Session IV

Turrets!

As soon as all the juice straws were all built, I got to assemble the turrets and then install the guns into them. Either I had been cleaning the pieces a bit too enthusiastically, or their fitting was less tight than I had expected. For a moment I was afraid that I couldn't get them hold together without a fight!

Ultimately they did fit. On the tops of the gun turrets I added a few hoops for lifting the thing on and off the tank itself, some cellar door -like hatches and the cover for the air vent. I don't think I have commented on the quality of the pieces so far in this series of posts, but they've been pretty damn nice.

Of course I just had to try the four turrets out as soon as possible. I'd loved to have them all pointing at the same direction (broadsiding would've looked so very cool), but of course it wasn't possible. At this point I started pondering on the painting and I decided that I wouldn't install them anytime soon - at least the MG turrets should be traversable thanks to some locking pieces, even though I doubted that a bit - because otherwise I'd just shoot myself figuratively in the foot.

As my last-last act of the evening's session I glued together one of the weird boxes that was destined to be installed to the side of the main turret's riser. Those triangular supports you could see in the instructions just didn't have the time to be included this time.

Session III

The turret production proceeded

The very same stuff kept me in its clutches: I was assembling turrets with their equipment. I started by quickly building the second MG turret up to the same point with the first one and then progressed to the 40mm K-20 guns. Those guns had a nice amount of details, but who'd ever be excited about the elevation-controlling gears, locks and such, if they'd end up being sealed inside this tomb on caterpillar tracks?

The rear bits (I really couldn't remember, after over a decade, what were the actual names for each bit) were indeed cool. I wasn't going to work on their paintjobs but instead take the "lazy" approach of only painting the visibles.

Maybe :p

Session II

Extra hatches and LMGs

I started by gluing some small railing bits behind where the rear turrets would end up living, and apparently some kind of exhaust pipe -covering strange structures. Right after that I had to spend some good time searching for my pointy-tipped tweezers, as I realized that my fingers were a bit too large for the accurate installation tiniest of pieces. The on-deck tools were also installed at this point already, or some of them at least: a saw, a pickaxe and some sort of a metal bar (lower front in the last image).

The rest of my session time was spent on the Emma production line, the kit was going to have as many as five pan-type drum-magazine DT light machine guns. Emma is the name that these things were known here in Finland back in the day (I'm not going to bother you with the history of the name). Two of these weapons were installed into the front armour plates of the MG turrets and out of those one I got to glue into the turret itself.

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.