An interesting site

     I know I spend too much time mucking about on the interwebs and not enough time building/painting etc but every once in a while I stumble across a gem. I found one such site w short while ago: The Prison Art Chronicles , an oddly named but highly amusing portion of the MillionMonkeyTheater.com website. It is a recording of one man's obsession with building models out of stuff that is essentially free (or nearly so) and he has built some beautiful models along the way. Take a look, also take a peek at the host page if you are at all interested in cheesy old movies (they review some real whoppers, truly MST3K worthy stuff).  Enjoy!

Building the Zvezda 1/144 Hawker Hurricane

     I have to confess that the Hurricane was always one of my favorite aircraft, overshadowed by the longer-lived and far sexier Spitfire the Hurricane was the backbone, muscle and sinew of the RAF during the hard days of the Battle for France and the the Battle of Britain. Easier to build and maintain, the Hurricane was numerically the most significant fighter of the RAF through those dark days. I always thought it looked cooler as well. Zvezda has added this aircraft to their growing line of 1/144 scale models and it is a beautiful kit.

box art is rather uninspired

Building the Zvezda KhT-26 flame tank 1/100 15mm

     This little model hardly needs an assembly article, but I have dome them for all of the other kits so here we go;

the front of the box, nice illustration

More Russian Beauties, building Zvezda's Matador truck 1/100 15mm

     This is another of the kits that I did a sprue-review on a little while back and have finally gotten around to building. As always with Zvezda kits it is a little gem of detail and very creative thinking in the "make it a snap-tight: way. This truck was one of the real work-horses of the British war effort so if you are building a Brit army for WW2 you will need a goodly many of these. Good thing that they are only about five bucks US.

Spending the afternoon with some Russian beauties, Zvezda I mean, Part IV; building the PZ IV d 1/100 15mm

     I remember doing a review of this kit ages ago when it first came out but, for reasons unknown, I never posted a build on it. Well better late than never, so here we go.

box art and contents

Spending the afternoon with some Russian beauties, Zvezda that is, Part III Building the PZ III Flam 1/100 15mm

     Having reviewed this kit some time ago I finally got around to putting it together. As anyone familiar with Zvezda kits would expect it went together without a hitch, the fit and finish of the parts was superlative. I still can't believe that these are snap-tight kits, they simply are as good as plastic gets in this scale.

box art, OK but not great

Spending an afternoon with some Russian Beauties Part II, The BA-10 1/100 15mm

     Having finished the last big boat project I needed something different. I cast my eye around my overcrowded "toy room" for something simple and undemanding and there they were, a bevy of beauties from the far-off land of Russia; a pile of Zvezda kits that I had picked up and never built! I scooped them up and got to work right away

      The Stug kit being a dead-easy build I looked for something that would be more of a challenge, there it was the BA-10. Not that there is anything particularly hard about this kit but is does have lots more parts and they are tiny (and my fingers are bratwurst-sized). Off to the races I went!

Box art, nice to see something other than all-green on Russian armor

Spending an afternoon with some Russian beauties, Zvezda that is, Part I The Stug III 1/100 15mm tanks

    Having finished the last big boat project I needed something different. I cast my eye around my overcrowded "toy room" for something simple and undemanding and there they were, a bevy of beauties from the far-off land of Russia; a pile of Zvezda kits that I had picked up and never built! I scooped them up and got to work right away

       First up we will consider the Stug III kit

box art, captures the subject very well

Final Nemesis

 

 Well, I finally took the time to complete the paintwork and add a dash of detailing on Nemesis. I think this has turned out pretty well for a spin-off of a failed project (it WAS supposed to be a small torpedoe-boat when this all started, an effort that I need to return to) albeit a fair bit larger than first planned. Even when I had decided to finish this project I still managed to get distracted and burn a few hours on stuff that would have been fine if left alone.