Spanky's Horch 4x4

Two old Tamyia kits.
Spanky refers to these kits as First Generation.

Nice Tiger pattern Camouflage Smocks and Helmet covers.

Verlinden & Dragon 1/35 Dio

Another one of Dave's Dio's.

Verlinden 1/35 Housing Base and Generation Two Dragon SS Germans.

Dave loves his 2nd Generation figures.

I believe he has this set in France 1944.

Dave's Stuart Light Tank

This Stuart is one of my favourite models of Dave's.
I like ugly Tanks and the Stuart is a great example of ugly.

The chipping and wash on this tank I think is outstanding.

Six Weapons per Tank must have been an armourers nightmare.

The scatchmarks lend an additional worn look to the model.

Awesome Stuff.

Dragon British Troops

Dave has used a few of these in his Tank Dio's.

Good detail shown here especially the waterbottle.

Hobbyboss ME 109

Dave can make a cheap and nasty kit like this one turn into a stunner!

Boeing B17 Memphis Belle

Chintz reminded me on the phone last night that we went to see the Movie of this aircraft after a Exercise in the 1990's.
I think we had spent quite a bit of time in the bar prior to attending it, because I can't remember much of it at all.

Dave said: I just wanted to add; the quality of finish that I have attained even from my average quality airbrush is far superior to any finish I was getting using brush paints. I now exclusively air brush Acrylics, and generally use enamels to pick out the detail. It really has pushed my kit production into a new level. I have also gone back and resprayed kits that I brush painted a few years ago, and where I am unhappy with the quality of the kit or the finish or the ability of actually producing a good kit, (think the early Tamiya Panther for example), I have sacrificed them to the children. It seems to keep the 3 year old happy. Having said that, I still keep some basic colours in cans for convinence sake, silver, matt black, white and I'm looking for a decent red brown at Mitre 10 for painting tracks.

Dave's Convair B36 Peacemaker

Dave has also been known to dabble with Aircraft construction. He has hung this above one of his boys beds, the poor kid has been having nightmares about Slim Pickens riding a H Bomb onto his duvet!
Seen here with an Airfix Centurion, I love the Aircraft from the 1950's, Big, Silver and Ugly.

Dishwasher Of Death

When Dave gets Armour to recycle and rebuild one of the first things he does is to thoroughly clean the kit to get rid of any excess decals and paint that the previous owner has adorned it with...

Warning the following photo's show kitchen appliances being used in a role not designed for, viewer discretion is advised.

Into the Dishwasher of Death!!! Make sure the Wife is not at home when you do this.

After the wash, Decals removed mostly.

The finished products, be sure to spend 4 minutes after the wash collecting all the bits that have fallen off during the cycle! and just give the Wife a blank stare when she asks why there are decals on the inside of her coffee cups.

Sheridan

M48AE3 Vietnam

Coldstream Guards Sherman 1945

Canadian Jumbo, 1944

Captured M8, Italy 1944

Now What?

Just When You Thought It Was Over...

Yesterday I thought I had finished the Spanky Series of 1/35 scale kits...Today at work looking on my computer I found more...much more, so I might as well post them, some of them are little rippers. The text below is from the original email.

More rebuilds, this time of a couple of Humvees. They do need to be dry brushed and given a bit of a dusting, but I liked the way they have developed so far. Because they are repaints there is not much work done to the interior, and there is also a bit of plastic frosting from the glue on the glass, apart from that, they are ok and will do alright as Humvee examples.Humvee 1. This beastie was just assembled in plastic with no paint, so it was an easy canvas. I'm trying to get some of those warning signs that they drive around with in Iraq, (Stay back 100m or you will be shot)
Humvee 2, a load carrier, I will add some stuff to the rear. This has received a liberal dosing of the salt method for paint chipping. The brown colour is the colour it was prior to painting. It was horrible.
The Tamiya MRE cartons with nice salt chipping effect on the rear. I will make some more up for the rear deck of this vehicle and add some water jerry cans as well. Note the green radio mounts. I saw pictures of the OD Green mounts all over desert vehicles, obviously they mount the comms in theatre and after having resprayed the colour. I think this vehicle will come up well with some further work.

Just another view of the first Humvee. Of note was the catalyst for this rebuild being that I brought the Tamiya Modern Veh accessories set. On the back it shows an illustration of a Humvee with the recognition panels etc, loaded up with gear. I had a humvee in the box waiting for a repaint, so I thought why not? I added the panels that came in the set and as I was rebuilding, I thought to myself, how do they strap this stuff on the back of the vehicle? More to the point, why would you leave stuff on the outside like that. I asked a few questions on the model forum, and lo and behold, there is no way to secure gear to the sloping rear of a Humvee. Mr Tamiya lied!!!!

Matchbox ANZAC's NZ Uniform

In doing some of the research for Dave's Valentine I came across a gem of info that I had previously been looking for in relation to the uniforms that the 3rd NZ Div used in the Pacific during WW2.

I had known and even seen some pictures of NZ troops in a camouflage uniform but had not been able to nail down the colours used...until now.

The 3rd NZ Division developed its own camouflage uniform while in the Pacific. The New Zealand khaki drill shirt and trousers were sprayed in three fast colour stain paints; dark brown, dark green and lime green. The dark green and brown were applied in irregular patches 3-6 inches long, allowing some of he khaki drill to show through and on top of these were oversprayed 2 inch diameter spots of lime green 9-12 inches apart. Each was allowed to dry so that no mixing occurred. Only the top surface was affected so that when the sleeves were rolled up the original khaki drill was evident. Under continual use the colours gave way to an overall blue-green shade and ended up lighter than the webbing. Headgear consisted of the US herringbone twill field cap or wide brimmed hat of New Zealand manufacture which could also be camouflaged. Some units continued to wear the steel helmet which was usually covered with dark green hessian or sacking with cloth loops for foliage.

I intend now to overpaint those two batches of Matchbox ANZAC's into this scheme later on this week. A nice find.

Dave's NZ Valentine

The final in my email clean out series from Spanky Dave is the Valentine Tank.
Again 1/35 scale depicting a NZ Valentine in the 1950's.
Dave said this was a pretty naff kit... I really don't know if he meant good or bad. It looks alright to me.

The dio base featuring the all the tussock really captures the typical NZ Army Training Areas. It could be Waiouru or Tekapo.

A great site for more info on NZ Armour

http://kiwisinarmour.hobbyvista.com/valentin.htm