room is blocked

As we will get again visitors, I had to clean up my room again. So the next two weeks there will be only posts from older stuff.

Bergehetzer in 1/144

I try to get my Bergehetzer finished in the next days. At the moment I do a lot of progress.
Inside I added the seat for the driver and the open box for the small parts. On the side I have the crane and on the other side a piece of wood. On the end I have to add a piece to guide the wire for the winch and then it should be finished.
As a source I use pictures from built models in the scale 1/72 and bigger. If you check the internet for pictures of original Bergehetzers you will be very disappointed.
There are not that much. Mostly you will find the pictures from the prototype in the Prague factory. This was the version with the spade. How many of them found the way to the troops? I have no idea but even in all books I know, you see no picture of any Bergehetzer with a spade in real action. So this brings me to the point, if you decide to build a Bergehetzer, just do what you want, most of them were modified in field in several different ways.

top view of my new Bergehetzer 

the Bergehetzer together with other (unfinished) German recovery vehicles

 

side view of my unfinished recovery fleet

 

some older dioramas

As I just came back from a one week trip to Europe I had no time to do anything. Therefore I open my archive of old works.

Just enjoy.

small diorama "Hetzer in Hinterhalt" / "Hetzer in ambush"

For this as for many other small dioramas I use small picture frames which I get for 1 USD.
I take the glass and paper out and fill it with a piece of foam board.  There i mark the dimensions on which I can place the scenario. With a air drying powder I created some small basics so that I can use them for different dioramas. Below is one with a wall.

The frame which I get for just 1 Dollar.

  You have only to consider that most air drying stuff is shrinking a lot. Therefore I had to extend everything later again. My mistake!

 

The finished mini diorama, a German Hetzer somewhere in the west waiting for "friends"

 

Cromwell recovery in 1-144 final part

In the last days I managed it to get the British tank crews  painted. So now they can take care for the recovery of this unlucky tank driver who came of the road.
For the recovery the HQ sent two crews. First the Scammel wrecker will get his chance.

The Scammel is from British Gramodels and looks nice. The building was a bit hard, my wheels were not as good as with the second Scammel I got. Finally I added the bar and some other details. 
But I like the model, nobody else has it in his program and the price is very fair!

While the crew of the Scammel discusses what's the best way to get the tank out of the ditch, the Cromwell recovery tank arrived. He should be able to tear his "brother" out f the ditch.

What's next?

At the moment  I build again a small diorama. I tried a different material to form the house fronts. So far I;m satisfied with the results. I only have to finish painting and have to decide which tank will be presented.

As I started with 3D printing, one of my first trials was a 5 ton Bilstein crane. In most cases it was fixed to a Buessing truck and not to an Opel Blitz. But for a test and as I do not have a Buessing or the Einheits truck I use one of my Opels.

Now for a much longer time on my bench, I have this unfinished Bergehetzer.
I started and then stopped with this project last year. At the moment I think about doing all needed parts with 3D printing so that the model will have a chance to get finished this year.

More progess with my first British tank crews. I urgently need them to finalize the diorama with the Cromwell recovery tank and the Scammel wrecker. Let's see how long it will take.

Cromwell ARV tank in 1-144 update

As I got the question what sources I used to build the tank, it"s quite easy, I checked a lot of Cromwell's in the scale 1/72 and wrote done what they had added. In the next step I generated a 3D drawing to get an idea about the dimensions. So take a look at the picture.
Maybe I will start and print some conversion kits with one of the 3D printer shops.