Session I

About the Project reportings

I decided to take a different approach to the reporting this time. I'd typo up a post per each session (building, painting, whatever I did). At the moment each post was going to describe the happenings of a maximum of 45 minutes of something, including every and each unpredictable interruption and whatever happens in a house with kids.

So far I've always done something almost like this but kept some kind of an editorial "let's try to make some sense". In blog post sense that translated into "some posts contained only a part of what I actually did while some aggregated a pile of tiny things".


Most likely I wasn't going to repeat this version of my process, but I felt like trying out this as it had occurred to me.

The glorious first commit

My first constructional session was a pretty low-yield one. I mostly got some hatches done on the rear deck, some tiny details and the main turret's riser. Or whatever you'd call the weirdly shaped coffin, with those vertically bullet-straight thin walls. At this point the whole tank seemed like a figment of some lunatic's imagination.

School age (FI)

A neutral 7

If this silly blog was a human being (and a Finnish one), it'd started school last week. But as it's not, it didn't, and these weird what-ifs about time don't have any better function except to provide "oh my, how time flies" kind of mutterings in us older people.

What kind of silly nonsense could I combine with number seven and what kind of ha-ha-ha-so-funny almost-jokes I could've conjured up? Well, our good friend Wikipedia contained a load of stuff, like the seven colours of the rainbow, the layers of the OSI model, the Snow White's dwarves and so on. Maybe this latest year has been, fittinly, quite Sundayish in its laziness, especially the last part of it. I can already tell that the next one won't start too hecticly, thanks to us moving to a new apartment/house in about a month. I guess it was time, as the last move was over five and half years ago...

This year I decided to spare you the stats and related mumblings, mostly because I realized that the birthday of the blog was tomorrow and had to type up something. Let's take a look at the numbers next year, because those aren't fun after the date anymore.

Project VII/17

A Soviet heavy tank T-35

At long, long last I got my endless "one of these days I'll start building a tank" yammering moved to the "ongoing" pile. It didn't take that many months, but these things apparently happen.

Still, I decided to begin calmly with the unboxing. I took a quick look at the instructions, which looked pleasantly simple to me. Again I wasn't really sure if I'd use any of the decals, but I'd definitely utilize the cable. The piece count was astonishing, which has never been a bad thing - so far.

Just to show the scale of the bottom tub of the tank I took this photo here, where my left hand was there for the scale. But again, it wasn't going to help anyone who doesn't have a clue of my hand size. Oops.

A somewhat non-constant painting plan

First stage

Painting the Star Destroyer started just like all her previous paintjobs: with random areas of various colours. Just like with the Kamov, this one got some polka dots for good measure.

She liked the idea of painting the display stand black, according to my suggestion. This way the base wouldn't steal the viewer's attention from the ship itself.

Second stage: Darth Maul -look

For some reason she decided, in the middle of the painting process, that it looked wrong and was totally ruined. It was always supposed to look like Darth Maul. Where did this come from? No clue and I really couldn't guess. And no, I didn't get sense-making replies to my confused questions.

So far for the Maul paintjob she's done the top surfaces black, the bottom was still as it was, just primed. The Muses haven't been too active, so we'll see when this project gets some wind behind it again, and how that is going to work out.

A lively work queue

My friend Tape had obtained a good pile of kits from an estate or two and offered the overflow for my own sick projects. I promised to offer a good home to a couple of tanks, a Tamiya's Panther (Ausf. G, early) and a Revell Jagdpanzer IV (Ausf. F, early). He suggested a couple for my Project Assistant and she received a Zvezda's IS-2 (1:72) and an Airfix Panther (H0 (wtf?)). The Zvezda kit was "a no glue required" show so I could let her build it all by herself. Supposedly.

My firstborn's models

My models

And when would I get to start with any of them? No clue, absolutely no clue whatsoever.

About the summer schedule of the 'Mumblings

Yeah... I was writing this before my summer vacation and I hadn't gotten a single second of modeling time in ages, and I didn't think I was going to do that by the time the vacation started. While on vacation I was obviously not going to work on anything and most likely the first week(s) would be a "nah, there's no time now" kind of a thing. Or so they've been over the last five years.

So, it could be that the Project Mumblings will take their first "now there won't be a post every single week" since the early months. Amazing, in a way. But I guess I'll get back to some sort of speed at some point, as soon as the general life settles into its own routes :)

Star Destroyer priming

The classic colour scheme for an Imperial Star Destroyer has been white (though I prefer some shade of grey myself) and that's how I primed this one. Quick and simple, even with the white plastic of the model itself.

Now we were ready for some artistic liberties and unusual paint schemes. Hooray!

At the Kuat shipyards

Assembling the spaceship

I started the assembly from the four-piece command tower and then progressed to the engine department. Those bridge bits didn't quite sit as flushly as I had expected. I also had to work a bit on the studs of the engine nozzles, but that's nothing you'd see from the outside.

The hull itself consisted of four pieces. To the bottom half I glued the Solar Ionization Reactor's dome and the engine bit. Then the top half of the hull was glued on and I just squeezed the halves tightly together to make them fit nicely.

There wasn't much more to do anymore but to glue on the command tower and the piece that came between it and the hull. Oh and the two-piece stand that I decided not to glue into the hull, just to make everything easier to paint nicely.

It ended up being quite pretty. Pretty but not big, from the top of my head I'd say that my Metal Earth Models ISD was a bit smaller than this one. And considering the time this took about half an hour, including the cleaning up and whatnot.

Project VI/17

Revell's ISD

This 1:12300 scale Imperial-class Star Destroyer was, as I have mentioned earlier, a yule gift for the Project Assistant. I hadn't even primed her Ka-50 when she came to ask me to build this. Her idea was to paint this one either brown or pink. Despite these threats of iconoclasty I took this one to be worked on. And yes, my reports have been somewhat off from the real world lately, can't help it :D

The instructions

As somehow expected, the instructions were ultrasimple. I really couldn't think why this kit was marked at difficulty 3 out of 5. Maybe there was some kind of deep wisdom that I just couldn't see.

I was really amused when I found the decal sheet. With one decal. And that one was to be slapped onto the front of the display stand.

The bits

All the pieces for this model fit in two small sprues. The pieces were decently sized and at least at a first glance they looked nicely detailed, especially the main hull pieces. Now if someone made a modern version of the MPC/ERTL kit...

Finished: Project V/17

Last minute mumblings

Yeah, well. The spring went, as I think I said at some point, a bit differently than how I had thought. My scale modeling time was also quite a bit more limited as time just went somewhere. For that same reason this post, that I had scheduled for the second to last week of May, was incomplete and therefore didn't get published. Still, here it is now.

My only mentionable deviation from my previous posts under this same topic was that I repainted the launch pad again with Dunkelgelb (Tamiya XF-60) because the dirtiness on the weird bits just didn't feel right to me. Now you can see them "clean" in the final photos. Oh and I just took the last photos three evenings ago, even though the model itself had been finished for weeks (or could it be months already at this point?), thanks to my overcautious preparations which proved to be less cautious than what I'd needed. But you can't control life events :)

The background story according to the instructions

Here's the letter-by-letter copy of the instruction sheet's text with its formatting and all. Curious stuff, all in all.

"At the end of 1944 the Germans started to occupy themselves with the possibility of a rocket attack against the territory of the USA.

Initially the possibility of launching A-4 rockets with the help of class XXI submarines was considered but the development was in January 1945 interrupted and based on the requirement of the forces the development of a double stage so called "American Rocket" started.

The A-9 rocket had to be lifted to an altitude of 160km by the A-10 booster rocket and then it was able to cover up to 5000 km in 45 minutes. Before reaching the target the pilot had to catapult from A-9. During the flight th epilot had to be guided by submarines on the surface of the Atlantic ocean. Before the end of the war tests of the A-9 rocket itself without the A-10 stage were carried out.

Flying weight of the A-9 itself 16 260kg. Max. speed 2800m/sec. Engine EMW with 25 400kg thrust."

And those photos

Switching jobs

Yesterday, the second of June, was my last day of work at my longest-lasting job so far. I did get to be there for almost nine years (I ended up leaving three months before that milestone). Then I'll enter the doors of the next workplace on Monday already.

After the boss-part of the ceremony and after my own few stupid words my coworker Hannis wanted to say something too and ended that by dropping a largeish plastic bag on me "we wanted to give you something for you to remember us by". I got a Star Wars hat and two scale models. That rendered me speechless, as I didn't think of preparing for anything like that.

The models were chosen by Iiro, the benevolent dictator of Presaleztan. His idea with the T-35 was that it was a huge tank, there was plenty to do and it was a vehicle that I wasn't too likely to buy myself. So it'd remind me of them that much easier.

The German rocket launcher was an obvious choice, I was told. Its wooden bits and the hugeness of the rockets themselves initiated a lively discussion among those of us who are interested in this sort of stuff, while the rest weren't too involved. No surprises there.

I promised (or should I say threatened?) to show the results whenever I was done. We also thought that it'd be silly or amusing to paint the company logo or name or something like it on the tank itself. Maybe I'd do that, because why not? :p