Travelling and the Delta Blues

Here is the Bus with all of it's detail sans the baggage in the roof rack. As you can see there is an amount of Redneck applique armor, which just random chunks of card from the off-cuts bin. The ladder and handrails are stainless safety wire (Note the 1lb can is like $4.00 at HarborFreight). The "zombie" wire on the windows is just a little bit of fiberglass window screening.


And here is the start of 1st watercraft I have ever built from scratch. The theme is PA Delta Pirates, and I figured I would mine my time in the USN's brown water navy for ideas, so a small landing craft is the base. I haven't figured out wether to build just a ferry or a full on Tango Boat, or something in between. Tango Boats by their nature were cobbled together so what ever I come up with will be in the realm.

Bob and the bus in the well for a sense of scale.
The Boat Build is my 1st entry into the Post Apoc Wargames forum's 2011 Boat Building Challenge. And it isn't like the idea hasn't been kicked around on the TMP several times.

A quick Size Comparison

A quick snap shot of what I am using to scale my models. The background grid is 10mm on the major grid line, or 5mm squares.

The vehicles are, from left to right Old Crow's Gecko Pickup, My Jeep, Battlefront's Jeep, Old Crow's Outrider and Battlefront's 3/4ton Chevy.

The vehicles here are, from left to right Old Crow's Gecko Pickup, My Fennek, Battlefront's Jeep, Old Crow's Outrider and My Wrecker. Oh and Bob the scale figure standing by his lonesome....

And here in a cluster The Gecko again, My and Battlefront's Jeeps and The Bus.

Generally I am working in 1/100th scale, with a strong leaning towards visually matching 15mm figures. Strict 1/100th tends to produce models that look a little small-ish next to figures, but I believe that is the miniatures basing effect monkeying with perception.

A New Jeep and Roof details

Here is some roof and frontend detail on the armored car. Still pondering what other details to add, mostly the engine compartment and gear stowage covers. Made a huge mistake with the front side windows, the ends are supported by a frame based on the underlaying laminated sheet build, leaving a void behind the facing sheets. Well, those started bothering me while I had the Squadron Green out filling the surface gaps, and well I filled them. In one step. Then I sealed the area with the roofing sheet. Well the putty wasn't completely cured and the solvent took shortest path out, through the "window" sheet.

And here is the 1st of the Automotive scale vehicles. Something vaguely Jeep like. I was looking at a Battlefront Willies Jeep for general wheelbase size, and pondering GZG's 25mm Resin Range Trunk. The build was fast 3 hours when you remove the time I took today for Barbecuing pork and generally fixing and eating dinner. But that tends to be the case with blocky Plasti-Card builds.

I am pondering both details and the shape of the next vehicle. I am trying to avoid the generic "dune buggy" look. But with the genre I probably will build one, thinking of the vehicles in movies.

The Third Chassis Revealed

This is the 3rd chassis, I figured I would do something more military with it. Thus a armored car thematically inspired by Fennek a new Germen armored car. As you can see the gross modeling is done and it is down to the details. Roof hatches and the like.

Bus Details, the engine compartment and bumper built out. The covers, heat sink/vents/intakes are all courtesy of Kotobukiya and HobbyLink Japan.

The Wrecker hasn't seen any substantive work since the last up date, I am pondering the winch and the hook, both are easy enough to build. But I have some of GZGs Lifting Crane Arms (V15-ACC13) and I am pondering using them instead.

This post is a day late, was watching my ex-roommates little dog and he had a run in with a skunk right outside the backdoor. So the last 24 hours has been a odyssey of de-skunking said dog and house with a bunch of under-sink chemistry and elbow grease. Sigh, at least the dog is somewhat clean and there isn't the automatic urge to vomit upon entering the house. I pray the sun shines tomorrow so I can open the house up completely and air it out.

Evyn

Snapshots of the parking lot.

Ok this is most a picture dump of what is being worked on. Still mostly laminated plastic card construction or rough conversions. While the Wrecker needs it's back end finished the other three are at the detail stages. For me detail is genrally a flash of inspiration, sometimes looking at the model, but more often when sorting through the bits bin.

The Bus

The Wrecker

An Old Crow Provider with added center line tank.

Water Truck, another Old Crow model (The Gecko Pickup), well actually two, the big tanks cut down from their Cargo Canister Stack.

Other Peoples wheels

It has been a building weekend once everything settled

down, the joys of single parenthood...

Anyways, the sort through the lead drawer on the organiser washed up the rest of the large wheels I special ordered from GZGs in December. Jon has produced some nice models with these wheels. Notably the Bulldog series of Trucks, but I have used the cab and bodies of that line with the tread unit provided with the Surveyor2, for

a "army" that infantry is the the Sons of Thunder from Rebel Minis (I figured "space" Dwarves would want something a little more mechanically complex than wheels).

I bought the wheels, now it is time to use them, figured I would get my hand back scratch-building with store bought wheels. I am starting out with simple structures of laminated card. In which one builds up the structure with card cut to shape. I use Plastruct's Plastic Weld as it is fairly forgiving in bonding disparate types of plastics. The wheels themselves are secured to a bit of brass tube which is glued into the structure with a bit of Cyanoacrylate glue.

This the base Chasis with the wheels attached. Four layers of pre-scored, I tend to use Evergreen's "sidewalk" which is v-scored into a grid pattern for my base building, as I can rapidly build up the hidden layers with minmal cutting. "Sidewalk" comes in grid sizes from 1/8th of an inch to 1/2 inch.

Next is the start of a model I am calling "Wrecker" thematically based on the large tow-trucks used for recovering Semi-Trucks. The perfect sort of vehicle for salvaging the ruins with. In that most tow-trucks have one or two winches and plenty of stowage for tools etc. etc...
Lastly, we have the Bus. This based on a fusion of a Art Decco streetcarand a large mid-door bus, generally used to ferry people around airports local. While the base shape is done there is a lot of detail still required (Headlights, mirrors, etc... Considering things like expanded metal covered windows, roof-top bagage racks, an extended engine compartment and the like).These are all separate chassis, all built to identical specs. The Idea is these are all bigger vehicles based on truck chassis. Physically the finished models will be approximately 30mm wide by 60 to 85mm long. Due the the width of the wheels I have discarded the need for tandem rear wheels, I will explore them in later models.

I also have a large number of GZGs smaller wheels, the ones from the 6 wheeled mule and the NAC reverse trike. These are more in scale with automotive uses, and hopefully will get to them later this week.

This is one of the Ideas I have been kicking around for a jeep scaled vehicle. As well as some more traditional designs.