't too difficult and it took me only about 3 days to complete. Moreover, I could still apply weathering techniques just like its larger 1/35 scale models. I am definitely building more of these including figures to perhaps build a diorama sometime soon.

1/72 Academy Fockewulf FW190a 6/8

I had this kit on my shelf for months half built and thought I'd finish it since I had a bit of spare time between projects at work.

This kit by Academy was released in 1992 and I presume it's for an entry level modeller as it was an easy kit to build with simple and minimal parts. I think it took me only a couple hours to build (minus paint drying time) and being as simple as it is and at the same time being very cheap (US $5), I figured I would do some practice at some free-hand camouflage airbrushing which I had never tried before.

The whole model except the topside of the wings was painted with Mr.Color 117 (RLM 76 light blue). The topside of the wings and elevators were painted in Mr.Color 331 (dark seagray). I'm sure dark seagray wasn't painted on the real planes but as said before, it's a practice model. :)

Top part of the fuselage painted with dark seagray and camo pattern painted with Mr.Color 18 (RLM 70 black green).

Left and right sides of the fuselage camouflag patterns airbrushed with black green color. I had to repaint a couple of times until I reached a result that was somewhat satisfactory. I am currently using a Taiwanese made 0.3mm Unico AB725 which I bought second-hand from an LHS owner who manufactures and sells his own air compressors. It's a pretty reliable novice level airbrush but as such, lacks the ability to airbrush finer details and I think it's about time I invest in a much better quality 0.2mm airbrush, probably a Mr.Hobby Procon Boy.

Here are photos of the finished model :

1/35 Trumpeter U.S. Army in Iraq (2005) /w Vignette

When I first bought this kit sometime in February, I was  initially thinking of building a diorama to go along with either my M1 Abrams or M2 Bradley AFV. After taking one look at the contents, I gave up that thought right away.

Apart from about two kits I built when I was a kid, I have almost no experience in building infantry kits and this kit looked much harder to build than the other two I did as all the limbs, hands, feet and heads were in separate parts and the upper torso with body armor is made of silicon/rubber. I had no idea at first how or even if I could build this kit and had it stashed away.

Wanting to try something different, I finally took it out and gave it a go and here's the building process :

I used a pin vise to drill 0.5mm holes into all the limbs and after using CA glue to fix 0.5mm steel rods into the parts, I fitted them together. Thinner rods would be great but that's all I had at the moment. I'm not sure if this is the normal procedure for building figures but it seemed the only logical thing to do. Without the rods, I'm sure the limbs would just break off with easily with little pressure. 

Some of the figures are almost complete.

The upper and lower torsos are hollow inside and I had to fill them up with putty.

Drilled holes in the upper as well as lower torsos to insert rods.

Faces painted. These guys look rather old... and they're supposed to be in their early twenties. hmm...

Body armor painted in Woodland Camo and BDUs painted in 3 Color Desert Camo. One of hardest things about building these figures was positioning the arms and hands so that they could hold their weapons in a natural way. 

I decided to build a small vignette(diorama) for the figures to perhaps display in my office. I used a display base I had bought months ago for another project but as the top part is 6cm x 6cm in dimension, it had enough space for only two or three figures.

I built the uneven surface with putty including the rock and sprinkled some garden soil after applying white glue.

The base has been primed and the rock painted. I painted the rock with Mr.Color 331 (dark sea gray) and dry brushed it with white enamel paint. The dried grass fixed into place with CA glue are actually fibers cut from a huge paint brush I have for cleaning pieces of plastic off my work space. 

The vignette base has been painted with an assortment of brownish, reddish colors and later weathered.

Here are photos of the finished figures and vignette. I ended up using only two figures which were the grenadier and SAW gunner. I have to apologize for the quality of the photos. All photos of my works are taken with my iPhone 5 and although the overall quality of the photos are normally pretty good, it is clear that the resolution drops significantly when zoomed in. Afterall, it's only a cellphone... ;)