Sarissa Precision N605 - Small 2 Storey House - WIP

 Assembly is simple and quick. The shutters on these are rounded at the top which is nice. The footprint is the same as the ruins, and the roof and first floor lift off quite nicely. Think I'll got for a weather yellow wall and green shutters this time. Also need to cut a add on roof out of foam so it fits Vietnam better, and then tile that.

Same footprint as the ruins, with a little concrete pad for the front door.

Just realised this would work as a burnt out shell as well, if you leave out all of the card bits. Hmmm...

Maybe add some planters in front of the open windows?

Plenty of ideas, but for now, it can dry so I can coat all the card tomorrow. 

Sarissa Precision N610 and N613 WIP

 Another N610 ready for paint, but this one will be painted as something that has been destroyed years ago. We will see if I can get that done tomorrow evening.

Also assembled N613 Single Storey Souk. This can dry tonight, tomorrow magnetise the front so I can add signs so it fits Afrika, Vietnam and any Arab speaking country. Just swap signs when needed. I'll leave the roof bare so I can add water tanks or little gardens on top, again when needed. 

BSSCF2025 - Sign me up!

 After a nice week with the girls and focussing on family time, the final details for the house.

Magnetised two 15x30mm MDF bases from my bases box so I can make a Afrikan and a Vietnamese sign, added a card square for the streetsign and fixed up the chimney. And that is it, she is ready for priming. 

 

BSSCF2025 - Nest Egg

 Decided to forgo electrical work and add more nests. Bird and eggs are oversized to help with painting, and the Storch nest will get extra foliage once painted. 

 

BSSCF2025 - Broody Birds

 Finished sanding down the walls lastnight and had a discussion about the build with my daughters at breakfast this morning. I suggested I would add some Swallows nests to the house as those tie in with the whole New Life theme.

A mention of the word Swallow must be accompanied by Monthy Python. Sorry, I don't make the rules.

 

The girls, rightfully so, said that a Storch or a Storchs next should be there as well. That presents a bit of a problem as the rules stated the build must fit inside a 4x4x4 inch cube and I'm hitting those limits with not a lot of room to spare. But I'll give it a try, so in comes a chimey. Plugged it in, glued it down and filled it with superglue and cornstarch to make it solid. I'll add a nest at a later date, the same for finishing the connection between the roof and the pipe.

 The Swallows nests (I went with Barn Swallows nests) are basic balls of Brown Stuff (my Green Stuff has gone the way of the Dodo ages ago) pressed into place with a toothpick and left to set. Once those have hardend I'll add a few tiny balls so I can paint up a few little Barn Swallows. Don't expect too much, those balls will be about 1mm in diameter max, with tiny stripes of red, white, black and the occasional yellow stripe. 

 

More power! Unlimi....well, not THAT much, sorry.

 Evenings worth of painting on a old, dare I say ancient, bit of plastic. Bought it for 2,50 euros built, stripped it, cleaned it, rebuild it (as good as 64+ year old plastic let's that happen, the damn thing is at retirement age!) and done. Faller B-143 Transformer Tower, in case you want one.

H0 scale, so works for 15mm as well as 20mm. Went for the "It's older but it checks out" with no defining region stuff, so goes anywhere, any period. Symbol is something I just Googled for with Power Company and looked good. Some spring tufts et voila.

T30 75mm HMC - the basics and start of Number 1

For Tunisia.Scicily, I want some light artillery support. As I have the M3 75mm  AT guns, I already have the base vehicle for the T30  75mm HMC. With the purchase of the Airfix Parajeeps I also got the 75mm howitzers so that is now sorted.

The mount and the shield will be most of the scratchbuilding effort. The rest is mostly cosmetic and feeling my way around the conversion so the 2nd one will be much quicker.

As the base vehicle I'm using the M3 75mm halftracks (yes, the names are confusing)

Opend the backdoor, filled in the what I assume are hull stowage boxes, made a ammo rack underneath the future gunmount, and filled in the notch in the drivers armour plate....which is very, very bare so will need some work.

Testfitted one of the trailers...

And then cut down the base some more for a better fit.

The other one will be built tomorrow (I think) to the same level and after that I can do the gun mounts and the gun shields at the same time. After that adding all the small details etc. maybe invest/trade for some AB figures American 75mm gun crew, if I can find any.

It's a sign!

Decided to take it easy tonight and edit a few billboard for various locations. Feel free to use them, just copy paste and put them in a Word doc, so you can scale them to the desired size for your table.

A spot of editing - African UN compound doors

Been practicing my editing skills in a free version of Photoshop. I have plenty of nice ideas from pictures online, but they are always tiled or with tons of crap in the foreground. But with a little bit of time.....

We go from this.

To this. 

Just laserprint, stick to a plasticcard door, weather it ever so slightly and varnish it. Bob's your uncle.

Transformers!

Catch of the week, traded for the cargo part of a 1/25 scale truck trailer. It's a load of round parts, steel beams and these 3 guys.

Great big transformers, that will do for TNT and Gaslands alike. Just need individual, but matching basing so I can slot them together of keep them seperate. I want to get these painted asap.

It will most likely be my last catch as well. Some stuff is still en route to me, but my hobbyfunds are all dried up atm. I've been shoving most of the proceeds of the sales back into my bankaccount but with both of us on benefits and expenses that are bigger then our mutual income, it is a uphill battle and decided I will stop purchasing stuff untill Crisis. So no orders for new mini's, no more new secondhand plastic and preferably cut down on my trips to the second hand stores.

The bright spark in all this is that I have found a place that would like me as an intern for 2-3 days a week for 2 maybe 3 months and maybe a job after that, who knows. I don't start till late August though.

...which gives me more then enough time for our 2 week holiday and time to clear out more stuff up for sale and get some more work done on comissions as those are needed to pay for the hobby for the time being. Also, I have tons of kits to keep me busy for the time being so spending money on that should not be a priority at all.

And thx to this Blog, Lead Legeonaries, I'm now pretty convinced I can make a shantytown easily enough using the foamcutter and cast off foam to make blocks to build the huts on for a shantytown. His work looks lovely and I will enjoy copying it.

On a personal note, some minor changes/events: My girls turned 4 yesterday and we kept the party pretty low key as we didn't have much spare cash after putting most of into a single gift for the girls.....a nice big pink trampoline with safety net etc. And they love it! And for me personally, while my knee still hurts as always, I've been having a lot less resistance while walking and cycling and I'm pretty chuffed about it. It's also been 4 weeks now since I last drank any sort of softdrink, and I now just drink bubbly or regular water and my health has improved a lot. A tone more energy, no more urges for late night snacking, and a general better feeling. Just lovely :)

The only issue ai have atm if that my focus has gone to shit. I'm just building as I feel like, with no clear goal, and I want to change that. I've set up a painting challenge on my Dutch Battlegroup page (2x Recce unit in August) to get some focus, plus I should be working on creating more Gaslands industrial scenery, and just keep the rest low key and not on a priority list.

And that is it for today. Tomorrow is the last day in daycare for my girls so we are having a small party at school, for which Kim and I got very creative. Just need to make some last minute things in the morning and then we are set.

It's wrecking time!

Decided to make good use of a underscale Daimler Dingo, in this case the one you get in the Monty's Caravan box.  As I prefer the S-Model version, this one will get a second lease of life as a completely burnt out model. Wheelnubs come from the 1/76 Matchbox LRDG set.

Waiting for everything to dry and set and then it is straight in line for the stuff I want to prime this week. I've left off anything that dates it too much, like fuelcans, so it can be used as a fully burnt wreck for the BEF, Afrika and Normandy etc as well. The green blob to the right of the vehicle is a officers hat btw, salvaged that off of the hard plastic officers inside the box.

Out with the old, in with the....less old?

As my PC was shutting down twice a night by crashing, I figured it was time to get a new one. Not having spare funds for that, it was a bit hard to find anything on my budget, but after selling some more stuff and with 200 euros cash in hand I found a 5 year old Gaming PC. After 3 evenings of work I manegd to get it to run properly and accept my old HHD drive (well, one of them anyway). I just need to purchase 2 more plugs so I can run the DVD player and my second HDD as well. But those are only a couple of euros each and can wait till after my holiday. It's a lovely PC, it can run 2 screens which would be nice if it wasn't for the fact it does not recognise my old 19 inch back up screen....If I can find a nice 22 inch or bigger one for a cheap price locally I'll be sure to allocate some funds for that....but again, no rush.

The PC barely misses out running Fallout 4.....which is a blessing in disguise as it would mean I would get lost behind the pc again for months. Still, a bit of shame.

Anyway, I did some modelling in between the PC, sick kids and my studies. Finally made the Italian Commandtruck  using the Italeri Lancia 3R0 90mm truck and the venerable Matchbox Monty's Caravan. It's not the cheapest of conversions for what essentially is just a Communications Relay Truck but I will paint it in weathered sand, Italian licence plates and plenty of dust covering those so it works for my 8th Army as well as Italians/Germans in the future. So I spent 25+ euros for just one truck? Not really :) 2 kits combined make 1x Comms Relay Truck, 1x Bison Concrete Bunker Truck, 1 burnt out Dingo wreck and one spare 90mm AA gun that will find a place on my Britannia trawler (when I find it again) to make it a Italian sub-chaser.

 

The conversion is super easy, just shave a bit of the bits sticking out from the cab and use a plasticcard spacer to mount the office body on top of the truck and that is it. I've changed the canopy mounts for brass wire for strength though. I will now make a small generator and 2 poles with wire strung between them to complete the look.

The tiny guns you see are 2 WIP HäT Skoda 75mm Mountain guns. I've bought these for my Partisans only to find out the Gebirgsjager used them as well so these, after some work to add extra armoured flaps on the front and opening up the viewports, are meant for the future Gebirgsjager I want to trade with a friend. The Partisan ones will be stripped down by removing the armoured plate. Les sweight, so easier to handle and conceal, that is my reasoning behind that.

Tomorrow is my last exam, and after that, weather permitting, I want to get on with painting stuff again as I have debris, Gaslands cars and other assorted bits lined up for painting.

Did not buy webspace yet, still looking into that and ways to fund it. 

I'll leave you with the useful parts of a job lot I picked up from Marktplaats that arrived on friday.

 These will become wrecks, as the decals are missing and I need the wheels and the 1/76 scale makes it does not fit well with my 1/72 stuff. I intend to pick up some resin ones for these when I finally get to it.

 Nothing I'd buy normally but the tent is nice (after some work) and the rest is ok for scatter I guess.

The sole reason for buying the lot. I've had a standing request for this ever since proofreading Tobruk, and no one had any spare and the Ebay prices are ridiculous. So I lucked out, again. Will look nice in Desert Sand camouflage. I've also managed to find an Auster and 2 Pipers for Normandy but those haven't been delivered yet.

Now, back to my studies.