Vehicle storage

It's been really wet and windy today, so I've had a day of sorting stuff out, which included getting around to gathering together various cardboard boxes that I have been storing my collection of 1/56th scale WWII vehicles in and putting them into a more permanent storage solution.

I purchased a couple of hard plastic storage boxes from the Really Useful Box company. The ones I bought were the 7 litre boxes which measure:

• External Dimensions: L 400 x W 350 x D 85mm
• Internal Dimensions: L 340 x W 307 x D 70mm

They're great because they are the perfect height for storing vehicles in, come with locking lids and are intended to neatly stack upon one another. Here is a case of German vehicles for North Africa (or possibly Italy).

I put some paper in the base, so that I could mark which vehicle went into which slot. Each slot was created using the foam that comes out of the spaces cut into a figure tray and trimmed to size. It's the pieces of the figure tray that you would normally throw away so that you have slots to store your figures, but I knew it would come in useful one day.

Once the edges of the box were lined, I then started playing Tetris with the vehicles to maximise the number that I could fit in and once happy with the places, started trimming more of the foam pieces (which have an adhesive bottom) and sticking them to the paper around where each vehicle would fit. Here is the start of my British vehicles for the Mediterranean.

I ended up filling six boxes with vehicles and storing them away neatly, which means I now have a bit of space on my shelves, so that I can start the next phase of cleaning and tidying! The missus will be so chuffed!

Late war German vehicles

I've been working on a couple more late war German vehicles, a JagdPanther and a Wirbelwind, both kits from Rubicon, for my Iron Cross armies.

The Wirbelwind is based on the chassis of a Panzer IV, so in common with a lot of Rubicon kits, there were plenty of spare parts, so I also built the Panzer IV turret at the same time, so add to the other two Panzer IVs that I built a couple of weeks ago.

I've got a little bit more weathering to do; I've only added a small amount of wet mud so far and will be applying lighter coloured weathering powders over the top. I tried out a different technique for painting the camouflage on this vehicle and I'm not particularly happy with it, so will return to the same technique I used on the Jagdpanther below and most other vehicles that I have been painting over the last year. Unless you try, you don't learn though.

As with the Panzer/Wirbelwind, there is more weathering to done on the Jagdpanther, to which I have applied quite a bit of wet mud. I'm also much happier with how the camouflage turned out.

I had never really taken much notice of the Jagdpanther (preferring the more mainstream Panzer III and IV workhorses for my armies) until I re-watched episode 4 ("Replacements") of Band of Brothers. It's the scene where Easy Company are riding into a Dutch town called Nuenen on some British Shermans and then a Jagdpanther comes roaring out from its camouflaged ambush position.

I immediately thought that I had to get one of those, plus some Shermans for it to fight against. It has also inspired me to get back into making some more terrain loosely based on Nuenen, which is where the scene is (very loosely) based, so that I can recreate the scene on the tabletop. This chap has visited Nuenen and compares the actual town with the Band of Brothers set: Visiting Band of Brothers: The Battle of Nuenen? | WW2 Traveling #5 - YouTube  Obviously, it's a bit different, but I don't think it detracts at all from the BoB series.

Waiting on the production line is a bit of opposition: a platoon of Shermans and a Firefly.

As noted above, there are always spare bits in each Rubicon kit, so with the addition of a tiny bit of plasticard and a few odds and ends out of my Rubicon bits box, I have created a second Jagdpanther in a hull down position. Before I make a start on the Sherman platoon and any Dutch buildings for my fictional recreation of Nuenen, I'll get this painted up.

Plenty to do!

Panzer IVs

 I've been slowly building and painting a couple of Panzer IVs for use in either Italy (with field applied camo) or North West Europe. I didn't take any in-progress shots, but here are the finished articles. I say finished...I've been debating with myself for about the last 10 days whether to apply some weathering powder to the tracks and wheels to make them look a bit more dusty. The varnish looks a lot shinier in the photos that IRL too, so a bit of dust would help with that.

I will be starting a Wirbelwind next and have ordered a Jagdpanther and a platoon of Shermans (3 x M4A4 and a Firefly).  All Rubicon models.

Finishing off Allied vehicles

These models have been sat in my cupboard for years, so I made a start on finishing them off a few months ago (just checked and it was March!!!), and picked them up again back in October. Anyway, they now complete...apart from painting the crews for the carriers.

My British Mediterranean forces now have some armour in the form of 2 x Vickers Mk.VI and 2 x A13 Cruisers, plus 3 x carriers for moving infantry around the battlefield.

I attempted a Caunter pattern on the carriers, which looks accurate based on some photos I found of British troops in Greece, but perhaps less accurate on the A13s; I couldn't find any suitable reference photos for them, so made it up a bit.

Finishing off British forces in the Mediterranean

Some of the stuff featured in this post has been on my painting table (actually, in the cupboard) part finished for a few years. I did a little bit of work on them a few months ago, but have decided to crack on and get them finished. I've had a weekend of finishing things off, partly inspired by the new range of Greek miniatures that Great Escape Games are about to launch. I've already got a platoon of Greek Mountain Infantry, plus plenty of support weapons including a pair of CV-35 tankettes, but inevitably I'll end up with some of the new range when they become available.

I finished off basing all my Greeks, plus some Gebirgsjager and some British infantry yesterday.

The stuff from the cupboard includes 3 x Bren carriers, which are actually finished except for painting the crews, a pair of A13 Cruisers and a pair of Vickers Light Tanks MkVI. The idea is to use them for scenarios set in North Africa, Sicily, Greece and perhaps even Italy.

I tried out the Caunter camo scheme on the carriers first of all because they had fewer lumps and bumps that needed masking prior to spraying with the airbrush.

I then made a start on applying Caunter to the A13s, but then put them down again a few months ago after getting this far.

The paints are Vallejo Model Air and come from a set called British Caunter Colors. The base colour is 71.288 Portland Stone, the lighter green is 71.401 Silver Grey and the dark green is 71.012 Dark Green.

I masked off another section and applied another thick stripe of Silver Grey today. One trick that I have learnt when applying the masking tape (well, two tips) is to stick the masking tape to your trousers a few times to take a lot of the stickiness out of it, otherwise it sticks to the paint too well, which brings me onto tip #2. When removing the tape, pull it as gently as you can and go as slowly as you can, otherwise it will pull off flakes of the base coat.

This thicker light green stripe is going to have another dark green stripe painted inside it, but I need to leave this one to dry for several days, otherwise risk pulling parts of it with the next application of masking tape.

The other tanks that I will make a start on finishing(!) are a pair of Vickers Mk.VIb's. I had got as far as painting on the base colour, which I think is Vallejo Model Color Iraqi Sand. I'm not 100% sure what I am going to do with them yet, but definitely not Caunter because of the difficulty of masking all the various panels.

All of the models featured in this post are made by Blitzkrieg Miniatures.

Ambushed supply wagon, part #3

Progress on this terrain piece has been a little slow this week due to work and family stuff, but I've now finished.  However, I might add some dust effects to the bottom of the wagon to make it look a little bit more weathered.

Here are a few of the in-progress shots picking up from where I left off in the last post. After sticking everything to the base and adding sand and fine grit, I then primed the whole thing with grey car primer from Halfords.

The next step was painting the base colour using some Dulux tester pots. Whilst the brown base colour was still wet, I dripped some diluted grey paint onto the brown to create a patchy, non-uniform effect. Once the base colour had fully dried, I dry-brushed a lighter brown over the top to highlight the texture.

Next, I painted the base colours, then the highlights onto each of the models, including the wagon.

The final step was to paint on some PVA glue and scatter a mix of various flock, static grass and clump that I had pre-prepared in a tub, then leave it to dry.

Whilst I was flocking, I also went and grabbed a couple of other pieces that I have worked on recently, but not yet flocked. One of them was the destroyed Panzer III, which I have written several posts about.

The other piece that I finished basing today was a Pak36 gun and crew.