Maddog Manufacturing Production for 2019

[Duke Maddog]

Thanks Blacksheep! I'm sure trying to stay that way.

[Duke Maddog]

Today was an 'empty' day so I was able to marathon in my Hobby Room. I am thrilled with so much of the progress I made today. So brace yourselves everyone, this is gonna be a long one. Please keep your sea belts fastened and your hands and arms inside the trolley at all times. Thank you for joining us. Now on with the tour...

I'll start with my armor again; I was really busting my hump to move a lot of this forward.

Let's start with my two ACE Italian vehicles. The Trattore got a coat of paint that came out very grainy. Apparently my Italian Armor Sand from Testor's was not up to snuff:



Everything is just dry-fit together on the chassis, that's why it looks so wonky.

Since I still had the Italian Armor Sand in my airbrush, I went ahead and shot the Coloniale as well:



Later on I sanded them both smooth and re-shot them both with some Testor's Dark Tan which looked 'close enough'. After that dried, I added the camouflage pattern on the Coloniale and painted the roof:



After that dried, I shot a gloss coat on it and then added the decals. There were only two; a front license plate and a rear license plate. Here it is showing the front one. I didn't turn this around for a second shot:



That was a tiny one. The Micro Sol hadn't taken effect yet.

Moving on, I shot paint on the British Airborne Group of vehicles. It is a flat paint, but I must have thinned it slightly too much since it came out almost gloss:



When that was dry, I painted the seats inside the jeep:



Before that though, since I still had that olive drab color in my airbrush, I decided to shoot another model. This one was the Hungarian Toldi II that the instructions said was an Olive Drab color under a whitewash. So, I shot the same color on the Toldi:



It might not be accurate, but It's an Olive Drab color. I doubt I'll run into any former Toldi crew members who'll tell me it's wrong. And no, I won't be winter white-washing this; I have no winter vehicles (save the Aerosans) and I don't plan on having this clash with the rest of my collection.

Moving on from there, I loaded a different Olive Drab into the brush and shot the remaining sub-assemblies on my Diamond T wrecker. This is when I found out that it was the wrong color. That's when I tried to modulate the color a bit on the cab to try and blend it. I ain't happy:



While that was drying, I decided it was time to finish the assembly on the cab. It gave me quite the fight:





There's still a bit of touch up to do on that.

Later when the sub--assemblies were dry, I added them to the rear of the chassis. Yeah, I hadn't re-painted them yet:



However, while gluing them down, I realized I hadn't glued down the cab! That came off and some tape went around the chassis so I could re-paint the rear of this truck in the matching colors.

Unless someone could tell me which color is the more correct one; I'll leave it on there and re-paint the cab. It needs touching up anyway. Please let me know...

Finally, I finished off the painting of the little Japanese Chi Nu since it had been masked for quite some time already:



After that was dried, I removed all the Silly Putty from this model. I was real pleased with what I saw:



Yeah, there are some rough spots but not many. That was mostly due to operator error. Easy fixes though.

Just for fun I decided to add the already-weathered wheels and tracks to this to see how it was going to look. This is fast becoming one of my favorite Japanese tanks:



Later on this got the track assemblies removed again and a gloss coat on it for decals:



It's still wet on there and hadn't time to smooth out.

Now it was time to take a break on painting and do a bit of assembly on some other models while I waited for paint and clearcoats to dry...

First off, I added a few extra detail parts to the Russian BREM. Then I glued some grey thread onto the crane and added the hook to the end. I then painted the hook after everything was finishing drying:



Yes, there appears to be a bit too much paint on the hook. I fixed that after taking this pic. Later I finished off this detail painting.

I then moved on to my SAM-2 missile launcher. I decided to remove the missile from the launching arm to make things easier to paint. I then glued all the base sub-assemblies together:



You can see that, due to the shortcomings of this short-run kit; the launching arm does not remain raised. So, I added a small slip of strip styrene to the inside to help it stand up, It works better now:



This one will be heading to the spray booth soon, along with the Hell Cannons. Speaking of Hell Cannons....

I was afraid that the different sub-assemblies on my Hell Cannons were going to get lost and/or broken. So, it was time to finish them up. I built the bigger one first:



Earlier someone remarked about how big these beasties are. Here I shot a pic with a soldier standing next to it. Both are 1/72 scale:



Oh yeah! That's big!

I then assembled the smaller cannon:



Here's a shot of the two of them side by side:



A final shot of them with the soldier again. He must have wandered off for a snack break or something before:



Earlier in this Thread I showed you the Colonial with the decals on. That was when I had finished all the painting and assembly and everything was dry enough to start adding decals. After the Coloniale, I decaled the Jeep and Trailer in the British Airborne set:



Man, those things were tiny! What made it worse was that Airfix had printed everything so freakin' close together that it was almost impossible to cut them out without messing up others! I'm so thrilled that I didn't have any of them get cut in the process.

Moving on, I then decaled the Toldi II. This was easier to do since IBG had given a lot of space between decals:



Next I moved on and added decals to the Japanese Chi Nu:



Then I moved on and added the decals to the two Russian tractors. Here's the first one. Everything was in front:



The second one had decals on front and back:





Well, I was on a roll so I decided to add the decals to something I have been needing to decal for awhile. I added the deck decals to the review kit of the Izumo that I had left languishing on my bench for too long. These look darn good:



I still have to add the hull decals and additional decals on the island and then this beastie will be ready for me to add all the photo etch.

Since I was decaling long-term bench warmers, I also decided to do one more. I pulled down the Space Shuttle and added the decals to this one, making it the Columbia:





Finally, after all that, it was time to call it a day. Thus ends this long update.

Thanks all for looking in, comments are welcome.

[Stikpusher]

Man that was quite a session. All in one day? Wow!

[Medicman71]

Man I wish I could get that much done in one day!

[Duke Maddog]

Thanks guys! Yeah, I did all that in one day. Granted, I spent about 7+ hours in the Hobby Room that day! It felt great! I need to find another day to do it again....

[Duke Maddog]

Okay, I had a few more days of building so; after building on a few models, I concentrated on those projects closest to the finish line. Here they are in some semblance of order....

I'll start with the aircraft I'm building for Bruce. The first thing I did was to add the metal barrels of the wing guns to the wings. This is the first time I ever did something like this:



While those were drying, I started to assemble the landing gear. This was tough; there are 11 parts in each one! That's an awful lot for a 1/72 scale landing gear! Here is one of them, still missing the last couple parts. You can see how hard a time I had building this:



Later on, I added the engine and the cowl to the front of this bird. You can see it here with both landing gear sitting next to it:



After the landing gear dried sufficiently, I added them to this bird. She's now standing on her own feet:



That needed to dry so I moved on. Here's the armor I worked on as I was waiting for that to dry.


I'll start with a couple ACE models I've been eager to build. First up is the Centurion, which got the suspension and most all the other fiddly bits on the main hull:



After that, I finished the turret, adding almost all the detail parts to this:



...and then I posed it on the hull. This beastie is almost ready for paint already:



Since I was working on the Centurion, I also moved ahead on the Centurion-based Nagmachon. I started by building up the upper hull. You can see the ACE-type fit that this still has. There's gonna be some filler in my future:





After that, I assembled the 'doghouse'. This had two full-sized parts that you bent around to fit on the base. Pretty ingenious if you ask me! Here's the front:



And here's the back:



The top is just dry-fit on; that way I can add the windows to this later.


I'm happy with how quickly this is moving along. I decided to pose everything dry-fit together to see how it's gonna look:




After that, I decided it was time to take some of these models over the finish line. I'll start with the Italian Coloniale. This little car got it's wheels on. The upper roof is only dry-fit still:



Later on I dullcoated this, added the windows, cemented the roof down and moved on...

...to the Trattore truck. I cemented the bed to the chassis of this truck along with the fenders; added the vinyl tires to the rims and assembled the tilt:



At that point I had lost the entire cab so this was set aside. Later on (two days later!) I found the cab so this will show on a future update again. I moved on to another model.

I then added the machine gun to the front of the Toldi's turret and painted it:



Now all I have to do is add the tracks and the exhaust on the back, then cement down the top hull to the bottom hull and this little tank will be done.

Moving on from that, I decided to try and finish the Japanese Chi Nu tank. I re-painted the exhaust with a mixture of flat black and copper; painting the copper on while the flat black was still partially wet. This gives a burnt metal effect. Here it is still a bit wet:



After that, I added the photo-etch screens to the tops of these pipes:



After a bit of touch up, rust application and the remaining detail parts, I finished this one up.

Now on to bigger game....

The two Russian tractors were so close, it was time to bring them home. I started by adding the vinyl tires to the rims and adding the wheels to the first truck:





They fit so well and tight that I didn't need to glue them! And I could still remove them as necessary. Therefore, I added them to the second truck:





After that, I pulled the tires off the trucks and weathered them with some weathering powders. Then I weathered the trucks themselves with the airbrush and a dirty, dusty color as well as some judicious application of the powders used on the tires. Adding the wheels back to these trucks brought them that much closer to being finished:









After that, it was just a matter of adding all the final detail bits and calling them done.



Okay, that completes this tour of the facility. I appreciate you all stopping in and taking the tour. If you make your way to the staging lot, you'll be able to see the nine models I completed this week.

Thanks all for looking in, comments are welcome.

[Stuart]

Superb work all around but I really like that Hellcat Mark - it's certainly worth all of the hard work you've put into it!

[Stikpusher]

Looking good Mark. I’m really liking those Russian trucks. But your Helcat needs an adjustment... the wheel hubs face outboard and the doors are on the inboard side.

[Medicman71]

Nice work as always Mark!

[Duke Maddog]

Thanks for the great comments and compliments guys! I appreciate that very much.

Stuart, you are too kind, considering how this Hellcat gave me HELLcat the whole time I was painting and finishing it!

Carlos... noted. I'll be trying to fix that this weekend. Thanks for the heads up. I also love those Russian trucks; now if I could find a trailer to hook up to the one. And just this morning; I see from HLJ that Takom is releasing this MAZ-537 tractor... WITH a flatbed trailer! Now, where is a load to hook up to the back of the one I already have?