Maddog Manufacturing Open in 2021

Here is my latest progress for this past week and a half or so. I'll start with my Big Tank, the 1/35th scale M-48A3 Patton. Someone told me that Testor's Military Brown was a close enough approximation for the red clay in Vietnam. Since he served there, I took his word for it and finally shot this beast with the Military Brown in order to simulate a dusted tank. It's kind of hard to tell in a couple of these pics:









Now for the small stuff.

As you remember, here is where I was with the Chieftains:



First I added the tracks and sprockets to all of them. It was a bit of a fight too! Note to self: next time do not cement the upper hull to the lower one until the tracks and sprockets are installed.

Here's the Mk.5:



...and the Mk.10:



I did the Mk.10 first and then realized the top run of tracks would not be seen once the skirts were on. Hence, the missing top runs on the Mk.5. I also did not get pics of the tracks on the Mk.11

It was time to add the skirts to my Chieftains: I only got pics of the Mk.10 and Mk.11:



You'll notice I also had decals on that one and the Mk.11 which is here:



I also noticed that Takom did us a bit of a favor having two strips of clear plastic adhesive on each side of the P/E fret. I only removed one side so when it came time to remove the skirt pieces, all I had to do was slip a tweezer under the part and slowly and carefully peel it off. No chance of the part flying off when disengaging it from the sprue:




While those were set aside to dry, I added the tracks and sprockets to the M-109A2 since it still didn't have them:



Meanwhile on the M-109A6 Paladin, I painted all the Jerry cans on the turret with Olive Green:



On my Israeli vehicles, I added the tracks and skirts to the Nagmashot APC so I could apply decals soon:



I also moved forward on my Israeli Centurion Sho't Meteor, adding fenders and stowage boxes on the turret:



Then I went to start my Centurion Sho't Kal Alef by cutting out the lower hull floor to assemble the lower hull:



I looked for the sides of the lower hull and they were nowhere. I then looked at the instruction sheet and saw why. I am supposed to have this Sprue D in this kit that includes the sides of the hull and the correct engine deck:



Instead, I have this Sprue D that does not go with this version of the Centurion Sho't Kal Alef:



And no, I did not pull out the Meteor kit by mistake. I already have that hull built using these engine deck pieces and no, the missing sprue D for the Sho't Kal are not in with the Meteor sprues. I simply do not have that sprue in my kit like I'm supposed to. So, the Sho't Kal is on hold for the time being.

Moving on, I added the decals to Ole Bill, and started on the advertisements on the civilian Type B Omnibus. The advertisements for this bus were painted on paper and card stock and I couldn't tell if they were decals or not. Even the number frames for these ads on the instruction sheet were different from the number frames of the actual decals. So, I cut everything out and pasted them one the bus using Gator Grip Glue. I worked at the rear of the bus first as you can see here:



That took a couple days so I didn't shoot any more pics of the bus with the rest of them on.

That is about all for this update. It is a bit short but at least I made some progress.

Thanks all for looking in, comments are welcome.

Sorry to hear about the sprue issue, Duke. The signage looks great on the bus and nice dirt application on the M48.

Love the bus Duke.

It's another weekend and time to open the manufacturing plant for another tour to show the latest progress Thanks to Hobby Day, I was able to get a lot done. First things first, let's visit the hanger where I managed to finally sand the nose of the A-400 into something resembling "close enough":





The shape is still a bit off, but it seems beyond my capabilities to get right. It can only really be seen from certain angles. Screw it! I'm tired of messing with this thing, especially after all this time. I'm gonna repair the wheels, prime the nose and move on.


I also decided to take someone's advice to mask off and paint the blue stripes going down the side of the An-124. So, I gritted my teeth and started taping; making every effort to make these straight:





After that, out came the Sotar 20/20 which I used to lay down the first thin stripe. Getting the point right at the rear was extremely difficult and I doubt I'll be able to make it look good. But the first stripe is down:








I've been too scared to pull off the tape to see how badly I did. I'm already pretty disheartened by this model already


Before I did that, I re-glued the two broken engines back on the wing:





Man, what an ordeal! I'll check the stripes later this week and then try to mask and shoot the bigger one above that one.




Time to check out the tank assembly plant now....


Moving on, I managed to get a bit of extra work done on the 1/35th scale Patton. First, I assembled the searchlight:





You can see I did a bit of sanding to try and make that thing look right. Man, that is one extremely fiddly assembly! Installing it on the tank is gonna be even more difficult!


After that I wanted to do something that would make me feel good about this tank. I added the tracks and installed all the final roadwheels:





Yeah, I'm actually liking this thing now!




And now for the next project I started for my SoCal AMPS 20-hour build challenge. This is the Russian CLUB M coastal defense missile system, which I got from a fellow AMPS member for my birthday. I was allowed to work on it over the course of the next four hours.


First thing I did, build the transmissions and drive trains, as well as the center differential so that I could assemble the chassis:





After that I assembled and added the engine:





Next I built the floor of the rear missile compartment. Here it is dry-fit on the chassis. You can see I added the floor of the driver's cab already too:





After that, I decided to assemble all the missile launch tubes ahead of time:





You can see one needed a little persuasion. After I did those, I saw I had one hour left for this build for the day. Out came the parts for the suspension. I built all the axle assemblies and added them all to the chassis along with the gas tanks:






Now, we'll check in on the WWI female tank. This one got the decals on it and some dusting. It's not done yet, despite looking so close. I expect this will be in the completed models section soon:





Now we move on to the Israeli Nagmasho't. Ace has you bend four tiny pieces of P/E into ammunition box holders for the four machine guns on this. I'm so thrilled I had my Hold-n-Fold:





You can see the Exacto Blade in the pic for size reference. Man, I'm glad that got done! I glued each corner joint with Gator's Grip Glue.


Since I was doing photo etch on this, I added the final parts to the model:





Once they were dry, I added the decals:





While the photo etch was drying on the Nagmasho't, I continued to work on the Sho't Meteor tank.


First I completed the details on the hull:








Next I started adding the details to the turret to bring it closer to finishing:





Here they both are mocked up with all the details I added:





Next came all the photo etch. First I did the turret; I needed to bend all the vision block shields and add them to the turret. Later I added the remaining parts to the turret and hull:





Later I added the hatch ring to the commanders hatch over the top of all those vision blocks:





Now this is so much closer to being finished. I should be able to paint this within the week.


Finally, I got tired of the M-41 taking up space. I pulled it out and added the fenders, the photo etch braces and the fender boxes to this:





Next I did final bits to the turret. This is getting closer to paint, but I still have so much more to do with it. I did add the idler wheels and the rear halves of the roadwheels to the suspension but didn't take any pics. Too much frustration with the roadwheels not lining up at all. Maybe you'll see that in the next tour.


That completes the latest tour of Maddog Manufacturing, I hope you enjoyed it. Thanks all for looking in, comments are welcome.

The Patton looks ace and great work on the P/E.

Fingers crossed for the blue stripe.

The Mad Factory is slinging out those arms again .
Great stuff Duke, I'm specially looking forward to the coastal defence missile system

Resin and microscopic PE. Man, insane! And Beautiful!

That's some going Duke. Well done sir.

As the fellas have said the An-124 is a monster kit!

M48 is coming along very nicely as is the rest of the gang

The Modelcollect chassis looks very complex and you have 24h for the whole build!