The Protectorates of Bohemia and Moravia, Czech 1945

Hi again. This is my latest diorama, published in Steelmasters magazine issue 125.
The whole diorama is done from cork sheets, and scratch built materials.
The base is formed from foam, and covered with acrylic resin.
StuG IV is dragon with 4 sets of Voyager PE sets, fruilmodel tarcks, and RB aluminum barrel.
Enjoy

Making Stone with Cork

There are many ways of using cork to make stone and brick, this is just my technique. I am by far the first person to use cork, I learned from the best and adapted to fit my needs and style.

Paving the Roads

I have a knack for putting myself through a ton of work on my dios, this one is no different! I have begun the casting of the cobblestone setts that will be used to pack the roads on this base. The casting is a long process on a project this large.

Each time I pull the castings I get 75 stones. The estimated number needed to par all the roadway is roughly 3,200; all cast, cleaned and set individually onto the base. While this is a grueling process and I have had many people tell me I am crazy and I should do it a simpler way, the fact is this is the most realistic look as it is done like the real roads. 

To help smooth out the ruts in the roadway and to give a better surface for the stones to be glued, I have used sanded tile grout to cover the insulation foam used for the basic shapes.

Building a Village Corner

Now that I have the Italian home finished, I have been playing around with a few new projects trying to brain storm some new ideas for a diorama. During this time I have been building a Sherman M3A2 and needed a base to put it on once finished.

I began looking at some old buildings I never finished for one reason or another, and found one that I was still interested in finishing.

I had begun this building roughly ten years ago and got stalled to a halt do to some mistakes I made in constructing it. At the time I didn't know how to fix what I had done and figured it was a loss and put it away on a high shelf "out of sight".

I might have finished this one sooner had I realized how easy it was to undo the mistakes and refinish it. But all in all I am glad I waited until now as I have a new vision for it and have begun the construction, starting with a little demo of the affected areas.

 

It was quite simple to remove the mistake, which was infilling the beams with plaster and trying to scribe the brickwork and stucco into it. I was a bit to messy in the application and it just went down hill from there. But now I have a new slate to start the reconstruction and the construction of the surrounding buildings and streets.

MV-22 Osprey Eggplane - Hasegawa

I love model building for bringing reality to scale. I spent hours researching the subject and then another more hours researching for the aftermarkets and spending a bunch of money! Back in the bench cleaning resin parts and bending photoetche is another pain ... it's true that in the end it is worth it ... but not always I'm in the mood for so much reality!!
So I have to say that I have two "Model Building guilty pleasures" , one is making those old matchbox kits come to life... there is something about building a model with my age and painting and weathering with the new techniques that is just a pure pleasure!! The second... well the second is the "Egg themed models" ... those cartoon alike kits have something that just grab my eyes and fill my brain with the scream "Build me!! Build me!!" .

So I would like to leave a in box review regarding the newest and so much anticipated Egg delight by hasegawa. The MV-22 Osprey EGG ...

This box is nothing alike the rest of the hasegawa egg series, its much bigger in height due to the size of the model itself and also do to the detail.

The box contains 1 set of instructions, 1 decal sheet , 2 grey sprues, 1 black sprue , 1 rubber sprue and 1 transparent sprue... it seems a lot for a Egg plane ... and it sure is!!!

The panel lines on the plane are recessed and the detail is very crisp. It comes with 2 figures and I had a wonderful surprise with one of them, the pilot with the open visor helmet only has a nose!!
When I went to the instructions it said the eyes and mouth where decal... and that got me by surprise... but when I look at the decal sheet ... i didn't believe my eyes ... they have to options... one with a closed mouth and another one smiling! What a treat!!!
For those who already build hasegawa egg planes one of the most feared part was the canopy. Well fear no more this time hasegawa did a awesome job! From the detail to the protection sprue its a beautiful thing to see , and I wish other brands would take a look at this and do it also on their transparent parts.
The decal sheet has 2 markings available VMM-265(Futnema-2012) and VMM-164 (Miramar-2011)
In conclusion , this model is really great , nice detail and sure looks like a lot of fun. If you have a big project in your bench that sometimes you just want to get your mind off I advise you get one of these for the pure pleasure. If you are new to model building and would like to do a simple model I suggest you get a more simpler egg...

RB Model Chains

This week a order from RB model arrived at my mail box. I'm always happy to open the mail packages from RB since they have great products at great prices, I usually buy barrels or ammo for my model tanks but this time I was eager to check out their new brass chain. At first when I browsed their website ( http://www.rbmodel.com/ ) they announced "High quality, very strong (welded links) brass chain." when I saw the small size of the links I got pretty intrigued. So I discarded all the goodies I got for later inspection and immediately open the 2 bags of chains!! And what a treat I had !! They are what they announced,high quality , strong and amazingly welded links. My mind went completely off the model boat applications and went straight to dioramas, the detail is so amazing that this could be use for winches, cranes , rails, fences , gates and so on ... this with a photoetched padlock and a 1/35 bike ... my mind keeps coming up with ideas. It's a great deal has well since the quality price relation is very uneven , you get a 1 meter long of detailed brass chain for less then 1,50 € . So in my opinion this is a great product to have in your workbench and a great deal.

 For those who don't know RB Model I can tell they have a great customer support and dispatch items really fast... one more thing.. I have to share... I also got 1/35 Panzerfaust, since I got so astonished by  the quality I leave you a picture and let you judge for yourself.

Finished the Italian Home

Well, this progect has taken quite some time to finish. However, as I was originally building it for myself I went at it at a slow pace with no real hurry.

Since the beginning of this project it has taken a turn into a commercially available product.

Here are the finished images that will be used for the boxart.