Production-Lining Your Art

Most of us build more than we can finish in the short term, we all have a variety of projects on the boil at once and many of us move among them at whim, building or painting as the fancy takes us. That’s the marvellous flexibility of the hobby, really. Of course some end up back in their boxes on the shelf because we’ve lost patience with them for some reason – obstinate fit, inaccuracy, waiting for parts or decals, whatever. The only kit I’ve put aside in recent times was a Hobbycraft Corsair, and it’s rather put me off the brand.

But eventually you need to clear that bench, get projects to completion, on display, and move on to new territory, though sometimes models have been in play for years. I found myself doing this recently, with a Zvezda (ex-Dragon) BTR-70 that had been unfinished in the box for about three years after being started as a ‘need-to-build-something’ project that I had thought would be a quick build, only to find the tiny Dragon parts tended to snap on the sprue, and the need to replace some with shaped wire rather consigned the beast to the shelf for a long time. Recently I got around to building a Tamiya StuG IV which has been in my stash for at least ten years, I got it from a second hand dealer in Japan, it’s the edition with all Japanese instructions (not that that’s a problem, Tamiyas really only go together one way and the diagrams are obvious.) Add to the mix the Testor edition of Italeri’s Sd.Kfz 234/2 Puma recon vehicle and I had a trio of 1:35th scale armour all clamouring to be finished more or less together. (You might have spotted them in the previous post, if sharp-eyed.)



So the solution was to do them production-line fashion. Henry Ford knew what he was doing, and while it depersonalised a craftsman into a repetitive technician, the hobby can withstand that at a small scale. Given that all three models were finally into their full paint jobs, I could tackle the finishing phases all of a piece. Each model received its fade coat, highly thinned paint misted onto the horizontal surfaces to create the impression the paintwork is faded by the elements. Then I did the oil filter weathering on them all, which was a process of washing the acrylic paints over with enamel thinner carrying dissolved artists’ oils to create tonal variety and the characteristic patterns of rust streaking. Then the pinwash to bring out details by capillary action, and tiny amounts of thicker paint to establish areas of open old rust; and finally brighter rust shades where rust is newer. The next phase is drybrushing in enamels (I can’t do it in acrylics, they simply dry too fast for me to keep up with the job and the task of endlessly cleaning and refreshing the brush) to profile edges and raised detail, making them ‘pop’ from the darker background of the paint and washing.

Then onto external fittings: tools and jerrycans on both the German subjects, all of which need to be painted and weathered before mounting, and a couple of fittings for the BTR. Next step decals – all three models could cross the bench together. Then onto the dust phase, Mig pigments brushed on in strategic locations for that touch of environment adhering to the beast. Final fittings, delicate radio antennas are often the last thing I mount, and of course the tedious process of painting a sharp division between wheel rims and tires, though that was eased somewhat with a new tool I’ll be reviewing here before long.



So there you have it – the same finishing techniques applied across the spectrum of three models in widely varying schemes, two wheeled vehicles, one on treads, different eras, three different manufacturers, but all responding to the same techniques for a satisfyingly dirty, beat-up appearance that whispers to the viewer’s subconscious that these vehicles have seen plenty of hard service. And all walked through the process from overall painting to completion side by side over the space of about a fortnight.

Now, I wonder if I should production-line build from the beginning in future? It certainly speeds up a heavy build schedule…

Look for retrospective reviews of these kits right here in the near future!

Why do so many companies have trouble with tracks?

Tracks... All armoured vehicles over a certain weight have them. They come in endless styles, narrow ones, broad ones, cleated tracks, padded tracks, live track, dead track... Amtracks with ‘swimming grousers,’ Shermans with ‘snow grousers,’ Panzers with Ostketten. The fascination with modelling tanks brought with it the challenge of companies producing realistic tracks, and most modellers would say they’ve never really achieved 100% accuracy no matter what approach they’ve taken.

There are traditional flexible vinyl tracks, single-piece, to be joined around the running gear, and they do a generally good job. In the early 1970s they tended to be poorly detailed and possibly undetailed on one side, though today molding technology and computerised machining of the molds means they can be highly detailed both sides. The ones above are from Tamiya’s 1:35th scale King Tiger, Ardennes. The drawback is that the relative stiffness of the vinyl means the tracks don’t develop a sag between the return rollers, or lie along the top of large diameter wheels, like real tracks do. 

 

 Then there are individual-link or link-and-length tracks, which call for cleanup and assembly. For some modellers these are the best, though for others they are a nightmare whose tedious nature more than forgives the lack of sag in the vinyls. Above are the indie links made by Academy to compliment their issue of the early Tamiya Panzer IV-derived tanks (all the models on the box are of Tamiya origin). And below are ModelKasten’s set for the above-mentioned King Tiger. 

If sag is your thing, Trumpeter got ambitious a few years ago and produced superbly machined link-and-length tracks for their KV-1 series of kits in which the sag over the return rollers was molded right in, and even the most die-hard anti-L&L builder must feel tempted by these amazing pieces of injection work:  

Then come the workable tracks from AM companies, whitemetal, plastic or resin with wire pivots taking the place of the real track bolts, and which will hang, sag and roll like real (dead) track -- for a price.  

Dragon came up with Magic Tracks, a soft styrene type in which the links click-fit and will hold their shape until you can hit them with liquid cement, lending themselves to being shaped to any configuration of suspension. This is a neat idea and probably the most innovative. Vehicles with skirts tend to make that perfect hang and sag of the return length superfluous though: you can’t see it, so why sweat blood on it? And tight tracks don’t sag anyway. But tightness raises the question of why some companies don’t seem to be able to get it right in the most profound sense. 

I’m talking about early Trumpeter. I was really attracted to the Chinese Type 89 tank Destroyer, and was building along quite satisfactorily -- until I came to the tracks. They were half an inch too short (below) to link up around the running gear, and no amount of coaxing was going to change that: snapping off the portside idler wheel convinced me to give up. I tried heat treatment, stretching them by heating them with a hair drier, and hanging them with weights, but after half a dozen exhaustive treatments, using all the heat my hands could tolerate, one track had grown about one link’s worth, as the vinyl shrank again upon cooling. I was fed up and shelved the project. That late-mold Tamiya StuG III I reviewed last time was both a pleasure and a relief to build instead.

 

 Of course I didn’t give up entirely. The Type 89 shares the same chassis with the 122mm MBRL and the Type 83 SP artillery, I have them all, and all I would need is a single extra length of track to complete them. Cut out a few links and splice them in with superglue and thread as necessary, and suddenly the tracks will go round the running gear and meet as they should. I emailed Trumpeter, seeking to buy a spare length of track, got a reply asking me to forward photographs of the parts involved... Then nothing. Hey, I tried, but their aftermarket support at this point is as dodgy as their English, which is curious given their truly ambitious products and their dedicated assault on the affluent end of the Western marketplace. Their more modern products are of higher quality, I would certainly hope the tracks are the right length given the price they charge for their new armour.

And what about Dragon? That other Chinese company often considered to have eclipsed Tamiya as king of 1:35th scale? Early Dragon is beset by far too many microscopic parts which vanish into the carpet, and by the sort of over-thought engineering that has Dragon airplane models glide into waist bins beside the benches of grown modellers sobbing with frustration at their sheer unfriendliness and inaccuracy of fit. This is the antithesis of Tamiya’s philosophy, and while Tamiya’s earlier products may not be acceptably accurate or sufficiently detailed for today’s more mature taste, you can mostly rely on them to build well. “Buildability” was Mr. Tamiya’s watchword, and is sure to have contributed to the company’s historic success.

My only experience with early Dragon is in the reboxing of their classic Russian armour models when the molds were obtained by Zvezda. Their BTR-70 built fine, only a few grab handles needed to be replaced with brass because they broke before I could remove them from the sprue (because the parts were finer than their sprue attachments!) But their T-72 is another matter. It may be Zvezda’s plastic: the link and length tracks are brittle and the plastic really does not like to react with superglue (a bit like Chinese plastic in that respect). Thus trying to piece those tracks together promised to be an exercise in frustration. The Zvezda T-72B with Explosive Reactive Armour is easily the most detailed tank model I have ever built, and it sits unfinished in its box because there is no way I’ll mess around with that job, and the only AM T-72 tracks I can locate are far more expensive than the kit was. My prayer, thrown to the gods of styrene, is that AFV Club will finally produce high quality vinyl replacements in their expanding range of sell-alone tracks.

Which brings me back to my lament, why can’t companies with all the expertise and the million-dollar computer-assisted design and manufacture, get the tracks right? Properly detailed, that fit the sprockets exactly, articulate with each other, and take a realistic paintjob? If it has to be link-and-length, then the plastic had better respond well to glue, you certainly can’t stitch them together. And if they’re vinyl then is it too much to ask that they be the right length?

These criticisms don’t apply to modern Tamiya products, modern Dragon, or, as far as I know, current Trumpeter or Revell-Germany. But they can all be criticised for their sometimes exorbitant prices. I know, I know—I want it all ways, tracks that fit and an affordable price. I’m just out of touch with reality...