Day One

So I am starting with the hull and the running gear I have cut out the parts for the first step in the kit's (kit: when I use this word I mean the basic plastic kit) instruction sheet. This wooden plinth thing brings the work up to my eyes, rather than me having to hunch over. Not good to spend months hunching over things. Unhealthy. I've taken out only the tools I am going to need right now, basic stuff. Extra thin model glue (the tube stuff, is it even still around? Actually it does have its uses but more of that later). Superglue (cyanoacrylate) and Araldite (epoxy). Scissors, a serious collection of files. Not shown is sandpaper (I got the Tamiya stuff and it's very good). The Olfa knife is for rough work; I can afford to go through those blades but not to have to keep replenishing my good craft knife blades. This is the real deal, the original and best Olfa brand knife, from which came the whole family of what most call 'box-cutters'. I have a Dremel but that is used for special things. In nearly every case you are better off with good hand tools, the unpowered variety. So these are the blades I am using:

For nearly all my younger days I used one blade only, the one at the left. I used this for everything. to cut parts out, to scrape them clean of seams. For. Everything. And I am very handy with this blade but I use it rarely now. The blade next to it is shorter and much stiffer, and gives me much more control. Next the chisel blade; I use this a lot. It is perfect for removing parts from the sprue because it is flat and gives you a good 'reference' to the majority of parts that will be attached either on a flat edge or in relation to a flat surface. Next we have to curved, scalpel-like blades. This will help when you have to cut curved part free. But they are especially good for removing seams without prejudice to the surface of the part. You can be not at the perfect angle and because they are curved they are still going to stay on the seam and not eat into the part itself. That swivel knife is a piece of crap. They have their uses for sure but I haven't found a good one for it yet. If you find you need one get a good one, a really good one, because this particular one doesn't do a lot of swivelling. Finally there is a saw blade you can fit to the standard modelling knife. Sometimes I use this when I have to remove something largeish (for example a mudguard that's going to be replaced with a photo-etched part). But actually this is where the Dremel, with a cutting disk, is best - big, messy jobs. And of course there are quite a few other blades but these are what I'm using at the moment and I think you will find them sufficient to most tasks.

Blades like this blunt very quickly indeed. I go through tons of them. They cannot really be sharpened (like my woodwork chisels). Luckily they are not too expensive and also, I have noticed, the modern generation of kit not only has finer seams but the moulds are designed to put the seams in more helpful places. I'm using files a lot too these days. You need a top-quality file brush though, to keep them in good order. As well as files, mount sandpaper on flat sticks of some sort (ice cream sticks!) with Aquadhere (PVC glue). Take the time to do this properly. Make sure you clamp them flat while they are drying. They absolutely have to be flat so clamp them to the flattest thing you can find. 

Glues and stuff. For the kit plastic I use any THIN liquid-type cement. Old-style thick tubey glue still has its uses but the liquid cement is a million times better. This time I am trying the Tamiya stuff, it's fine. On the right is a glue for styrene, the white stuff. You can get every form and section of styrene rod and sheet imaginable, as you with copper, brass, steel, aluminium etc. I'm using the Tamiya putty too but there are many to choose from; I recommend you buy a veritable collection and get to know their different properties. At the back is good old Araldite, which we use when we need to glue something strongly, when Superglue is not going to do the job. Superglue in most cases will hold parts in place but it is fragile. Epoxy is tough and makes a real bond. Superglue, cyanoacrylate, you will probably find about five different brands in any supermarket. I have run out of the good stuff I got from Pacer. If it was better than this ordinary stuff from the supermarket then that would have been a question of how viscous it was and how quickly it sets. With brass parts you do not want the parts to bond instantly as you're going to have to push them around till they are perfectly in position. So I grabbed this green one, that calls itself a 'gel' and apparently gives me half a minute to fiddle about. Let's hope it's a thin gel. Last of all is superglue debonder. You use this to undo superglue mistakes or if you stick your fingers together haha. It's main use, however, is cleaning up superglue from brass parts and in that respect it is absolutely indispensable. Once the brass parts are joined you just wipe them with the debonder on a kleenex till they are totally clean of any excess glue.

A word on soldering/gluing brass parts. They are best soldered, it is true, but you cannot solder a tiny bolt that is half a millimeter across without the following: an EXPENSIVE soldering iron with a very, very fine point, a third hand that will hold the parts together for you, and a very great deal of skill/experience. I have a nice soldering iron from Hakko, basic model. Very nice indeed. Nowhere near fine enough, who was I kidding. I do not have the second or third components. Last time, I tried, and I succeeded with the bigger, simpler bits but I was defeated by the finer parts. I'll get back to you when I know more.

Back to business:

I have come to my first problem. The book shows me that missing from the kit parts are two strengthening ribs/vanes. The manufacturers generally do skimp on detail where they think the sun won't be shining. Just think how nice it would have been if the cast iron character of these parts had been faithfully reproduced. For now I'm going to ignore this issue because I can; this is one of those decisions that actually CAN be left till later, and so I will. If I want to I can come back to these parts and somehow graft on those missing details later.

But now, still on *Part 1* of the kit instructions, these towing lugs are to go on the fore of the hull. They are all very nice but look, ejector pin marks! Oh noes! Of course the manufacturers try to put these in unobtrusive places but these are going to be visible, on an outstanding feature, unless I do something about them. Step one: fill with putty. Make sure you get the putty right in there, like a dentist filling a tooth. Obviously the minimum used the better but it is more important to fill the hole well. Step Two: file/sand the putty away carefully. You can use a chisel blade to bring it down a bit before you sand, but there is always the risk that you will tear out the putty, or put a divet in the surrounding plastic - which you will have to fill. I am fortunate in this case that the parts are dead flat and I can make short work of them with file and sanding stick. 

So marching right along, I have put the first parts onto the hull: the stanchions for the suspension, the housing for the rear idler, the mount for the return roller. That was trouble-free. I have also mounted the towing lugs and as you can see there is a horrible, horrible gap where they join the hull.

Not a problem! I filled those without any trouble at all. Now this was important; I could not ignore this. The towing lugs were either part of the side hull plate or they were welded (I actually cannot be sure, even from the excellent photos in the book). What I do know is that there was not a huge gap between the hull and the lug. This was a major detail that had to be taken care of.  The filling operation went rather well and the result is that the lugs really are part of the side hull armour, as they must be. And I am happy with them. If I had left that gap I would have been unhappy, forever.

My eyes are not what they used to be. Taking these macro photos is how I see what's wrong; up near the (top) of the lug you can see I have not properly cleaned up that part where it was joined to the sprue. You'll be pleased to know that little problem is gone now. But when I have a bit more money I am going to have to get myself a jewellers loupe.

Just time for a little more before I call it a day.  I assemble and mount the sprocket drive housings (yes I still haven't fixed up that bit of mess on the towing lug but I will). I marvel at how much more precise the parts are today, compared to when, thirty years ago, the only kits around were Tamiya and shovels came moulded in one piece with trackguards.These parts are going together sweetly.

  And here are the leaf springs and their 'shoes' all cleaned up and ordered on a piece of paper. I probably didn't need to do this, could have just put them in one pile, but it only takes a second to do this and it's not like I haven't made mistakes before. I mentioned seams before. All parts have seams. I have never seen a leaf spring suspension part that did not have its seam right down the centreline. These were fairly easy to clean up though. The shoes have, like the stanchions I was going on about before, been simplified by the manufacturer. Their real shape is considerably more complex. I've made an executive decision to live with this. Making eight new suspension shoes: not going to happen. We'll dirty them up good and no one will care, not even me.

So all in all a productive and satisfactory first day. Smiley face.

Preliminaries

Look what's come in the mail! Oh my oh my! This is the photo-etched brass bits and also the book. I could not begin construction of the plastic components without knowing how the brass and other things are going to play in. And so here, below, are all the bits, quite enough to begin work. Still to come is the turned metal gun barrel from JB Model. I have the brass etched set, I have the Montex masks, the track set and also a set of very nice sprocket wheels from Fruilmodel, I have the book. Elsewhere I have things like a set of jerrycans by Armorscale and towing cable from Voyager. I'm going to need an after-market MG-34 without buttstock and a pile of other things too but we'll acquire these items all in due course. And we will make our own bits and pieces too. Right now we are just going to focus on the basics and the fundamentals. We will actually be following the order of the instructions in the plastic kit, but we may jump around a bit - providing we are not putting any carts before any horses.

I have this too, an Aztek, somewhere near the middle of the range, never been used. Finally, a decent airbrush, replacing the excellent but very basic Badger I've had since I was about eleven. I do not own a compressor (too poor at the moment) but the cans of propellant will be perfectly adequate for a job like this. But we won't be seeing this in operation for a long time. I completely finish construction before I even think about painting. The plastic box in the picture above is for sub-assemblies. I have never understood those people who fully assemble a model before painting; that seems crazy to me. I hang them all up in the spray booth and paint them separately. Because, for example, how can you paint a roadwheel's tyre accurately if it's already in place? Just how are you supposed to get behind it? Nah, you stick that on a drill or your Dremel and spin it.

Hello and Welcome and Suchlike

Hello, welcome. I am forty-six years old and I have been making scale models since I was five. The purpose of this blog is to document step by step the building of a model, in this case Academy's very nice Hetzer 38(t). My main intention is to be of help to younger/novice builders, who have built a few kits straight out of the box and now are ready to go the next step, which is 'super-detailing' or 'scratch-building'. But maybe you veterans will find something of use in all this too. Of course, when the time comes I will be telling you everything I know about painting, and some things I don't too, as I'm going to be trying out some new ideas. A lot has changed since I was a lad, when once the model had its base coat on it was all about splashing on some mud and rust streaks, dry-brushing and washes. Now there is acrylic paint. Now there is 'chipping techniques'. Now you can buy unbelievably realistic solutions to recreate rust effects and other weathering too. We shall see, we shall see.

I chose the Hetzer as it is a comparatively simple vehicle, with relatively few parts. This way I can cut down construction time and get to the painting, which is for me the main event. Also, there are quite a lot of references for this vehicle and historical/technical accuracy is quite essential to making a successful model. When I was young I wouldn't care about this sort of thing, I'd rush to the end and be perfectly happy. Nowadays I need the thing to be real. To do this, you buy yourself books. This is the book I got from Eduard for a piddling $3.95. It has high-quality photos of very inch of the machine, and I wouldn't be able to work without it:

We won't be doing any painting for a long, long time. It will be months before I finish construction, probably around six. Because I don't want you all to lose patience I've decided not to detail the interior because then it would be over a year. Instead, we will focus on making what's on the outside thoroughly credible. Finally, we'll need to build either a base or a diorama. We'll make that a fairly simple affair. Just as when we draw portraits we do not leave out the background, the vehicle needs some setting, or it's not finished. I haven't any special idea about this yet. I will need - at the painting stage, to decide where in the world the vehicle is/was and I'll need to 'landscape' accordingly. I mean, if this tank is hiding out in a barn, then the barn I make has to match, architecturally and in every other way, the location in which the tank's unit was known to operate.

We have bought a whole pile of 'after-market' parts. These are things like the truly beautiful Eduard photo-etched brass detail set, Fruilmodel's gorgeous cast white metal individual track links (no, you seriously cannot be using those hideous one-piece vinyl things), turned metal gun-barrel for the cannon and a really nice machine gun for up top, things like this, all of which take your model from the B Class into the A Class. Much of what's in the kit is going to be blobby, dodgy, and need replacing with either after-market parts or our own ingenuity. Parts of this kit will be built from whatever I have lying around.


Construction is not so hard. The hardest - and it is hard - part about building models (once you've got all the reference material you need) is patience. Slowing down. Do not be looking at the finish line. Look at what you are doing right now and know that the slower you can go, the better it will be. Be willing to do tests, experiments. If you don't you'll bugger it up and have a real headache to fix it. Keep your work bench super clean and tidy. You need to be able to put tools back in their place every time you use them. Don't let piles 'o crap clutter your work space; clean up whenever you take a break or when you finish for the day. You need to stay focused, and keep things as simple as you can for yourself, and you don't want to have to look for things; you want them to be right were you put them. Like a surgeon, if you will. Above all you need to learn to resist with all your might the almost overwhelming desire to cut corners.That said, I'm probably going to cut a few.

Every day I work I will take photos to show you what I've done. For months on end you're going to see how various construction challenges are met. This early stage is all about the right blades, files, sandpaper, glues and filler. You don't actually need a lot of tools for basic construction. I think we must be just about ready to get this show on the road :D