Friday, November 29, 2013

My First 15mm M60A2 Starship Completed

While I still don't have a production model, I did manage to paint a single M60A2 casting from my first try reject mold.  I plan to field a company of these in the same MERD-C pattern as my M113s.  Here are a couple pics:

 

It looked really dusty prior to clear coating it.  May have to go back and dirty up some more, once I get more castings painted.


Saturday, November 9, 2013

My Old 6mm (1/285) Middle East Buildings

As I've been going through my stuff and finishing some old projects, I've also been rekindling some of my old interests.

I am  a long time micro armor player (some modern C-n-C miniatures being the first purpose manufactured historical miniatures that I bought), enjoying both WWII and Cold War games.  Several years ago, I made a number of simple Middle East buildings based on those in photos from the '67 and '73 Mid-East wars. 

The idea was to make simple masters that could be easily cast, and allow me to customize the buildings, hopefully yielding a diverse city in a relatively short period of time.  Like all of my projects, this is still waiting to be completed.  Here is the first batch of completed buildings:


As soon as I had some castings, I realized that I really should have made some ruined/battle damaged buildings.  So I got to work on that as well, and quickly had a set of damaged buildings.  I took some of the buildings and made minor variations as originally planned.



More of the damaged buildings below.



As soon as I had a set of damaged buildings, I started working on composite buildings made of two or more of the originals.  The building in the lower left of the above photo was the first example.


The composite building was made from the two other buildings shown above with a partial base added to it and some detailing with styrene strips.  Working backwards, I then completed the pre-battle damaged building.


Another example of  a composite building below.

 
The second batch of buildings includes a couple more complex shops, a mosque, and three more houses.  After digging out the unfinished models, I think I will finally get around to completing them in a coming months.  Though I will probably finish them as solid models, as I would rather have a little greater detail and am not concerned with placing infantry stands in the buildings, as I was a few years ago.

It was my intent to add some of these models to my site this past January, but never got around to it.   I will add the damaged buildings (or at least some of  them) to my sale site in the next few days.  Also, I'm going to re-visit the original building models and rework them into more detailed solid models to make them more interesting, ease casting, and add them as well.  I think that I can get this done in December, as I am supposed to have some time off.  Wonder how may day job will derail this one...