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Airfix D-Day Battlefront Diorama - with Additions


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My daughter had a smashing time after school on Wednesday - with a large hammer! To create some more realistic rubble around the diorama, I sent my daughter into the garden to look for some small stones. A few at a time, they were wrapped up in an old T-shirt to stop flying splinters and beaten to death! It created a nice range of colours, shapes and sizes.

 

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After that, I found a piece of Ramin wood, and sliced it into thin strips on the bandsaw. These would be additional roof timbers from the house, scattered by the blast or cleared by the troops using it. Straight from the saw, the edges had lots of splinters, so I set her off with a sanding block to clean up the strips.

 

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Once the timbers had been sanded, we got some Humbrol acrylic matt earth and diluted it with some screen wash. 

 

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After a good stir, the thinned paint made a nice wash/stain to soak the new roof timbers of the house. As it dried, it soaked into the wood, allowing the grain and texture to show through.

 

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Once the wood had completely dried, it was given a light sand with some 400 grit sandpaper. Some areas were sanded more than others to create variation in the distress of the timbers. The two at the back of the image aren't sanded at all, while the two closer pieces have both hadvarying degrees of sanding.

 

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As well as roof timbers, we needed some more roof tiles scattered about. I found an offcut of styrene around the same thickness as the kit roof tiles, and set my daughter loose, marking out and cutting some parallel, 4mm wide styrene strips. It took a few goes to get it right, but she got there in the end.

 

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I mixed up some red/brown for the tiles and she painted the strips. Once dry, they can be cut into single tiles and will only need a slight touch up on the edges. I also painted the left over, wider strip after she was done, to give us a bit of spare tile material.

 

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While she had been doing those, I painted the sandbags and other walls on the vac-formed base in a base colour. Rubble and other debris will probably be the next job to attach in the next build session. Another two and a half hours had gone and that was the end of this week's build session.

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

No progress on this of late. We've been too busy with two school modelling projects. One is for World Book Day and that is now complete. The other, which is still ongoing, is a Moon Landing themed Easter Egg competition. We've won her age group for the last two years so the pressure is on!

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The only progress we have made was to fill the back of the very thin vac-forming with a plaster/PVA glue mix to stop it being crushed by accident.

 

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Once the plaster was dry, the plastic was epoxied down to the MDF baseboard which has already had its edges painted black and varnished. It was weighted down and left to dry, and the lead weights came off this morning. We've got quite a bit of debris to add to the ground but it shouldn't be too long before we make a start on the Jeep.

 

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Edited by Army_Air_Force
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Little legs damaged a hair net while getting her hair done ready for dance class. I said, "Great, don't throw it away, we need it for the diorama!". While the mesh spacing is overscale for a 1/72 scale camo net, it would do for us. However, for some time I've wanted to replicate the square spiral hessian camo material in WW2 netting. I had a plan.

 

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I had a few miuntes to do some testing today so stuck some parcel tape down onto a piece of scrap wood. I mixed some PVA glue and waterbased green and brown acrylic together, then added some baby talc to thicken it slightly. I didn't have a fine needle for my syringe, so ended up just scooping up a little of the glue mix onto a piece of fine wire, and dabbing it onto the parcel tape, forming a spiral. 

 

These spirals vary between around 5/16ths to 1/2 an inch square. After it was dry, it peeled off the parcel tape no problem. The plan is to cover a larger piece of wood in tape and then tape down the hair net, stretched out over the board. I'll then start applying green and brown glue spirals over the netting, leaving until dry. The net should then peel off the parcel tape, leaving the glue spirals stuck to the net. It can then be used on the diorama, supported on some poles with cotton guy ropes.

 

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Despite the Easter Egg school project that is ongoing, we made a little more progress on the diorama today. I cleaned some of the paint away from the base, and had to do some trimming of the vac-formed base as the house didn't fit very well.

 

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Once we got a reasonable fit, the house was glued in place and then weighted down with some lead blocks to keep it firmly still while the glue set.

 

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After a while to dry, the pots of smashed up stone were brought out, ready to add some debris around the site. It was sprinkled on dry and in some cases, move around slightly with a paint brush. Once we were happy with the distribution, the whole base was sprayed with a water/detergent mix.

 

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After that, we went around the diorama with eye droppers, dripping dilute PVA glue onto all the rubble. There still lots more work to go, with more dirt and mud etc, but all the extra rubble is turning the smooth plastic base into a more realistic scene of destruction.

 

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I started out my modelling life with model railroading, in British OO scale, then British N scale layouts, OO9 ( narrow gauge ) set in World War 1 and finally American N scale.. 35 years of R/C aircraft followed that, plus I've done a little bit of R/C cars, boats and yachts, so I've learned lots of skills from one hobby that aren't always common or known in another branch of modelling.

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I checked on the dio this morning and the PVA had fully dried. A careful prod and poke of the rubble showed it had all firmly glued in place. 

 

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The debris around the house will probably remain mostly untouched. Some of the other areas will have the colour changed or toned down with the airbrush and the road needs a good work over with further colour, dirt, mud and weathering. I particularly want some mud trails from the Sherman tracks.

 

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  • 1 month later...

After a break of a few weeks for another project, then all falling ill, we finally got back to the D-Day Battlefront diorama today. It's the school Easter Holidays, so what better way than some modelling to fill in the day.

We began with some painting on the diorama base. The road and pavements, while scattered with broken stone, were still looking very clean and fresh. To dirty them down and mottle the appearance, we used some of the Airfix starter set black and brown acrylics, painted onto a piece of scrap styrene as a pallet, then applied to the diorama with a sponge and stiff brush, dabbing on the paint in random patterns and different densities.

 

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It worked well to tone down the road, but is only the first step. We also want to reproduce muddy marks and clods of mud from vehicles and tank tracks along the roads. That will probably involve a plaster/paint/PVA glue mix, possibly rolled on from a small wheel on a stick, but that's all for another day. After the dabbing and stippling, the base was put to one side and left to dry.

 

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Time to move on to the next stage. As mentioned previously, we've ditched the Tiger from the diorama in favour of a Willys MB. We got the kit at Christmas, in the Aldi sale. 

 

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There's a lot of tiny parts in the Willys kit. Since she hasn't really done any small fiddly models, mostly aircraft with large parts and just a few small accessories, I suggested we start with the field gun and trailer first. If those got messed up, it wouldn't be a great loss to the overall diorama.

 

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So the field gun came first, with the chassis/tow frame being made from a number of small parts. Some of the joints needed a little extra opening up to fit correctly, but it was a good excuse to remind her about trial fitting components to check. Holding them together for assembly was fiddly, even for 9 year old fingers, so we resorted to Blu-Tac to hold the parts in the correct alignment while the liquid glue was brushed into the joints.

 

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While parts of the field gun dried, we started to assemble the trailer, then hopped back and forwards from one to the other. Each one is made from several components.

 

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While certain parts of the gun and trailer were drying, the wheels were given a coat of black on the sprue. Some Easter card making was also interspersed amongst the various modelling tasks.

 

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They could then be left to dry fully before they would have the centres painted green, be cut free, cleaned up and be ready to fit.

 

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Five parts in the trailer so far, eight pieces in the field gun. We also spent some of the drying time in the garden as it was the first nice warm day for a long time.

 

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Before we knew it, it was after 4pm, so I suggested we carry on and get the last few trailer parts attached so that everything would be dry for the next session. So the axle, springs, wheel arches and front steady were cut out, cleaned and attached.

 

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A few days ago, I started an experiment with a camo net. I had one of my daughter's dance class hair nets, damaged a few months ago, to use as the practice net. A piece of 1/8 plywood was covered in parcel tape to stop any sticking. The net was then stretched over the wood.

Some of the Airfix starter kit acrylics were mixed with some PVA glue to thicken it and allow it to glue to the netting. Starting with the brown, and using a small brush, I painted square spirals onto the netting and tape covered board. I quickly ran into a problem. The hair net is woven out of micro fibres which actually resemble long link chains. Because of the thickness of the chains and the way they are woven together, the netting wouldn't lay flat on the wood. This made it difficult to form the spiral on the surface of the tape. The mesh was hovering slightly above the surface and so I was having to poke the brush down through the mesh and then let it partially cure before pressing the net down into the tacky surface to bond the mesh to the glue spiral. 

 

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I did some green later and then let it all dry properly, before peeling the net off the board. It was lifted up to see the effect. Due to the problems applying the glue, I didn't closely pack the spirals, but the overall concept seemed to work fairly well. What I did need was a finer mesh. This would hopefully allow the mesh to lay flat on the board and the smaller weave would support the spirals better.

 

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I raided the scrap fabric box and found some black tights ( hosiery for American readers ) which had a fairly fine weave. I piece was cut out, approximately the size of a 20 feet square camo net. This was stretched out a little to open the weave and then taped down to the board. This time, it was much closer to the board and it was much easier to get a smaller, more in scale spiral to stick to the mesh. I started with the brown again, painting on the spirals and square cornered snakes, leaving spaces for the green. It does take quite a long time, but appeared to be making a fairly good representation.

 

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After the brown was complete, I worked from the dry side, filling in the spaces in green. The brown didn't change colour much when drying, but the green was very light with the white glue mixed in, but darked quite a lot once cured.

 

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Here's the last of the green drying. Once that had dried, the glue would be hard enough to stop the mesh from shrinking back to its pre-stretched size. This allowed me to peel all the tape except the corner pieces. I then glued more patterns around the edge of the mesh.

 

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After a further period of drying, the camo net was peeled away from the wood. I'm very pleased with the way this is looking.

 

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The netting is balanced on two metal rods over the end of the diorama for these photographs. It will probably be fitted in this location, or this approximate location, supported on some poles and with cotton guy ropes to tension it. The kit radio operator will probably be under here, along with a few other odds and ends. I'm feeling quite pleased with this little experiment, something to keep in mind for future projects.

 

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We had around an hour spare today so had a quick modelling session knowing we'd be having to leave bits to dry anyway. The field gun and trailer were painted first.

 

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She didn't want to tackle the wheel hubs in case she got the green on the tyres, so I did those. I showed her how to build up several layers of dilute paint, allowing capillary action to draw the paint around the hub. A quick force dry in front of the heater, then another coat until a reasonable density was reached.

 

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