Model Armour

I wanted to blog the build of this kit, but my camera was out for repair. As they say, time marches on and I went ahead with the build while I waited for the camera to come back. I have to say, this was one great kit. Fit was excellent, assembly very easy and good detail. The kit went together in about 3 days. The only drawback I have with it is the interior: even with the hatches open, you won’t see much of it.

I plan to finish this as a US Marine vehicle on Iwo Jima delivering a jeep and some supplies. I ordered some Bison decals for it and am now waiting for their arrival. In the meantime, I’ll start this off by painting the camouflage. The instructions call for overall Olive Drab with streaks of Sand and Earth Brown. I’m going to use Tamiya acrylics, OD faded with some Dark Yellow. For the sand color, I’ll use Buff mixed with white. Color pics I’ve seen of LVT’s and Tanks show the brown to be more red so I will try Red Brown cut with Khaki.

I free-hand sprayed on the camouflage pattern. I’m not too excited about the brown color, though. While the paint dries for a day, I'll begin on the Fruil Tracks.



Next came the sand


and the brown


Your comments/suggestons would be appreciated.

I really like that Steve, once you start weathering the colours will probably darken anyway. Lots of scope for rust streaking

Chris

Unusul build, we don't see these too often. Looking forward to seeing it with tracks!

Vinnie

Thanks, guys.

I might have to play around with the camera settings. The brown looks wierd in the pictures but not too bad sitting on the bench.. But you're right, Chris. Weathering will probably help some.

Looing very good Steve, really like the camo

Deano

I like the camo pattern too,and it`ll look great when weathered

Hey Steve, the camo looks great, as the guys have already said it'll look even better with some weathering - the planned Dio, sound really interesting, we don't see many PTO projects.

I'll be following along

Cheers for now
Mike

Thanks for you comments, guys.

Mike, you might see a few more. The Bison Decal set that I ordered has markings for 8 vehicles. Can't let the decals go to waste!

Track update

I’ve completed assembly of the Fruil tracks. Not a lot of fun, I can tell you. There were 250 links altogether. Half of those were the connector links. Each of the tracks had to have two “nibs” scraped off the end to allow drilling out of the connector holes. Also, each link needed 2, 2.5 mm pins to hold them together. Even after assembly, some of the pins didn’t hold and had to be reinserted and re-glued. A little frustrating, but they do look good.

Painting. I don’t like to use Blacken-it. I used it once on some Panzer IV tracks a couple of years ago and, while it does look good, the chemical must have attacked the wire pins, as they disintegrated when I was putting them on the tank. So, I painted these tracks with Krylon White spray paint as a primer, then sprayed on Tamiya Gun Metal. Funny….we’re back to the original color.


Next, I gave the tracks a wash of Black, Burnt Umber and Burnt Sienna. With as much use as these vehicles got in the South Pacific, I didn’t expect to see too much rust on the tracks, so I kept the rust effects to a minimum and none on the inside.



And here they are on the LVT


It took me about 5 days to assemble the tracks, but well worth it. If these things weren't so expensive, I'd use Fruils on every vehicle.

Still waiting on the Bison Decals and I'll continure weathering. Now, on to the jeep and the vehicle load.

Really like these vehicles and enjoying the build so far

Just in case it's of interest Hobbyfan have started releasing some new figures specifically for this kit in case your interested