nightshiftmodeller

HD photos

Here you go mates, today I smoothened the surface even further by gently sanding it with a microfine sponge and water. This won't appear in the video as I did it after the video was finished.

The surface isn't excellent but now I'm more at peace because it's nothing weathering couldn't handle. 

Daily update

Yessss, camo finished, decals applied, and sealed with satin varnish! It's an armored salamander! 

Okay, so finishing the camo was overall pretty fun, made me feel like a kid again. To sum it up I'm not happy with how the Ammo paints airbrushed, but I'll give them another chance some other time. I'll try adding drying retarder or thinning them with Vallejo Airbrush Cleaner which works excellent for airbrushing AK and Vallejo paints.

The green spots were painted in 3-5 layers,...

Early video

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

Have fun :) 

Don't get startled!

I just like painting camouflages with a brush :) And this kind of hard edged camo is so typical for late war Germany. 

The "ugly" bits are one layer of paint. The "proper" ones at the front are 2 layers. So far I'm pretty happy with how it looks, although I could've mixed the green a little bit brighter. But just like I tend to say that weathering will make everything darker, it is possible to make it lighter as well. I'll try to do that on this one to make it more balanced. <...

Last night update

I made a quick camo profile for the Rutscher. I find this step extremely important when making up any type of paintwork. It helps you visualise the painted model and you can pretty much dial in every contour of the camo pattern. In some cases, like with this one, the tank can have slightly more complex shapes and it's hard to sketch out the camouflage, like you can see on the right-hand side on the top view. I'll first paint the rest, then take a photo of the model from the unpainted side, an...

HD Photos

Hey guys, enjoy. 

Finally got those proper shots done. Seems like I'll start painting it tomorrow :) 

Patreon change (?)

Hey guys,

I was thinking about making a slight change in the way new Patrons are charged. It's a so called "charge up front" method, which means new Patrons will pledge immediately after joining, instead of being charged at the 1st of the next month.

According to Patreon this won't affect you in any way, you'll be charged per usual on the 1st of the next month, as you already paid for this month's membership.

What are my reasons for this?

First, there were a few people...

Weekend update

Here's an easy way to spend over 200€ in one day :D 

So, this is what I've brought from the model show yesterday. There were some paints, tools and other things but this is the tasty stuff :) 

And, I'd like to hear your thoughts.

As you can see, I bought the new Jagdtiger from Takom and couldn't resist to get a set of metal tracks as well. Now the kit looks really sweet and I'm thinking if I should buy a set of photo etched details or build it out of the box... I...

Weekend update

Good Friday evening mates,

I'd just like to let you know that I need to take the weekend off again. My original plan was to write a script for the Rutscher video but today was very exhausting and it's the last thing I wanna do right now. In fact, I'll probably head to bed right now because tomorrow I'm waking up super early to catch a good parking spot at the model show I talked about a few weeks ago.

I'll pick up that Crusader which I ordered earlier and I'm also gonna do some mo...

Early video

Here ya go mates: https://youtu.be/M8ywNtjfkdc

Daily update

Well the build is pretty much done!

I still have one small idea to add a few spare links at the glacis plate but I don't have that many left, so... we'll see once the model is painted. I can add them at any point, because as I've seen on Sdkfz 251 photos, they were usually held in place with wire, which is a pretty interesting detail btw. I might also wrap most of the hull in wire at the end, which was done pretty often to hold branches and vegetation on the tank for camouflage... but o...

Daily progress

Soooo it looks like the finish line is just around the corner!

All that remains is to add a few tools which I sourced from a RFM Tiger and maybe a couple more tiny details and touch-ups. 

I also had to steal the rubber antenna base from the Rye Field Tiger as well. The Bosch headlight was taken from a Dragon Tiger simply because those parts were quite bad in the DW/AH kit. Figuring out how to wire the headlight was a tough task but I did it similarly to what Hetzer had, aka t...

Daily progress

Hey guys, sorry for taking the Sunday off.

I did some detail work using PE and copper wires, nothing special actually... but hey I also improved those empty bolt holes on the roof with some photoetched bolts from Aber.

Now I'm starting to think if I should add some tools on the fenders or keep the thing clean and minimalistic? 

Daily progress

Fenders are ON! 

These were one of the easiest fenders to solder and bend. If anyone is hesitant to try this for their first time, these might be a good start. 

Smol kitty is suddenly looking more chonky. I also tried one of my ideas to clad the sides of the superstructure with Pz IV tracks. Unfortunately, it looked really bad. Initially I tried to get some inspiration from StuG III photos, but nothing worked because this thing is just too different. Then I realised it h...

Yesss!

Now we're talking! 

The other track is halfway done, but that's a story for another day. Super glad to have the running gear perfectly aligned and the track tension is pretty much bang on. I actually used a trick for this which I learned when building a T-34. I attached the rear idler wheel on its movable axle with superglue so I could move it back and forth for the ideal track tension. To move it, I simply reactivated the superglue with debonder, moved it back as needed, then fixe...

Early video!

Yooo guys I'm so sorry for sharing this late!!!

https://youtu.be/_PY2MgRtnGA 

Today I just keep jumping between my workbench and daily job and suddenly I'm hit with one of the worst shower thoughts "dude you forgot the early video"

Daily progress

Welds are done! Here I took the opportunity to make a few welds of a different kind, the so called multiple pass weld beads. These were common on some German tanks, but most of the time they were combined with the single bevel welds. 

I'll let them dry for a few hours and tonight I'll hopefully tackle the running gear! 

Daily struggle continues

Turns out I was so wrong last night. The toughest and most frustrating part of this model is getting the running gear aligned properly. 

The swingarms have extremely loose fit so I had to check their alignment at least 20 times while the glue was setting. They're also very thin so I double secured them with superglue. 

Roadwheels have super loose fit as well, but this led me to an idea. Aligning them once the model is painted and weathered would be even worse, so I'll do...

New model under construction!

So after finishing the impact video I felt the strongest urge to just BUILD and so I started working on the Rutscher.

Turns out tonight was a pretty productive night shift as I managed to clean up and prepare the entire running gear, which takes up most of the sprues, but the most time consuming part was (and will be) the main hull. Needless to say I'm not impressed with this kit. The fit of the main hull parts was meh in most places, they glue together in a way that requires filling an...

Yup, it's gonna be serious

I just decided to use another Tiger that I started years ago as the main protagonist of this thumbnail. It will appear a few times in the video as well, so no clickbait :) 

Unfortunately I don't know if I ever finish this model... it's one of those several-month long projects. It would take at least 6 months to complete, so I dunno :(

Finally a daily progress

Hey guys, sorry for taking the weekend off, but I’m just exporting the impact video as I’m typing this. These are the examples from said video. We’ll take a look at penetrating hits, impacts coming under an angle and regular 90 degree ricochets. It’ll be pretty interesting 😁

So I've been doing some practice off-camera...

I was just trying to come up with the easiest shell impact technique I could think of for the new video and might just accidentally found my new favorite approach lol. In the past I've been working with soldering iron and epoxy putty, but I really enjoyed this quick practice piece. All you need is to drill out a shallow hole, fill it with putty, give it about a minute to dry and then push it out with a blunt smooth object... done... brb, gonna do some filming on that turret in the background....

Another video is finished!

Whoah there buds, this must be the quickest video I ever made! I can't even describe how stoked I am about that! It will be a pretty simple video where I explain how to make somewhat presentable bullet holes on plastic and metal parts. 

And while I had that Tiger on my bench, why not use it as a prop for the thumbnail? :) 

Early video

https://youtu.be/-3huQT6Ui4c

Enjoy guys. I've uploaded it to my personal channel. 

I didn't make it any different to the official video, as my editing software decided to freeze at 99% THREE TIMES in a row lol. So let's hope it'll be fine. We'll see tomorrow. In the meantime, again, enjoy the early vid. 

Ah, zimmerit

So while I've been considering this Tiger as my next build, I took it out of the drawer to take a look at it, because it's been a while since I did what you see here. Before you ask about the heavy flaking, this is the Gruppe Fehrmann F13 which had most of the zimmerit coat fallen off :)

This is my first "serious" attempt at hand-made zimmerit. My previous 2 efforts date back to my early teenage years. 

At the time I was stoked about the results, but now I know I'll have to r...

Final HD photos of the KV-220-2

Enjoy guys. These photos came out really well. The video won't do this model justice, at least not as much as these pics. 

Good news everyone!

The KV-220-2 is officially finished!

Tomorrow I'm gonna start putting the video together. HD photos will be ready in a few days.

So... how do I feel about it? Pretty okay actually. I could've done a much better job in some aspects, but some of these were just due to the kit's quality - especially the running gear. I guess finishing 2 models with shitty tracks and wheels in a row isn't the most satisfying thing if you're a fussy boi like me and it can actually make you a bit discou...

A little update about early access

TLDR: don't worry, nothing bad happened, you're still getting early videos as usual.

So, something strange has been happening... I've noticed that my views dropped quite hard in the past 3 weeks... like, normally a video gets around 700-900 views in the first 30 minutes since posting, and if it's something that people like, Youtube will push it to get more views and it might get 20-30K until the next vid is posted... but now the videos get barely 400 views in those first 30 min...

Alright, you asked for it :D

TBH the best selling point for me was the PE upgrade set from Hauler which was also available. I'll be picking it up on 30th of this month. 

Daily progress

Yesternight I managed to add the dry earth tones to the entire hull and finished the dark tones on one fender. This is so much fun and I can't wait to get it done!