First steps

Well, I'm a little behind by not by much. I spent a lot of time last night planning, so ironically I didn't get done what I had planned to do. I figure I've got two times to really get stuff done: before I go to work (I leave around 11:30) and after Maike goes to bed. Anything involving drying or spraying I'm going to do in the mornings and let the summer heat take care of that for me, and building and the like I'm trying to do in the evening.

Or that was the plan. Instead, the fiddly bits slowed me down considerably. But as of 10:30 this morning, I have this done:



The field cars and motorcycles are built, and the first Schützen platoon is ready to paint. I decided to try a different technique for painting and basing after some research. I'm putting the cleaned infantry models onto popsicle sticks with a dab of superglue, and I'll prime and paint them there. After they're done, I'm going to mix up some concrete patch with some brown house paint I have left over from terrain building I did a while ago. Put that on the bases, stick the models in, cover the bottoms of the models, and there you go! After that dries, I'll cover it with static grass instead of my usual drybrush and bits of grass.

The biggest issue I had were the fiddly bits. Specifically, the motorcycle drivers were a PAIN to put together. I'm still probably going to have to clean up around their arms once they've set. It took me a lot longer to get that done than I'd thought. Secondly, I was really disappointed with the quality of the casts of the Schützen platoon. There were a lot of heavy mold lines where the mold clearly didn't completely match up, plus big boogers of flash that would obscure some of the detail. When you've got to file off mold lines that heavy in a scale like this, you're losing detail, period. I actually can't use one of the MG loaders because the entire front of the model is only semi-cast, with no face and the arms melting. I sent an email to customer service about it - they've been good about replacing stuff like that. Sadly, I don't know if it will come in time to do any good.

I finally just figured I'd do the obvious and easy stuff like the helmets and the larger glops and leave the small mold lines alone. I had hoped to get all of this primed today, but I'll hold off and prime it tomorrow with more of my infantry. That's it for now! Off to shower and go to work.