The attached photos are of an M-54 5 Ton ammo truck, of Bravo Battery, 1st Battalion, 2nd Field Artillery, from the 8th Infantry Division in Baumholder, Germany, in about 1974. The kit is a combination of the AFV M35 2 1/2 ton, the Italeri 5 ton, the Real Model 5 ton resin cab kit, and a lot of scratch building. The trailer is the Verlinden kit which has been waiting for it's prime mover for several years.

The decals were ordered from Black Lion, http://www.blackliondecals.nl/index.htm and I cannot say enough good things about them. The company did a terriffic job in taking the order, communicating back to me to ensure they got it right, and in addition to making the markings for two separate vehicles on one sheet, actually threw in a couple of extras. They allowed me to mark up the vehicle exactly the way I wanted, and with white bumper numbers that's not easy. I highly recommend them if you're looking to get some custom decals made, and I'll be using them again for some future projects.






Tom

Looks great. The rounds in back look spot on. Great job.

Looks really good Tom, nice job. Are the ammo cases and rounds from one of the kits or are they aftermarket? The markings on them look very good indeed and really add to the realism. Did they come from Black Lion too? I agree with Gino - spot on!!



Bob

I rode in the back of that truck going to Graf in 1979.

One of these days I'm going to get around to doing that conversion. It's just so distracting with all those big scale BB's and HC kits coming out from Trumpeter, Aoshima and Hasegawa this year and lord knows what else they pop out.

ON those decals. Where did you get all the truck generic ones. Stars, fill only fuel tank ones etc. Were those part of the package you got from Black Lion?

I have been in the back of one of those also. The bed on the ones I rode were more scuffed up though. I can almost smell the diesel.

Good conversion work and paintjob on the truck Tom and nice to hear a report about Black Lion Decals we did a news story on the company when they started up
https://armorama.kitmaker.net/news/2862

Thanks!!

Steve, almost all of the decals you see came from the Black Lion sheet. The only ones which are NOT theirs are the Tire Pressure markings over the wheel wells, and the one which says "Do Not Fill Above This Line" which are Archer Transfers. All the rest are what I asked them to provide. I am building another vehicle (this time a 2 1/2 ton converted as the battery mess truck), and so they sent me markings for 2 separate vehicles.

The only reason I didn't ask Black Lion to do those as well is because I already had the transfers, but given how much trouble dry transfers are compared to wet decals, in hind sight, I'd have been better off getting Black Lion to do those as well, which I know they could have handled easily. The whole thing, made to my exact order, was 15 euros mailed to my house. You can bet I'll use them again!!


Bob, the projos and the powder canisters are from AFV, some from the M-548 kit, and some from the set which they sell separately. Both include 155m and 8". They now come with a very nice decal set for the projectiles which you see in the photo.

I do have a few gripes about the powder canisters however. The decals provided are totally inadequate when compared to the ones you get for the projos, and don't actually reflect all the markings found on the canisters, so I wound up doing the marking by hand. They're really just dots, but from a distance the markings almost look like letters. The second gripe I have with the powder canisters is that while AFV provides very nice "dunnage" for the projos, there isn't any for the canisters, so these are scratch built (along with the banding straps). But my biggest gripe is that for some reason, in the 155mm ammo, for every 8 rounds, they only provide 6 powder canisters, so they don't work out evenly. But other than that, they really do provide a nice touch for finishing off a kit. The separate ammo set also includes one pallet's worth each (8 x 155m and 6 x 8") solid brass rounds with the protective grommets removed around the bands and a fuse in the round instead of the nose plug. Very nice!

Tom,

Nice! How was the trailer to build?

thr (VMI '85)

Class of '85, eh? Pleasure to meet you. Just got back from my 35th a few weeks ago!

Trailer wasn't too hard to build. The wheels were somewhat hard to keep on and are not set up to roll, which is a shame, because the 5 ton rolls along very nicely. But these are for static display, so it doesn't matter. I'm not sure how long ago I built the trailer, but I suspect it's been at least 10 years or so.

This build (and there are others in my gallery) are all from my first unit after I graduated. When I arrived, everything was still in solid OD with all white markings, and we began to pattern paint this scheme in the summer of 1973.



Tom
VMI '72

Looks just like the one I rode in the back of on my way to Geisen!! Very nice work.

Joe

Excellent job Tom, like the cammo colors. I’m working on a 54 series truck right now. I went they hard road by scratch building the whole fender and such. Would you use the same kit again.

Joe

Thanks, Joe. The colors are the original pattern paint used in Europe when the OD vehicles were first painted, starting in about 1973. I left in 1977 and as far as I remember, they were still in this scheme, so I'm not sure when they started evolving into the current style.

Although I had the Real Model resin cab, it was one of the earlier ones and for some reason was not as good as their new one appears to be. So I also did the "cut and paste" scratch method for the fenders, using Dave Willett's excellent article (and the resin piece) as a guide. I used a few of the resin pieces (like the extended hood), but wound up using more AFV or scratch built parts than I'd hoped.

I have a bunch of in-progress shots of the work in my gallery, and it was a lot of work. But overall I'm pretty pleased with the results.

Looking at the new kit from Real Model, it appears to be much better than their original (I thought I read that it's been re-tooled or at least re-done), so if I were to do another, I'd probably try that route. But I won't be doing a repeat of this particular process anytime soon!!

Tom

I caught the earlier posting re: Black Lion decals, and immediately considered the different decals I could really use that are not available anywhere else. Not knowing the potential cost caused my delay, but seeing your 15 euro cost will make my decision to use them more immediate! Thanks for the info!

By the way, Black Lion says they will make a file of those custom applications they recieve, for the purpose of making them available to other customers. I assume this would be with the permission of the submittor.

They couldn't have been much easier to work with. I told them what wording/numbers I wanted, the size and layout that I wanted as well as the color and the quantities. I had some photos of earlier vehicles I'd done which I sent them as a guide. They then sent me an emailed file as a "proof" sheet so that I could make sure they had everything right as far as size etc. As soon as I gave them the OK (and PayPal) they finished the sheet and mailed it. The whole process took about 6 weeks. The availability of decals to make specific vehicles that I'm building is a huge help!!

Tom