Nice progress, Sal. I just had to pick up this beast as well when I saw spruebrothers had it for sale for 35 USD including the crew! It will be an interesting build.

Nice little Pak, Jim. Looks good - especially considering the scale.

I will try to make the firing look to my PAK 40 to capitalize on my "full recoil" mistake. It will be a fun exercise although I am not to sure about the result yet.
Weathering is progressing as well.

More to follow.

Jesper, Bruce & Alan: thanks for the comments. The base is actually an old bottom cut from a Christmas tree when we put up a "live" tree instead of our artifical one we have now. I always thought it would make a nice base, and now it is.
Hope everyone has a safe and happy new year. Looking forward to seeing all the completed builds in 2012.
Jim

Count me in! Here are my starting photos...



I'm combining a little M8 Scott Howitzer Motor Carriage with an M10 Ammunition trailer. This build will be my first tracked vehicle since I was a teenager, and my first resin build at all. I've read a lot here and elsewhere, but I'll build these mostly straight out of the box. (The resin will technically be OOB, but there will clearly be some scratchbuilding involved, per the instructions, for all of the finer parts.) I'll even work with the kit's vinyl tracks for this one too.
Cheers!
-Sean H.

Thanks for the comments guys, I hope everyone had a good Christmas
@ Jasper, Nice progress and WoW $35 bucks had I known that I would have bought another 1
@ Jim nice going on that little kit I like the Christmas tree base as well
@ Sean, Welcome to the campaign does the kit come with the figures as well, looking forward to seeing your build

Hope everyone has a Happy and Safe New Year and if you are gonna do this let someone else drive

P.S. I plan on cutting my base out tomorrow and starting the work on that

I have now finalized my build for this campaign. The 1/35 Tamiya PAK 40.

During construction I made a mistake and glue seeped into the recoil mechanism and it set in the full recoil position. Well, there were basically only two choices, either make it as a damaged gun or show it firing.

Zon shared some good links for showing a firing gun. You can see the earlier in this tread if interested. Based on those I got started and the result is shown below. It was my first try at this. There are a few things I would do differently next time, but overall I am satisfied.

Obviously I still need a crew but that would be for a diorama at a later date. As for this campaign I am calling this one finished.

Comments welcome

Jasper, That looks real cool I like it. Do you have anything running through the middle of that cotton linking the projectile to the bore of the barrel, the over head shot looks like the projectile is making a bit of a right turn could just be the photo or my crooked eyes
Congratulations on your finish looking forward to seeing it in a dio with figures

Jesper: Nice!!! Glad it worked out for you and the effect came out well. I'd only suggest trimming a few of the stray fuzzies, but otherwise it is very convincing and well done. Looking forward to seeing the dio when you get to it.

Happy Modelling, -zon

Jesper:

I LIKE!!

Looking forward to your eventual crew.

Jim

Thanks for the comments, guys. Appreciate it.

Sal, I used a plastic rod inside the fussy material to make sure the projectile follows a straight line. I can see it looks like turning a little to the right in the picture. However, I think this is an optical illusion since there is more fussy material on one side of the rod than the other. In reality the line is perfectly straight.

Zon, I see what you mean. It needs more trimming. Especially on the line linking the projectile and the fire/smoke plume.

I will update you when the crew and diorama are in place. It will be some months though.

This looking pretty cool!
I have question for the guys, who have seen guns discharged in realy life. Isn't the muzzle break supposed to divert the blast and smoke rather to the sides instead of allowing a blast ring to be formed? Just wondering....
In any case I am looking foward to see the action with figures: There's got to be a lot of movement. It's not going to be easy, but I trust you can do it!
Cheers,
Guido
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-n1HvCN-_s&feature=relmfu

Guido, I think you are right. It would be more correct to have much more smoke coming out of the muzzle brake sides.

Ello guys and Happy new year to ya all .. Jesper mate that pak 40 turned from a cock up to a wonderful result ..gotta love those huh
Guido is kinda right ..the muzzle brake does split the blast but the Pak 40 had one hell of a recoil .. the blast from that gun firing was large to say the least ..every thing i have ever seen on film of that gun firing shows it lifting all sorts of crap around it and the smoke is pretty damn good too . to fix this weee problem have blast coming from the muzzle aswell .
One bit of film i watched was on the Eastern front in the snow ..the blast had snow flying all over the place ( dew to how low if sits to the ground ) the recoil as always huge and the shell ejected out of the breach and hit the ground .sliding at least 15 feet backwards ,,snow and ice on the ground was the cause .. oh Jesper dude you gonna need a shell ejecting too ..thats got to be flying out of there ,dio time matey

Phill

Jesper: (re Phil's comment on an ejecting case)
I was wondering about that. I have not seen very good film/videos showing where the cradle is when the case is ejected. Does it automatically eject in full recoil, or does it automatically eject (or manually eject) once the gun has gone back into its forward position?
Jim

I started work last week on AFV Club's leFH 18 10.5 cm Howitzer


I have managed to get the major sub-assemblies together. the gun shield was a bit easier to get on straight than most other attempts i have had at such a thing. Getting the rear spades in position without splitting their frame back into two pieces was probably the biggest hassle so far. I opted for the horse drawn version (basically no brake cylinders or convoy lights), not that the final result will look a lot different.

here is a progress shot:

Hi Jasper,

Nice work, I'm not sure about the overall colour, maybe too rich, but I could be wrong, I suppose it depends on a split second. My thoughts would be more smoke, a flash of that intensity would give the game away but you have created a fine effect either way.

Good work, very creative.

Al

Jim ,, On the Pak 40's its a auto eject system ,,the shell ejects at full recoil and to really make your day i found this little bit of film on you tube .
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9yecemugWo

That show some nice shots of the gun firing and the massive recoil it has ,,also has the awsome 88mm Pak 43 ,, now thats worth watching

Phill

Phill:

Great video!! It seems the spent case ejection is just after full recoil, as the barrel begins its return to firing position.

Happy Modelling, zon

Phill: I agree - great video. It even has a lot of period movies showing my little pak 36 in action. Thanks for posting the link.
Jim

Jim ,, my pleasure ,, wasn't cool you not seeing that stuff ,,all lovers of big guns should see plenty of stuff like that .

Phill

Ah ha! I've finally taken my first steps in this build (since posting my start back on December 29th).
As I had said, I haven't done a tracked vehicle since I was a teenager, several decades ago, and I was leery about all the road wheels that many here complain about. Ha! The M8, on the Stuart light tank chassis, has only 8. I guess I set the bar low enough for myself. So here are the first half, completed last night. I think I'll paint in subassemblies soon, or maybe after the running gear is all on. The trick is getting paint behind all these spoked wheels I guess.

Cheers!
-Sean H.

@ Sean and Vance, nice progress guys keep at it
I was going to call my Beast finished but

I started looking at the photos and I think the treads need some more work

I know that there are no track mark in the grass but I used a grass mat on top of a piece of plywood


any suggestions will be greatly appreciated

@Sal: i wonder it you could use a soldering iron to burn/melt away the grass from the track mark areas and then glue down a thin layer of mud in the channel to make it a true recessed track mark? just a suggestion, haven't had that product in hand for quite a while. cheers, bd.

Hi Sal,

You could save the grass mat for another lighter project and put the beastie on cobbles.?

Al

Hi Bruce, thanks for the suggestion I don't know about a soldering iron but you did give me an idea. I will try to get to work on it on Monday, Giants football tomorrow
Get some pics up after I do what I'm thinking