I like the solutions you came up with for these new additions. This is getting interesting.
J

Hi Tim ,

nice work on the horse , very realistic i'd say . Despite your work on the figures in the car it seems like the horse and the cart will be the eyecatcher on the scene (in my humble opinion ) .

Keep up the good work sir

Kurt

Thanks guys,

Dave – spooky, you must be psychic... your wish was already my command about the rear window…er and the windscreen,“tasteful” too. As for how to tackle the gore generally, I did quite a bit of grueling research into it & the result – while still under review - is based on actual examples, so not exactly Hollywood Western c. 1955 standard…

Kurt – well let’s see, far from dozing off I’m actually enjoying getting the horse harnessed although it’s as fiddly as I’d feared.

So let's get these party-sans started, and why not play their toon complete with Mercedes Benz reference in the lyrics…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXdbrbrxsQ0



This is ICM’s set, modified as follows left to right: (1) Way too tall, chopped 2 mm out of his knees and another 3 mm off his waist which isn’t glued to his legs pending final position in dio. (2) Also outsize, I’ve decided to leave him out altogether. Their headgear is actually in scale to the figures, those biiig flatcaps were all the rage (3) nice pose but ICM had him wearing a big round furry Cossack hat…winter wear not an option here, so I glued it on then carved it back to make the top half of his (balding) head. (4) a strangely-proportioned boy wearing a winter deerstalker – same solution as (3).

Regular army guys were often in partisan groups, usually as liaison officers for co-ordination purposes so after searching for recruits I settled on these Stalingrad productions guys. Excellent resin detail although they seem a little under-sized - but maybe foraging wasn’t their strong point. However the heads were just weird, as though cartoon tree-trunks had slammed into either side and squashed them, so replacement heads required.





A comparison, and the reason the old guy got the boot…



So here’s where it’s at now, trial positions in the dio which will determine weapons & other accessories - the horse is currently being kitted out in full harness & traces so unavailable for a photo-call…





Next time – party animal

Time for dobbinski to get hitched, so first some balsa…



…and an egg-box top to wedge horse & cart in place while connecting/harnessing…



…the yolks and padding attached, white glue all the way…



Harnessing made from paper strips - non-leather straps as per unterweb refs, configuration slightly adapted...



Hard to see here but there is a proper bit in his mouth…





Colour-wise they seem to belong together - somehow the horse’s coat looks more integrated now.If it looks too shiney in daylight I’ll dust him…er her with pastels…



Tarp made as per demo on p.1 of this thread, and also for making grain sacks - half-filled so they sagged/slumped. Spot the spade and axe handle. Tarp and ties fought back hard, many dampenings with water & hidden dots of white glue required to make everything lie flat…



Just enough room under the tarp for three huddled partisans to have jumped up and let loose on the approaching staff car…



Next time – viva zapartisans

Tim, This is looking really great!🍺

—mike

I'm following thisone and it's getting better by the day.
Can't wait to see it finished!

Nice harness and cargo! As far as the horse goes,I wouldn't make him more matte. Look at a real horse and you will notice a sheen to the coat.
J

Thanks guys, glad you like it - although after looking at the pics afresh there are a few minor amendments if anyone’s interested. The horse’s eyes have more life in them, a few touch-ups to coat & hooves, thinned the mane a tad more, and spent shells now litter the cart.

But she’s not impressed with her servitude – her left hooves refuse to come out of the retaining rings, the white glue can’t have dried before they went in & they were big blobs.

And while I’m at it my internal spell-checker missed “yolks”… so… no sorry can’t resist…the yoke’s on me. Hey at least I apologized

The Russians are coming

I'm loving this. Following.

Thanks, welcome back & meet the guerrillas;

Dimitri




Vassily



Alexei



Georg



…and Michail during a brief stroll outdoors between major rain events here - he’ll either be holding the reins or a PPsH, the stick’s just a symbol of indecision…



Dobbinskaya out to temporary pasture (not the eventual dio)…



And the solution to the spade & axe picture quiz…



As usual I can see a number of touch-ups & tweaks required before they go operational.

And so to the dio base - here’s something I threw together yesterday…



…with a touch of rail infrastructure…





Ha if only. Those are actually samples of my mate Alistair’s 10-years-and-counting railway masterpiece measuring 12x6 metres…my only input’s been the Dali-esque sky and 3 sets of grain silos. He came to mind because he’s been heavily using the Gras-master crop-making gizmo we co-purchased a few years ago & I need a refresher on how to use it properly for my dio. If we get through enough Barossa Shiraz 2011 vintages he might let me use his layout for background

All that’ll take a couple of weeks to sort out, maybe more including recovery

Next time – Splendor in the Gras

Wow,the characters are great and very well thought out. All of these details when put together are really gonna rock,
J

Hi Tim ,

well , your work on the horse and cart are catching my eye like the figures too. Take your time on this dio my friend , beautiful result so far .

Kurt

Thanks gents,

Seem to have been some very slow news days on the Dio forum this week, so during my own Intermission here’s something to be going on with while you get your popcorn and ices from the candy bar located in the foyer…

Somewhere on the southern salient of the Kursk battlefield in July 1943, Hans-Ulrich Rudel’s tank-busting Ju87G undergoes running repairs to its undercarriage...







Rudel was the most highly decorated Luftwaffe pilot of WW2 with an extraordinary service record - his claim of 519 tanks destroyed is almost certainly exaggerated but he flew over 2,500 missions, was shot down over 30 times, wounded 5 times, yet lived until 1982. Some may recall these photos from last year, I posted them in a thread (by someone else) debating for/against mixing 1/32 and 1/35 scale, as evidence for the affirmative.

As for A Shot In the Dark, the dio base is well under construction, I now have the Gras-master, and I’m not afraid to use it…

Whodathunkit? 10,000 views all because I bought a sh*t k*t. Virgin territory for me so thanks to all members & lurkers for masochistically clicking on this thread & comments, hope you’ve enjoyed the pain so far as much as I…er well there’s a song that immediately springs to mind to describe how I feel – here’s one of the best Oz singles from the 80’s, RIP Chrissie…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5boYiMktOvs

mmm so many apt lyrics for all model-makers. Here's some progress shots of the dio base…

Draw a plan, take one plywood board and waste packaging



Chop up packaging & create minor blizzard



Finish jigsaw with white glue



Apply plaster of Paris...



...and a powder-paint wash to identify necessary fixes







The general idea from here is to use real soil (fine-graded) & scale-gravel mixed with white glue to make a thin hard overall cover, with thicker patches to soften the troughs and ridges in the landscape. Then after the grass & trees go on, a loose cover of more graded soil up to the level of the retaining edges like an infinity-pool, so that I can butt other dio bases up against it to create long perspectives in the final photos.

The actual landscapes in the Kursk area were predominantly rural, agricultural, flat-ish i.e. featureless rolling fields. My prime reference (Restayn/Moller’s 400 page/600+ photo “Operation Citadel Vol 2: The North” publ J.J. Fedorowicz 2006) shows scores of such vistas…but on p.106 I got diverted by that piece of off-road furniture…



Good grass in worth waiting for…next time.

Hi Tim - All's looking good - nice to see your base work! this ought to turn into another great Tim build! Nice work on the figures too - looking forward to your next post -

Cheers
Nick

Some really fine work going on here, Tim!! The details look great, the horse & cart match what you'd see in one of those old battle photos, and the partisans really look the part(couldn't resist). Will definitely keep watching!

Thanks guys,

As this'll be a background item, thought I’d slip it in now for closer scrutiny





Dimitri not feelink well

Great progress. The well is awesome. Great woodwork there, also the cart is super awesome.
/Stefan

Thanks Stef

My patience-ometer’s in the red zone again (everyone else’s too probably), I’m beginning to see this dio when I close my eyes. Intensive soil-slappin’ yesterday just in time to take some test shots before dusk - hope I can get that perfect sky back for the final photos…



No decision about the well position, just plonked



Those retaining edges look like nice low walls, pity they’re not right for the Kursk area so they'll disappear. Handy real trees in the background can stay though, who’d guess they’re eucalypts?



Gratuitous highway billboard for not-my-sponsor…unless opportunity Nochs of course…



Life blew my foliating plans away today so…NEXT time, I swear, grassorama.

You really know how to get the cool outdoor pics done. Nice placement of the base in front of the background trees.etc. It is all coming together very well.
J

Gracias JR,

and talking of which, for those unfamiliar with this magic contraption, a brief explanation:

First the materials - different lengths of filaments, the longer ones I cut down to around 15 mm before use, and to vary the effect different lengths and colours can be mixed to taste (as in top & bottom right bags)…



Powered by a 9v battery it creates a static electric field (with the ground-wire attached as close to the area being grassed as possible), so that when the filaments dumped into the white section’s hopper are shaken out of the spout onto the ground, they land standing up…sorta kinda. Simple, as long as that ground has been masked around with paper towels and coated in either white glue or similar about one minute prior. But doesn’t that make the ground all shiney, you ask? No, because I used real soil mixed with white glue to make the hard ground – it’s absorbed and doesn’t reflect, even with a layer of glue on top. Very fine soil sprinkled through the grass dulls any exceptions…



Close-up of the above scrubbier section along the roadside ditches…



…and part of an intermediate section with longer stalks starting to predominate. I’ll go full long-straw field for the other side of the dio behind the car (remember that?) & cart…



Dobbinskaya approves, but oops her mane’s caught the static charge too.

Next time – how to degauss a horse

Nah I’m over this, it’s a time-consuming process. Although square-foot sections at a time are allegedly possible using one of the larger sieve-grill attachments, I’m using the smallest spout provided on areas less than half that size because it’s more controllable and more stalks land not-horizontal. I should add I’m no expert, someone with more time to practice tweaking Gras-Master techniques could do really spectacular dio landscapes. So there’s a way to go yet - the field, some trees & bushes, and omg maybe, just maybe, the big reveal.

You may not assign expert status to your self but it sure does look good.
J

Thanks Jerry, finally finished er grassing…reverse-mowing…today. All up it took 4 or 5 hours but I think they’ll like it out in Lurkdom.

I’m curious nobody’s commented about the Gras-Master, as far as I’m aware it’s easily the best way to replicate grass in dios - I know it ain’t cheap but mine’s lasted 10 years or more & shows no sign of failing.

Trees now under construction, final photo spread next weekend.

I know it as an old tool. I just wonder about its' use in taller grass though. I have seen it used a lot in the HO scale railroad world for the scale grass there of course. I have used taller grass in my last two works and I just put clumps of cut up grass in the white glue on the bass and then rough it up with tweezers. I think it's faster but,hey,to each his own !
This site in general has slowed way down recently and maybe that is what you are experiencing ?
J

That horse....
The hair at it's neck
You threw me off the chair here. All 1:35 horses I have seen look bad but this one is simply awesome! Great fix with the hair!
Loving this blog.
/Stefan