Hi all
I was interested to ask if there are any serious WW1 enthusiasts out there? Generally, kit availability lags far behind the WW2 and modern periods. Most of my WW1 work has been the result much conversion (Airfix multipose, Tamiya, much plastic card and putty etc).

The Great War has tremendous scope and would appreciate any feedback on similar enthusiasts. Perhaps there is a dedicated forum that I dont know about...?
Thanks
Garth

A few areas in military history from the 20Th century get over looked in modeling, or have very small followings. One is WW1, other than a few mediocre plastic kits and some expensive resin kits in 1/35 and 1/32 scale, pickings are scarce in figures and vehicles, although aircraft is pretty well covered.
WW1 Land-ships is a pretty good site dedicated to WW1 modeling.

Yes hello - Hi there I do believe I have moaned from day one that there's very little WW1 about, and at the moment, I have bombed this site with my WW1 dio's with basically no rsponse (if you can call thousands of lookers and 1 or 2 responses a response that is) anyway, I am building a 10 segment WW1 different to mud and blood, but each segment will be its own diorama which in turn will join to another to make a larger diorama, and no intrest on this subject, that I've never heard of or seen, and like I said, no intrest at all, I've even posted an Albatros D-111 and suggested posting that on the wing site and I got 1 (one) reply - WW1 its a laugh - the GREAT WAR did it happen ?


http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2387/3531073141_b6a0b752a8_m.jpg

Hi

I think there is an interest in WW1, probably not as much as WW2 but I think one of those factors might be the actual nature of the warfare. The what appears rows of trenches with opposing side firing and killing each other doesn't carry the same interest as the different campaigins and techniques of "modern warfare". I say appears because there was more to WW1 than the terrible trench fighting we see so much of.

As to your dioramas Alec. It does show by the viewing numbers that there is an interest, probably based on the thread titles, people take a look I know I did. The lack of response to be honest, certainly in my case was I didn't want to say anything bad so thought it best to say nothing at all.

Alan

yeah there really isn't a lot out there at the moment. i built this emhar MkIV a while back though. i think it was the 4th model i ever built so it's not great.



My latest completed model is of this WW1 75mm artillery peice which i built for a friend. Unfortunately the kit is truly awful, although he had had it lying around long before i was born so it's hardly suprising.

Hi Al, well what can I say - errr actually I'm not made of steel and yes I do have feelings, however I always write please leave both good and bad comments, if someone is only getting good then fine, if I recieve nothing but bad comments, so long as those comments are constructive I couldn't honestly care less, on another web-site that I can't be bothered with anymore, Steelnavy.com, I built a ship and basically asked for both good and bad comments as I do here on this site, and some twat wrote - its wrong - that was that, now to me that's just being stupid, I have other comments such as, the rigging is to thick, that's the sort of thing I can work with. So, if you see any of my works on this site, please leave a comment good or BAD to me it doesn't really matter.

I for one would most definitely buy any and all plastic kits of WW1 subjects, all the different tanks, armored cars to infantry sets and would love to see crew served; mg's to all the various artillery pieces used in that war. It would be great if some of the bigger boys on the block such as AFV, Dragon, Tamiya would jump in on this.

I've always been interested in WW1 tanks. Unfortunatly there are no, what could be considered good tanks out there. By todays standards, they could almost be considered poor kits. If tamiya would put what they into their Char B kit into a kit I think it would sale extremely well. Come on Dragon , Tamiya, AFV Club, Trumpeter, or anyone else. How many Tigers or Shermans (don't get me wrong, I have many of both) do we need. Produce one and I'll by it, I promise.
Troy

Troy - tanks in 1-35 and 1-72, male and female (the one's with machine guns only) whippet and if you're luck is in, even the tadpole, and late in the war armoured steam driven cars, so there's quite a lot of armour to consider, then of course there's always the static big guns, horse pulled/driven, traction engines, this was all very high tech stuff almost 100 years ago.

Well, the tanks are butt-ugly and generally not very interesting. The ARTILLERY is another matter. There's a fabulous resin kit of the Skoda heavy mortar sold by Wiener Modelbau I'd LOVE to build if I had 150 Euros burning a hole in my pocket:


It was used in both wars, so maybe Trumpeter will offer it? Hey, Axis, WWII, what more can you want?

The aircraft OTOH are MAGNIFICENT and the kits out there amazing.

So many kits, so little time.

On the top of my wishlist, there are a DECENT FT17, a DECENT tadpole, and a not so expensive Whippet in 35th scale.
Landships are IMO among the most beautiful vehicles ever produced.
So, yes, there is enthusiast here.

Alex.

try scale-link.co.uk lots of ww1 goodies in 54mm about 8pounds per fig. great service. redlancers here in the states also carries them. & bill c .hauler also makes a skoda mortar in resin &1/35 to boot. its cheaper than the h&g version. i got mine from hong kong. lucky model i think. nice kit, you can make either the ww1 or the ww2 version.

It really is incredible that none of the big kit makers have addressed this. The fact is that the British lozenge shape tanks are some of the most famous of all tanks. Only Brits will know what the hell I'm on about now, but I dug the Blue Peter Fifth Book out the other day (published 1968, price 10s) and there's a double pager with Peter Purves making Mark IV tanks out of six safety matchboxes and two Swan Vestas boxes, a few bits of corrugate cardboard for tracks and match sticks for guns. He has five of them in a table top diorama with barbed wire and smashed trees. Brilliant! If anyone begs enough, I'll scan it and post it in.
If Blue Peter could do it in 1968, why not Tamiya?

There was also the recently published Osprey book on Cambrai, which I thought was pretty good, a particularly interesting photo of a wrecked tank half buried in the mud. Sometimes a new work like that can have an inspirational effect.

Sorry, it is bank holiday weekend after all. . .

I would love to build wwI stuff -but the styrene kits are hard to find, expensive and inaccurate; the resin ones are out of my budget. Tanks, armored cars, artillery -it would be great if they got the DML treatment.

alec one thing with the figs, try to scrap off the seam lines and flash if there is any, it would make the model more appealing. cheers calvin

Hello there, well this is gonna be my excuse and I'm sticking to it, there were 5 sets of figures, 3 totally different sets as I tried to vary the WW1 styles of uniform, and because there was so many of them, across the 10 segments I probably used 140, a lot of flash marks never got done, and by the time I'd finished painting the last 1-72 bloke my eyes were suffering, so thanks for spoting and please leave as many comments as you can.

Thanks for all the replies.

I believe that the diversity of the conflict really gives so much scope. Although WW2 was truly a 'global conflict', WW1 gives the opportunity to represent everything from red-trousered French infantry, marching straight out of the Franco-Prussian war to gun boats chugging along an African river delta, terrain varies from trenches to Palestine desert, Paris taxis ferriying troops or camels laden with Maxim Guns.

I think there is so much scope, we should just convert, scuplt and innovate...!
Hope to see some WW1 projects coming soon...
Regards to all
Garth