A Break on the Front
Here's the starting point for the model: I had bought this kit at a local model shop and after building the tank body realized the bottom piece was pretty badly warped. I sent an email to Mirage Hobby and they were nice enough to send a replacement kit which was very generous of them.
The beginnings of the base. Behold my carpentry and tremble.
Here's the quad maxim, what a bad model lol. I'm not entirely serious there but the instructions were insufficient and it ended up with this bad slant despite my best efforts. This is where I got the idea that it should be damaged.
Here I've taken a lighter to it. It did a bit more damage than I would have liked but I was able to get a bit of plastic to repair the barrel on the adjoining gun.
Basic layout. I got the sandbags in a set of 3 of varying sizes from an ebay seller and got the rocks from the woods nearby.
Base coat down. I skipped a lot but I glued down scraps of old sandpaper to make up the road then punched holes into it and the base to make potholes down the middle of the road based on some roads I looked at through google earth.
I ended up being annoyed that the sandbags didn't have any ends on them, so I cut off the edges and used some green stuff to create my own bags. Not too bad I suppose.
Here's more or less the final layout. Lots of guys hanging out. I wish there were more sets of models where half the people aren't charging into battle or lobbing a grenade. The Hat tank riders fill that pretty well and I took the models who were in nice poses from the other sets. The tanker loading a shell onto the deck is actually I think supposed to be holding the 85mm shell for the T-34-85 but at the scale it's very close to the 76.2mm shells that the gun on the SU-26.
Base with the sawdust and plaster applied. I put some down the road too which was sort of a mistake but it eventually sorted itself out.
Base all painted up. The plaster down the middle issue fixed itself somewhat. There's an accumulation of dust on the left side of the road because nobody can drive where the sandbags are.
Filled up the potholes with railroad fill plus PVA mixed with tamiya paint. Not the dark sea grey in the picture but XF-57 Buff.
Everyone ready to be primed. I made a bunch of sandbags with green stuff and cannibalized another one of the Maxim guns to use it as repair parts for the broken one in the model.
I'd never used rubber treads before so I didn't expect this to happen, not sure if it's normal but it's pretty annoying. I just said screw it and lived with it.
And by lived with it I meant invented a fictious way to carry a unditching log that happened to block the view of the treads from one side. I can't imagine this would be very practical but how else would you carry a log when your whole deck is covered in ammo?
Tank is more or less done here. I painted everything up off camera so all that was left was static grass.
And it's done. I'll point out some of my favorite bits as we go through here.
You can't see it that well but that little blue box is a toolbox/lunchbox I made myself that I'm pretty proud of. I also had to add the handle to the bucket the guy in the back is carrying and drill it out a bit to add gloss medium.
That shell stack seems like it would be entirely impractical in real life. Also it's almost impossible to see but the shells inside the turret are painted differently to indicate they're AP or HEAT. I'm not entirely sure what this gun took.
I owe so much to that log for blocking the inordinately saggy treads.
"You reposition one shell on the rack and all of a sudden you're 'endangering the operation.'"
Close up on the repairs. The pose on this guy was just perfect to be scrutinizing this but I think originally he was meant to be receiving the shell the other guy is handing up.
Militiaman in the front. Apparently rather than having units solely made of militia the Soviets had militia as auxiliaries on regular units. It makes sense he'd be the one properly patrolling while the regulars take a load off.
Close-up on the tank. I think I need to work on my highlights and color modulation next. Well thanks for checking this all out, this is my last completed diorama so I'll be uploading pics of my build in progress next.
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5 28 February 2023, 01:29
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A SU-26, its crew, and a group of infantry take a break alongside the road to repair a backfired quad maxim.
The SU-26 is an improvised assault gun that was built and in service only in the Leningrad pocket where for a lack of infantry support weapons they modified a handful of T-26 to have a deck and a naval-esque turret mounted up top with the crew and ammo exposed. There were so few there's not much record on their effectiveness. Regardless I'm a big fan of the design.
I think every previous diorama I'd done had been way too large for the scale and the amount of objects I had to put in the scene so this time I just jammed the diorama full of figures and details on a much smaller base than previous. I think the base is about 23mm x 23mm and it's one of a pair with my next diorama.
