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An LCM3 Adventure

Decals

Next the decals and numbering. The only actual decal I used is the tiny placard decal on the instrument panel, which came from Archer transfers, and the decal on the fire extinguisher (placed on the front of the cabin as per the Maastricht image), which is a leftover from the Dragon Wagon fire extinguisher decals.

The rest of the markings were hand-painted using Vallejo off-white freehand. Yes, the hull numbering looks terribly crude. I painted it that way intentionally as it matches the style in the Maastricht image. I can only assume these numbers were originally hand-painted without masks by someone with terrible painting skills.

The hull number chosen was specifically intended to be different from the image (boat #327, rather than #336) because while I want the diorama to look like an LCM3 being loaded in Maastricht, I didn’t want to be limited to matching the image exactly, as that would require the Dragon Wagon to be totally closed up and the LCM3 to not have its machine gun mounts installed.

The large tarp over the hold was made using ‘Green Stuff’ putty from Games Workshop. This stuff is ridiculously expensive for the amount you get (unless you buy it on ebay) but has one really useful feature over my traditional Apoxie Sculpt: it stays flexible even after curing! So I made the tarp by rolling out the Green Stuff, detailed it with a seam around the edges, draped it over, creased it the way I want to, and then after it dried I could remove it to airbrush it rather than having to hand-paint such a large part. It’s expensive, but very useful for things like large tarps.

The interior hold, or at least what’s visible of it, is stained with Mig pigments fixed with white spirits. I used ‘European dust’, ‘Track brown’, and pretty much any other shade that looked correct.

The hull bumpers come from Thatchweave. They look great and darkened nicely with a simple brown wash, but I may darken them further before gluing them down.

Thatchweave Live links

Yes, the bumpers aren’t installed on the LCM3 in the original image, but they are visible on other LCM3s loaded in Maastricht, so I’m going to assume they were on boat #327.