Maddog Armor Manufacturing 2013 Production Line

[Duke Maddog]

Okay, I've finally worked on enough armor to justify starting an Armored manufacturing Thread here. This is my latest progress on the armor I have in progress.

This is my Morser Karl on railcars all camouflaged up. Now all I have to do is paint some of the details and then add the decals and weather it:

After finishing that I had to uncross my eyes so I started on this simple little kit. This is the Nutrocker Hover Tank I got from my Secret Santa. I sanded the seams on the turret and then finished with adding all the little detail bits. This one is now ready for paint:

That helped a lot!

There it is. It ain't much since I'm also working on a couple of Group Build projects and a lot of shelf queens; almost all of which are aircraft. Once most of them are done, more armor construction will commence. Meanwhile, thanks all for looking in, comments are welcome.

 

[moon puppy]

Chuggin' along..Mark the only thing that gets me, Karl looks like he's in a firing position yet he's also loaded up for transport, don't think they would have fired that big thing while in transport mode.

 

[Duke Maddog]

Thanks MP! Actually, while looking up videos on Youtube of Big German Guns; I have seen one video clip where they did fire this from the rail cars. It surprised me that they hadn't dropped it from the transport cars, but you're right. I have to try and stiffen the swivel joint because this gun either sits in this position, or it sags down to where the gun is resting on the deck. There's no in-between....yet. Once I get that fixed, it should sit horizontal like it is supposed to be while in transit.

 

[Model Maniac]

Your Karl looks great, Duke, even though it's not finished yet.

Since 1:72 is your scale, I think you might be interested in this set of 8 x 1:72 armors for $15.99 (free shipping worldwide):

http://www.aliexpress.com/item/Free-Shipping-1-72-Tank-Model-Assembly-Toy-8pcs-per-Set/643889293.html?url_type=wto_clc_pic&productId=643889293&biz_type=sitePromo_wto_buyer360_clc&crm_mtn_tracelog_plan_id=1170996382&crm_mtn_tracelog_task_id=21177858&crm_mtn_tracelog_log_id=2871727615

 

[Duke Maddog]

Thanks for the compliment. As for that set, are they kits? What do they look like? How are the detail? It would be worth getting since some of them are models I don't have, but only if they are kits worth building.

Thanks for the link. I'll have to research these more closely.

 

[Dave wahl]

Duke:

That Karl Morser is one MASSIVE looking vehicle. Very interesting and beastly.

Dave

 

[Duke Maddog]

Thanks Dave! You think the Karl, looks massive and beastly, wait till you see Dora again. I took a picture yesterday of this Karl sitting next to Dora and she dwarfed her little brother Karl! I'll be posting those pics sometime tomorrow I hope.

Stay tuned everyone!

 

[moon puppy]

Thanks MP! Actually, while looking up videos on Youtube of Big German Guns; I have seen one video clip where they did fire this from the rail cars. It surprised me that they hadn't dropped it from the transport cars, but you're right. I have to try and stiffen the swivel joint because this gun either sits in this position, or it sags down to where the gun is resting on the deck. There's no in-between....yet. Once I get that fixed, it should sit horizontal like it is supposed to be while in transit.

I stand corrected, link up that video, would love to see it!

 

[Duke Maddog]

Thanks MP! Actually, while looking up videos on Youtube of Big German Guns; I have seen one video clip where they did fire this from the rail cars. It surprised me that they hadn't dropped it from the transport cars, but you're right. I have to try and stiffen the swivel joint because this gun either sits in this position, or it sags down to where the gun is resting on the deck. There's no in-between....yet. Once I get that fixed, it should sit horizontal like it is supposed to be while in transit.

I stand corrected, link up that video, would love to see it!

I went looking all over for that video again and I could not find it for the life of me! Gee, make a liar outta myself! Later I'll probably stumble over it long after this thing is finished. I apologize; I do know I saw it because I had paused the vid to be sure of what I was seeing. I'll keep looking.

Meanwhile, I have some more progress to show and some fun pics to post here. Check them out...


I tried to get more done on my Olympia staff car at Hobby Day. I got the wheels on it and repaired the upper windshield frame, but that is about it. I wanted to paint this more, but I'd left my dark grey color at home:

Finally, I got some progress done on my Dora. The gun trunnions are now completed and I can move on to the command cabin and loading deck and cranes:

Now here's how she looks all assembled so far:

And now for a size/scale reference, here is Dora sitting next to her 'little brother' Karl on railcars, and the Olympia staff car so you can see the sheer size of this gun:

What a monster!

And YES! THE BARREL IS DROOPING! I haven't glued it all together yet due to the fact that gluing it will make transporting this thing much more difficult. After all, the size of this thing means I have to do almost all my building at St. Crispin's Hobby Day since that is the place I can stretch out the most. I've already heard all of the viagra jokes and hints I care to hear; at Hobby Day and my AMPS meeting 57 PEOPLE thought they were being funny with them! After the first three, it is no longer funny....


Last but not least, I also have one other model I found while trying to clean my Hobby Room. I'd started this a long time ago and just found it again; so I decided to try and make some more progress on it. This is the Revell 50th anniversary re-release of the fishing boat that I got some time back. I know this isn't armor, but I'm not going to start a new Thread under Ships just for one little boat so here it is on this Thread for now:

Here you can see where I'd painted the details and the side of the cabin and the decks; then masked everything off and shot the white over it, then removed the mask. I had touched up some of the details when I took this pic; now I have to get some more of the detail parts mounted on.


That's all I have for this small update, more work is shown on the Wesendorf Field Forum if you care to take a look there. Meanwhile, thanks everyone for looking in. Comments are always welcome.

 

[Tojo72]

And the hits just keep on coming,that Karl is impressive !!

 

[Dave wahl]

Duke:

OMG!!!!!!! That thing is more than just a little HUGE That Dora is something else. And I thought that Karl was gigundous, but Dora is a monster. Great job on such a big subject. Both of them!!!

Dave

 

[Duke Maddog]

Thanks Dave! Yeah, Dora is one big scary monster, but I'm getting there! Thanks again for the compliment Dave, I hope to have more done soon. Stay tuned for more....

 

[Tankbuilder]

Is that barrel sagging at the forward joint? If so maybe you can reinforce it with some metal tube on the inside?

Cheers

 

[moon puppy]

I went looking all over for that video again and I could not find it for the life of me! Gee, make a liar outta myself! Later I'll probably stumble over it long after this thing is finished. I apologize; I do know I saw it because I had paused the vid to be sure of what I was seeing. I'll keep looking.

Yeah we'll probably stumble on it somewhere, not that I doubt what you say, just would like to see that in action.

Looks like the Minnow!

 

[Duke Maddog]

Is that barrel sagging at the forward joint? If so maybe you can reinforce it with some metal tube on the inside?

Cheers

Yes, it is sagging throughout, but i won't need any metal reinforcement. All I need to do is glue it together. I haven't done that yet since a completed barrel is more difficult to transport. Someday soon I hope!


Thanks MP! And yeah, someone else mentioned hearing the 'Gilligan's Island' theme going through their head when they saw that boat too. LOL!

 

[Duke Maddog]

Hey all, here's a small and simple update since I haven't been able to get too much done. I had a bit of a disaster a couple days ago that made me want to tear down my house, and shoot myself in the head, but it wasn't as bad as it could have been.

Anyway, here is my latest progress so far. I'll start with my one model that's been sitting for awhile waiting for a part. This is Dragon's 1/72 scale captured German T-34/76 1941. It had been waiting for the machine gun barbette on the front glacis plate. I finally contacted DragonCares and they came through.

I was able to add the final parts for this before I could move on:

Once that was dry enough, I painted on the camo pattern. This was done by hand with a fine-tipped brush:

This is now ready for clearcoat, decals, dullcoat and weathering. I should be done with this in no time.

Next is my ACE Opel Olympia. She's got a new coat of paint and is ready for clearcoat and decals. Then she'll be weathered. Here she is before I added all the final detail parts:

Now if I can only find these stinking decals! I always seem to be losing them!

Now for a couple models I started. This first one is Trumpeter's WC360 locomotive. I'm building two of these to display in front of my Dora railgun:

Next is Dragon's Neubau Fahrzeug No. 2. I haven't quite finished No. 1 yet, but this was fast and easy and the camo pattern will be quicker to do on this one. So, here it is before I started painting it:

Well, that's about all I have to show for all this so far. Stay tuned, I may have more coming sometime later this week.

Thanks all for looking in, comments are welcome.

 

[moon puppy]

 

[Duke Maddog]

This week, I had two whole days to work on my models. This will be a pretty extensive update this time. All of this update is on armor models since all my aircraft models in progress are larger aircraft and difficult to transport to Hobby Day.

Anyway, I started on Friday getting a lot of work done on my Dora in particular. Before I get to that, I did some finishing work on a couple models first. One was an Israeli Sagger vehicle I was doing alongside my Iraqi Sagger. I had lost one of the wheel hubs, and so couldn't finish. While cleaning my Hobby Room, I found a sprue of all the parts I needed to add all the wheels to the Israeli Sagger:

After that, I pulled out the paints I needed to complete the Neubau Fahrzeug Nr.2's camouflage pattern. It too a bit of time, but I finished that up and then put on the tracks, added the fenders and now she's ready for clearcoat and decals:

I'll be doing a few little touch ups to that, but I'm almost done.

Speaking of decals, I also added decals to two other models. First is my Beute T-34/76:

And second is my Opel Olympia staff car in US Army markings:

The next time you see these two, they'll be done.

Finally, after all those small little jobs got done, I started on my Dora again. The first thing I did was assemble the command cabin that hangs beneath the loading deck:

Those are photo-etch screens I had to add to that platform. I had primed them first.

Next I assembled the two massive support beams for the command cabin and loading deck. You can see the major seam line I had to take care of on each of these; especially on those shelf-like extensions in between the short support legs:

I sanded and filled these seams with Mr. Surfacer 500 and sanded and sanded. After so long, I was pretty sick of working on them by now; given all the sanding I had to do. So, I pulled out a couple other railroad models to work on. I got my two WC-360 engines built up to this point here:

While I had them all sitting there and the Dora all displayed on her tracks, I figured I'd test-fit these two engines on the front of Dora to see how they are going to look. At first glance, they looked pretty impressive, despite being dwarfed by the gun they are 'pulling':

Upon closer inspection however, I determined that they won't work for the Dora as you can see here:

Several friends suggested that I just pop off the bumpers on the engines and raise them, but I don't think it'll work well that way. Instead, I'll have one as a stand-alone display model while the other will go in front of my Leopold gun when I get that one done.

Moving on to Saturday, I started the day finishing the work on the large loading deck support beams. After several hours of sanding, filling with Mr. Surfacer 500 and sanding again, I finally managed to get these things to a point where I could go on:

After adding these two support beams to the deck, I then installed the command cabin. Then I snapped this assembly onto my Dora to see how it looks:

Note the staff car as a size reference...

Man, that is looking pretty impressive! I looked ahead and saw what else needed to be done and all the wind left my sails concerning any further work on Dora. So, moving right along, I decided to start a couple new models.

The first one I started was the Zvezda Tiger I snap together model. It was simple and easy and I had it done in about an hour or so. Some parts I did have to glue, but she's holding together. This kit has hard plastic tracks molded in one piece each that you bent around the wheels and snapped into some pegs behind a couple wheels to get the sag and hold the tracks. Most ingenious! Too bad all small scale companies don't do that with their tracks!

Here it is all assembled:

And to prove it is simply a snap-together model, check out the box:

Next I started one of two guns I got the day before. This is one of ACE's 75mm Pack Howitzer. I got two of them, but decided to assemble one. What a joy to build:

Later, I got paint on both of these models. First the Tiger got a preliminary basecoat:

Then the pack howitzer was painted up:

That model is about an inch and three quarters long. Tiny!

Man, I'm so glad to have one of these in my collection now! I should do the other one soon too.


Well, that's my progress for this week. Thanks all for looking in, comments are welcome.

 

[Duke Maddog]

Well, here it is a week later and I have been able to get a lot of time on the bench. This has been a pretty productive week, considering on about half of these it's been two steps forward, one step back!



First off, I got a basecoat on my Nutrocker hover tank. Not much else done here, but I was doing a lot of airbrushing and he's one of the first models that got one:

Now, since I'd had so many armor models finished last week, I decided to start a few more. These next four kits are ACE kits and I'm having a blast doing all these.

I'll start with two models I started for a Group Build on the Missing Lynx Braille Scale Forums; it's about the Middle East wars. This first model is an Iraqi M-3 armoured personnel carrier:

It's a pretty straightforward little kit and went together pretty well so far:

Next I also decided to start this OT-62 APC for my Egyptians:

I got the main hull together first:

I found I was missing a part that was not on the sprues, so I scratched a replacement from sheet styrene. You can see it here behind the raised superstructure:

Now that missing part tipped me to something being wrong. I looked at the instruction sheet and found that I was supposed to have one of these sprues in the kit:

Instead, I have this sprue:

Note the absence of torsion bars in particular that are shown in the instruction sheet. Plus you can see the outline of the missing piece I had to scratch. Unless I can find a way to replicate all those torsion bars; I'm unable to finish this model. This seems to be happening to me a lot lately.

Oh well, onward and upward. This next model is one I found while cleaning out the hobby room and got a big hankering to start, so I did. This is the Russian TOS-1 Buratino MLRS. Here you can see the tracks I have to clean up. I already cleaned the one side and took this pic so you can see just how much cleanup I need to do on this model's tracks:

Next I assembled the lower hull and the rocket box:

After some seam filling and sanding, I assembled the parts to the upper hull. I then built the turret and the launch box arms. Here you can see the top hull and the turret all dry-fit on the lower hull:

Next, I decided to do something simple and fun. This next model is my British truck "Tilly" that I built up:

Later I put a basecoat on it, but apparently the paint was a bit thin. That's cool, it'll look good in another coat:

Finally, this last armor model is one that I started two decades ago. This is a DUKW in 1/72 scale that I think is an Airfix or Matchbox model. It's been so long that I don't know! I don't have the instruction sheet anymore to tell me. Anyway, I had put this aside because I'd lost the decals to it and put it away since I couldn't finish it. So, while cleaning my Hobby Room last week, I stumbled upon the original decals for this model. I promptly coated them all with decal film and the next day I pulled out the old model and put them on. Here it is now with decals on; they are still a bit rough and I'll need to hit them with some Solvaset to make them sit right, but at least I can move on with this model:

Okay, that is about all I have for this week. I may get more done this weekend; meanwhile, feel free to check out the progress I made on my aircraft in Wesendorf Field.

Thanks all for looking in; comments are always welcome!

 

[moon puppy]

Work work work....