A thing!

I've posted a thing! But it's not here, it's over there.

Group build idea.

So thinking about the Hawker Weather Build in May and how much fun it was, I'm thinking that it'd be fun to do another one and I might even get something useful done on this project again. A bit of thinking and rejecting kits and subjects, I came to a conclusion. What's the one kit that everyone has or can get? What's that one kit that everyone has built in the past? What's the one kit that everyone seems to hate?

The Airfix Sherman.

So here's the general idea: July will be "Pimp my Sherman" month. Everyone grab an Airfix Sherman and build it however they wish. Any nation, any era, any amount of modding, scratch building parts and greebling you can manage without using a part from another kit except for crew figures and stowage.

To make it interesting it's going to be a competition. At the end of July I will collect all entries, post a blog with links to the final pictures and collect votes by email. The prize will be the winner's choice of the new Airfix Cromwell or the re-released Chi-Ha medium tank posted to wherever the hell you happen to be. Obviously I will be disqualified from winning, but I'm going to build a damn tank anyway and there's nothing you can do to stop me.

If this sounds interesting then post below.

In other news, the Typhoon has finally been located and it's almost in the state I left it. Sadly there appear to be lots of small dots of yellow wall paint on it and a few scratches, so it's going to need some TLC before I can finish it off.

Day... whatever.

Well May has well and truly ended and I have not finished the Typhoon. I feel shame. On the other hand I got to pet a wallaby in Florida so I'm pretty happy with my decision. Sadly, due to room renovation in my absence, I have no idea where the Typhoon actually is at the moment, and my tools have likewise been scattered to the winds. I'll have to get back to work now that I'm starting to get over the jetlag and feel human again.

In other news, The Assault Group have a "free mini for facebook likes" campaign on, and they've got some interesting stuff on offer. There's a variety of scales and periods in their range, so go take a look and spread the word.

Day 6

Alrightey, here are the promised pictures. I now have the varnish I need to start applying the decals, so maybe... just MAYBE I will be finished in time. Tonight I will try to get the varnish applied and MAYBE get a few decals stuck on. Still not sure if I want to go with a yellow or blue nosecone.

Day 5 - frantic work

So a brief break from the tidying and packing today was when I decided to "test" my new Tamiya acrylics and see how they worked. Based on advice from AlFront over at War Diaries of a Little Englander I copied the pattern from the Airfix instructions in pencil and painted the same pattern. It worked. Far better than I was expecting it to. Nice that this build has taught me another little trick for my bag thereof.

The current state of the plane is: fully painted, with the pilot needing to be done and then the decals added, weathering and wash to finish.

The chances of me getting all this done before going away for the rest of the month on Tuesday are: slim.

Pictures to follow tomorrow, when I have some light. [UPDATE] Pilot is finished and glued into place. Now I just need to do the nosecone (which requires buying more paint...) and get varnish to start on the decals.

Day 4... slowdown

In a stroke of absolutely terrible luck it has been raining very very gently all week. Just enough that I haven't been able to spray the plane until tonight. This means that I'm behind my self-imposed schedule and I'm running out of time fast. I may need to take emergency measures and declare the first two weeks of June to be May.

Day 2.5 & 3

Most of this was done in a little under two hours yesterday, with the tail wheel and the wing doors being fitted today. It's now ready for painting so time to get researching on patterns and paints. I think (but am not 100% sure) that Vallejo Russian Green and GW Fortress Grey will do the job nicely. The green lines are splodges are GW's new "Liquid Greenstuff" filler. It works okay for this kind of thing, but for bigger jobs I'd have to go with the manual mix stuff. As you can see, the pilot and canopy are not attached yet. I'll be painting both seperately and gluing them on after the kit is ready for decals. The propeller is currently spinning but with a distressing wobble, so I might glue it into place later. I'm also not 100% happy with how the wing doors went together, and the right wing sticks up a bit more than I'd like so it may be filed down some more.