Maddog Manufacturing 2025 Grand Re-Opening

[Duke Maddog]

Happy New Year! After a nice relaxing Holiday season for all my "elves", all of them are back as Maddog Manufacturing is reopening for 2025 in a pretty big way. So, if everyone is ready, we can board the trams and start the tour. We'll start with the Hangar as usual, showing first the projects that did not get finished last year.

Remember to keep hands and feet inside at all times as we head on into the Hangar.....



Here in this first bay we have this F15C Eagle just waiting for cockpit masking and paint:

Another one in the next bay is waiting on paint, this is the Italian MB326K Impala:

In the next bay is the Boeing 727, mostly ready for further assembly but the kit gave resin landing gear parts and about a third of them are missing. I'm still trying to find the missing parts or source some new landing gear to replace them:

In these next two bays are the two B-2 Stealth Bombers that I've been working on:

A ton more filling and sanding are necessary on those two!

In this next bay is a bagged kit I got so I decided to get started on it. This is the 1/72 scale Heller F-84G Thunderjet in French Markings. Cockpit and nose intake were first built:

The next thing would have been cementing everything inside the fuselage and closing it up, but I still need to add 2grams of weight, so that will wait till I find my supply of weights. Meanwhile I cemented the wings together at least:

And finally in this last booth we have one I started recently, it was packed in the Mystery Box we had on our last Distressed Kit Auction. This is the 1/72 scale Hasegawa Jake on a Catapult. I started with the catapult:

Later moved on to the engine:

The rest of it fell together quite well:

It's bigger than I expected, but it's gonna look good:

That completes the tour of the Hangar, now on to the Shipyards to see what's on the slipways....



Here in the Shipyards, our first slip contains the HMS Westminster frigate, mostly just waiting for the extensive photo etch to be applied:

Next to it are two of the Butler Class destroyer escorts that came two to a box. Decals are missing so I'll need to source numbers from my spares box. Meanwhile, I did what I could to paint them up. Here is the first attempt at paint:

While that was drying, we laid the keel for the second DE, getting it to the paint stage:

That one then got painted up, starting with the decks:

Once they were properly painted up, I added all the final detail parts:

In these next two bays, the keels were laid down for two of the four Fletcher Class destroyers and built up to the paint stage:

One is an early, the other a late variant. Again, I already have both a Fletcher and a Sullivans already built; I'll need to source numbers for additional ships in this class for these.

In the next bay I have the Marine LCAC under construction. The pilot house was completed, the last of the superstructure assemblies that needed to be done:

Here's a shot of this monster ready for paint:

That concludes this part of the tour of the Shipyards, now we see what's happening in the Motor Pool in the next post....

 

[Duke Maddog]

Here in the Motor Pool, there's a lot that's been happening. Production has ramped up quite a bit here. We will start this time with some of the newest projects started so that more can be worked on when some of the models closest to completion get done.

In this first bay we have an M3 White scout car that I got from the Distressed kit Auction in December. It was mostly built already but some parts still needed installation. However, I went ahead and added the wheels and then the decals:

Later the seats went in. I still have to source some driver and shotgun seats though:

In the next bay is another Canadian vehicle; this one is a fuel truck on a Chevy CWT chassis:

You can see in that pic, I started with the wrong chassis so I needed to remove everything and rebuild this on the correct chassis which is longer. You can see the better fit here:

Speaking of fuel trucks, this next bay has a German one under construction. First of course is the chassis:

Then I built up the fuel tank:

Next I started with the cab interior and got it ready for paint:

Here it is pretty much ready for paint and then final assembly:

The next bay has another German subject, a Schwimmwagen that I'd started some time ago. I finally got a camouflage pattern painted on it, then applied a gloss coat and decals:

Next to this is the SdKfz 9 with the crane that had been giving me so much trouble. The cab fenders just weren't sitting right, and the hood over the engine did not fit right. So, some disassembly was done and some 'gentle' persuasion was applied to correct the sit of the fenders:

Once that was done, the hood was reattached so it sits better as well. Then the tracks were added and a camouflage pattern was applied:

I will be so glad when that is done!

Moving on to the next bay we got started on a more simple project, this is the Heller AMX-13 light tank. I have two more of these in the stash somewhere; I got a second one to make Israeli and the third was going to lose it's turret to a Sherman to make the Egyptian modded Sherman.

The hull was completed first; the wheels will go on later:

Later the turret was done and mocked up on this:

That is an odd duck; it's about time I had one in my collection....

Another French subject was started in the next bay. It's one of my Secret Santa gifts, an ACE French VBL with the anti-tank Milan rockets. The lower hull was started, and that's about as far as I got on this:

In this next bay is a Japanese anti-ship missile truck, which makes sense for an Island nation. This is so cool. Assembly had already started last year, but this was more or less completed to the paint stage in the past week or so:

It's made so the missile tubes can be elevated:

Later on, a base coat and camouflage pattern was added:

Recently while going through the stash, I found a Dragon Jagdpanzer IV L70, so that got started ASAP when I found it. This is going to be made Syrian so that I'm that much closer to my goal of building all the WWII German equipment in Syrian service. Here it is in the next bay over all mocked up:

Another long term shelf queen was brought out to the next bay where some adjustments were made and the tracks added. This is my Sherman recovery vehicle (M35? TRV) which has been sitting far too long. With additional parts being raided from other unbuildable UM Sherman kits, I'm getting this closer to being done:

In this next bay, I decided to start an IBG Italian Ro truck.I have two; one has a gun on the back and the other is a cargo truck. I opted to start the gun truck first, starting with the engine and gearbox(?):

There are 17 parts in the engine alone. Seventeen....parts:

Next the chassis had to be assembled practically from scratch. All the parts were provided, but they all needed to be built:

That's another 12 parts. And here they are all put together, sans engine.... so far:

After that I jumped ahead to assemble the gun for this:

In these last few bays are the main battle tanks I'd been working on last year. Didn't have the time to bring them over the finish line last year, but these will probably be the first ones for this year. This first bay has the British Challenger I Mk.3 already camouflaged:

Later the gloss was added and decals applied. You can barely tell, but they are on there:

Next up is the Australian M1A1 Abrams, all camouflaged as well:

That one got the gloss and decal treatment too:

Finally, there's the Canadian Leopard 2A6M. It got camouflaged as well:

Gloss and decals followed, as with the other two:

Again, hard to see those decals. They get harder to see when the cage armor is applied. This is mocked up right now:

That will get dulled and weathered before the cage armor is more permanently applied. That completes the tour of the Motor Pool for now.



Oh, you thought we were done? Oh no, we are heading out now to the Space Port....

Out in our Space Port, we still have work being done on the Millennium Falcon. Recently the side docking bays were completed:

Later the quad gun mounts and seats were built up:

Here they are closed up:

This isn't the last. Out in our back lot we have a Blacksmith shop going up next to the Lumber Mill. The basic walls are up now:

Later the forge got started:

And finally, while going through the stash again; I found this Faller kit of a car dealership so I figured that was a fun project to add to the back lot here. I started with the showroom first:

The roof was then built and dry-fit on top so I can paint inside:

Just for fun, I added some of my civilian vehicles inside as show cars:

They won't be permanent; I was just having some fun.


Now that concludes this tour of Maddog Manufacturing on this Grand Opening day. Thank you all for taking the tour and remember: comments are always welcome.

 

[Heavens Eagle]

You have more going on than I have on my shelf of doom. Who makes the B2 kit Mark?

 

[razordws]

Were those Bitler class destroyers from Skywave?

 

[Duke Maddog]

Thank you Paul! The B-2 kits are both Testor's kits. I had built one before ages ago, but it was stolen out of USC's Air Force ROTC display case. Now I'm building two: one will have the original it decals, the other will have the IPMS Nationals set.

Thank you Dave! Yes, they are Skywave. The Fletchers are also Pitroad/Skywave green box kits.