E-100 ''What-if '' - 1/35 Trumpeter

Hello All and all hello ...

Right ... so I got a new finished kit to show you dear readers. Unfortunately, this is one of my worst finished kit to date. Coming in second after my failure of a Tiger I, this is one of those build that I just had to call it '' finished '' and just move on. 

This thing was painted for four times. I put on just a german grey and decided to strip it and put on a night Lozenge camouflage but the paint work I put on was complete crap and there were pain runs and poor masking job so I had to strip it. I decided to put on digital which came out utter crap ( again ) so I had to strip it and after a long time of inactivity, a good friend of mine suggest this current scheme to me and I just went ahead. Thank lord he suggested this scheme to me. I was so close to bin it. 

Further problem arose when deciding on the weathering scheme. Getting tired of the muddy look, I wanted to give it an urban feel. I put on streakings using AK and the streakings I put on came out as utter rubbish. I am very weak in streakings so decided to put them on to practice with. Having no choice but to move on, I put on a different colour of streakings with oil and it came out better but nothing satisfactory. 

The next problem was the pigments. I got tired of the brush on looks so I decided to apply it dry and fix it with thinner. I wanted to show so many debris dusts and rubble from urban fightings that I applied so much pigments and apply thinner on them very generously that the thinner runs down the unwanted surfaces and pooled around, creating effects I did not want. 

The other let down was the sorry state of the commander scopes. There is no clear parts nor plastics to fill in those ugly holes so I had to use Deluxe Materials Glue and Glaze and painted it green. My lack of control with the Glue and Glaze resulted in a very bad job. 

I had a fun time putting on the extra stowage on the deck and the rust effects on the spare tracks. Those are the only satisfactory outcome from this build. The colours used were Tamiya dark yellow, olive green and red brown. Vallejo german grey was used on the wheels and chassis. MIG pigments were used for the dusts. The rust was done with Vellejo panzer aces rust and oil paints. The tarp was made from kitchen foil. 

Kit wise, this kit is very simple, fun and goes up quickly. This is one of Trumpeter good kits ( before they start making those GREAT kits like the T62 and such ) and suffers in some details. The biggest gripe about this kit is the lack of clear parts for the commander periscope. 

It's time for the photos - 

(If you think some are small, just click on them ) 

The spare tracks -

The stowage -

And as usual, my show case photos from various angles-

And as usual from me -

Well, that's about as much I can sum up about the build. 

I do not love what I did on this kit, not one bit. I see this as a failure but this served as a very valuable learning curve. I shouldn't even be letting the readers see this failure but I figure I should show this just so people can read about the bumps I faced so that they do not do the same mistakes I did and feel disheartened and throw away their kits ( I almost did ).

Thank you guys for always supporting me. Thank you dear readers for your patronage as well.

Until Next time

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W.I.P 1/35 DANA 152 mm - Part 5

Finally.. some update on this baby ... I've ignored this girl for far too long ... 

If everybody can recall- I cut off the last update after I primed everything so let's pick up from that. After priming everything, I painted the engine and the interior of the engine bay as it would be VERY visible from the engine grilles that I have shown before. 

This was my first time painting an engine and I had absolutely no idea what I was doing but I think I managed to pull through. Have a look - 

The ugly black lines you see are my shadings lines that I put on with hand brush as I was too lazy to put them on with airbrush .. 

After that, I put on the remaining pieces of the PE which were the big engine cover hatches and primed it again and painted the base colours; Mr. Hobby Aqueous H303

This was my second time painting this but I thinned it down with methylated spirit and it just came out so smooth. I never had that much fun painting with any other paint.. well, except maybe with Vallejo Air.

The 2nd colour and first camo patches goes on; again I used Mr. Hobby Aqueous. The colour is H37 wood brown.

The third colour and 2nd camo patches went on. As I already had tamiya black, I didn't waste any further money on Mr.Hobby black and just used tamiya black. Lord, I hated tamiya black. ( Black and white are really hard to paint for me ) 

After that, I left if alone for a few days and while trying to put weathering on my T-55 Engima, I decided to dirtied up the chassis and running gear like so -

And after that comes decals- 

The front cab -

and the back -

I'm building a Polish army version and I just realized, I picked up a scheme that has only those four decals on. While relieved of the fact that I don't have to put on too much decals, I was kind disappointed that there was only four.

Moving on, I applied pin wash to the whole thing. I used AK nato vehicle wash ( the black one ) -

After that, I put on a matt varnish and spray some thinned down dirt/earth/dust colour enamels on to prepare for the upcoming weathering stages ... 

Next, I followed up that step with painting of the vision ports and lights -

I have no idea how to make the front light looks realistic.. this looks stupid IMO. I should put on some gloss varnish with brush to build this feel of a glass head light.

Tail lights -

And I also painted the only 3 tools on-board, the tow cable and the straps on the little round thingy and the saw.

and this is how this baby looks now - 

Whew... well, that was a big update... all I need now is to followed up on the weathering and I should be done. I will see if I make enough progress to make an update.. if not, then straight to the finished product..... 

Until the next update....

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