A pink T-55! Why not?

Also late 2016, I was without modelling inspiration, so I asked my daughter what next I should build. She could pick anything from the stash (expect the really big ones), which ended up being Lindberg's 1/35 T-55.

Small detail : she wanted it to be pink.
I actually found a picture of a pink T-55, outside of the Museum of Contemporary History in Ljubljana (Slovenia). It was painted pink overnight (and flowers put in the barrel) on the eve of International Women's Day 2012.

Of course, during construction, another few good practices were meant to be embraced:

• Always wash the sprues first, especially older kits (a lot of discussion about this, mainly the reason why I put it here :-))
• Careful when removing (smaller) parts of the sprues.
• Inspect wheel/axle alignment every minute until it's dry.

Construction finished, I went to work with black primer and Russian Green.

A layer of heavy chipping fluid, then pink and then toothpicks and brushes. Love the technique, hate the result.

It now looked truly hideous, which she did not fail to point out. I liked how she could honestly point at it and say "Daddy, you made it ugly!". She'd be a great SMCG member, no attaboys.

So, I went over it with several more fine layers of pink and now looks more the way I wanted it : multiple layers of distressed pink over a green base.
It needs some more weathering, maybe some fuel/oil stains and it'll be done.

Passing (pushing?) a hobby to the next generation

Late in 2016, there was a trade/sale moment in our scale model club. Picked up Smer's KlikKlak version of a 1/48 model of an Mi-2 helicopter, Police version.

It's not that I like helicopters per se, or that it's a striking model, but it felt like something I could (easily/quickly) make as a first model with my daughter. It's not like I expected her to be interested more than half an hour and even that was probably pushing it.

She liked it well enough and it got her acquainted with the simpler steps of scale modelling :

• snipping  the parts of the sprue instead of ripping and twisting like I did as a kid.
  (How about you? Admit it!)
• applying glue (Tamiya extra-thin) carefully, not in blobs like I did with those Revell tubes.

She lost interest by the time the fuselage was assembled and smaller parts and rotors needed attaching. I finished it on my own.

Gotta say, what I expected to be a sheet of decals was - disappointingly - one big sticker, from which every symbol or stripe needed to be carefully cut. The parts that fit around the windows were specifically annoying.

Happy with the result! One year later and it still has a place on her bedroom cupboard.

The Sprue Cutters Union is back!

The Sprue Cutters Union is back! I can think of no better way to :

- Wish you a Happy New Year!
- Start building models again
- Start blogging again

- Where have you improved the most in the past year? -

It's hard to think of an area I've improved in this year, not having done more than a couple of hours over the entire year.

Having gone through a divorce and moving out to a (small) appartement, I'd say I've learned the following:

1. Planning

Not having a lot of room and/or storage space in the new (temporary) appartement, I left most of my modelling stuff at my old place, only taking the bare necessities for ONE model I planned to tackle.

After 3 separate trips before I had all the tools and colours and stuff, I started to think further ahead and optimize the going back and forth.

2. Improvisation

For the same reason (lack of space), airbrushing was gonna be a tad difficult, but I saw a lot of potential in one of the boxes left over from buying new furniture. Meet my new spraybooth!

3. Perseverance

Not sure where it went wrong. The instructions were weird and I took a wrong turn somewhere. Some parts ended up in the wrong spot, but since the ropes were added MUCH later, this only become apparent very far into the build.

Initially, I told myself I could live with it, nobody of my friends would notice and those who did would get credit for perception.

Further along the painting process, it started to nag at me and it got as far as not wanting to continue the build anymore.

So, finally (a few months later), I decided to cut out the offending pieces and correct it.

The build is finished, it just needs a couple of touches of paint and then the dreaded rigging will start.

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This has been posted in response to January's Sprue Cutter's Union topic. To see what other modelers are saying about this topic, follow the links below:

• The Combat Workshop
• Motorsport Modeller
• Scale Model Soup

Click here for more information about joining the SCU and this month's topic