2015 Armor Production Run, Maddog Manufacturing

[Duke Maddog]

Happy New Year everyone, and it is now about two weeks into the New Year. This will be a small update but I now have some decent progress to show, so without further ado; here is how I started the new year.

I resolved to finish at least eight of the unfinished models from 2013 and 2014. At least six are now extremely close to the finish line. With that being said, here is the work I did on the two buses I had hoped to finish last year.

This first bus got the suspension done and then the interior was added to the top. I later snapped the top part of the bus to it. Here it was ready for clearcoat and decals; you an barely see the suspension underneath:

This is where it is now; all decaled up and ready for dullcoat, wheels and weathering:

I also added the suspension to the bottom of the Strassenzepp bus interior:

Afterward, I painted the dash up. I was trying to make it look like wood paneling with chrome trim around the instruments; not that it'll be visible once this bus is closed up:

Last, I added then front fenders to this bus:

I wanted to add the windows so I could finish this bus up, but I some how lost the clear acetate that came with it which contained the window outlines on it. So now this bus has gotten a whole lot more difficult to finish now.

Next I decided to paint the Forlite staff car. It got a full coat of green drab and is almost ready for me to add the windows and close it up:

That's Silly Putty inside masking the interior detail from the airbrush, in case you were wondering...

Finally, I tried to make some progress on my FT-17. I built up the drive and idler wheels first:

They were easy!

Then I had to put together all the small roadwheels. I cut off half of them (three at a time) and carefully cemented them to the other halves that were still on the sprues. You can see how small these are compared to the Exacto Blade:

And these were the larger ones! I had already done the smaller ones; only losing one small one that I didn't even bother to look for. I'll deal with that issue when I come to it later.

After that, I had enough! I moved on to work on my aircraft. You can see the results in the Wesendorf Field Manufacturing Thread.




That's about it for now. I have a few days coming up where I can get more done so hopefully soon I'll be able to post some finished models. Meanwhile, thanks for looking in, comments are welcome.

 

[moon puppy]

Good start to the year Mark.

 

[Tim A.]

That bus is really nice. I love it. Silly Putty makes great airbrush mask. My wife saw it in my workroom awhile back and said OMG! is that Silly Putty then sat down and played with it lol....



Tim

 

[lupanzer]

...the bus looks cool!

Luiz

 

[Duke Maddog]

Thanks guys! I hope to have these finished within the next couple days.

 

[Duke Maddog]

Okay, after about two and a half days of marathon building, I finally managed to get a few things done. I wanted to get even more done but sometimes it felt like I was going two steps forward and one step back. That was still moving forward at least; not as much as I wanted, but I still moved forward.

First off, this will be a short update since most of the progress resulted in some completed models. In fact, I completed three aircraft and three armor. Feel free to check them out in their respective Forums.


Next, my armor....


I had some serious issues here to take care of. On my British Forlite Staff Car, I had some gaps to fill in and so I added some Mr. Surfacer 500 to it. I put it on thick to account for shrinkage:

Next I sanded it smooth and then added a new basecoat to it. Once that dried, I clearcoated it for decals:

Once that was dry, I added the decals and dullcoated this before setting it aside to dry:

Once dry, I added the wheels and did some minor touchups to this. That completed this one.

I also added the wheels to the L-39 bus, and dullcoated and weathered it to call it done.

Finally, I found the glazing for the Strassenzepp bus so I was able to add the windows to it:

Now I could finally close this up! So, I put the top on the bottom and found a huge gap above the fenders that shouldn't be there:

Fortunately, I hadn't glued it in so I pulled it off; cut off the fenders from the chassis, and added some strip styrene to them to raise them higher to meet the bus body:

Lo and behold, it worked! I did have to glue the bottom a little tighter than usual to make them match better, (thus the clamp) but it worked like I wanted it to. There is still a tiny gap there but it is within my tolerance levels:

I have given up making this an "award-winning" model after I couldn't get the paint to behave; I can accept that small amount of gap. It would take far too much effort and damaging work to try and close it up further.

So, now that I got it closed up, I finished up by painting the front end. There is supposed to be a decal that goes above the windshield, but it got messed up and unusable, so I left it off. Now it is complete.

Okay, you've seen the work I did to these, now feel free to check them out in their respective Forums.

Thanks for looking in, comments are welcome.


Okay, you've seen the work I did to these, now feel free to check them out here in this Forum.

Thanks for looking in, comments are welcome.