Tinkering with M7 Priest Kangaroo #3

Finally! Had some time today whilst waiting for a lacquer coat to dry. Finished up the kangaroos and crews, this set certainly wins the prize as the worst estimate of work and time required! Anyways, happy with them now, will reprime tomorrow ready for base coating with the SBG Churchill...

Russkies finishing tomorrow!

Tinkering with... M7 Priest “kangaroo” conversion

Following on from the Company B Priests recently finished (see my flickr https://www.flickr.com/photos/troop-of-shewe/albums) , I decided to have a go at some Priest Kangaroos, this time using the Warlord M7.  Whilst the kit is fine, maybe a bit too chunky for me and I hate the fixed tarpaulin, it was apparent a conversion was going to be fairly major surgery (ironically the company B M7 would have been easier).

 Anyway, Warlord M7 as above, one major issue that I didn't foresee was the earlier model wheel sets with central earlier return rollers.....

First up was the major surgery, on inspection the best thing would be to remove the superstructure sides with the cast on ammo bins and reconstitute out of plastic card. Painful, brutal, and not for the fainthearted......

Regards the track sets, I shortened a set of M4 tracks to match the M3 chassis, worked fine in the end, and now reasonably accurate. The unbotched Priest is in the background for comparison.

With the sides I had to make suitable recesses to accommodate the plasticard side plates at a later point. The new sides will additional details on anyway so probably for the best. So several scalpel blades and a few cuts later, I had the basic hull cleared out, although that tarp casting was annoying me.....

View from above, looking drastic...

As I'm a glutton for punishment, I had decided on a pair, so the same process was repeated, and this time the offended tarp cast was removed.

So that's it for a bit, need to concentrate on getting some commissions out the door. 

I'm pleased I went to the trouble of redoing the track sets and a total clear-out of the hull, it will produce a much better result in the end. 

I plan to fully crew these with infantry as "sabots", similar to earlier M3 halftrack crews I did a while back.  By using sabots the crew/passengers can be removed or added as required. 

I'm gradually getting the hang of facebook, although not being able to separate hobbies and real life is confounding me, and I'm sure my children don't appreciate the toy tank updates...any pointers welcome.

n.

Normandy Priests - WIP - going for a Christmas Finish !

Quick post while I have five minutes, have been juggling several very detailed commissions at the moment, hopefully trying to clear the decks for Christmas.   The blog has been neglected recently, partly due to my iphone no longer supporting blogger but mainly real world pulls etc etc, however I will try and reinvigorate over Christmas as some really cool commissions finish.

So, today's focus is two Company B priests modified for Normandy, which will be resplendent with converted Warlord plastic crews, as always heavily fettled!

Above, basic paint work with initial weathering ( alongside part of a lovely New Zealand force for Italy ( more on them soon). I will detail all the Priest Normandy mods in another post, but trust me there's a lot of work up till this stage!

Here we have the two Priests with some basic weathering inside prior to crew positioning, crew will be pinned and fixed in place. Apologies for the picture quality, I have invested in a superb LED light-set, which I cant recommend enough, unfortunately it creates this strobing effect when i use the iphone!

Initial crew positioning, the crew are still on full length painting pins as they still need finishing off, but its enough to allow for composition ( or more correctly confirm positioning from the build stage)

So you get the idea, crew will now be removed and both crew and interior will now receive final detailing, prior to fully fixing in place tomorrow (hopefully), and then to finish off the exterior.

As always, best to subscribe via the email link to the side, more prevalent now as I am no longer able to post update links on TMP.  

And for those who are interested...

Re: TMP - I seem to have fallen foul of the increasingly erratic and hubristic editorship, it would be nice to know what particular offence or digression I was found guilty of in absentia (I'm sure its more than me being on this side of the pond!)

Anyways, I'm clearly joining an increasing [secular] diaspora! Its a genuine shame as what was once a great and diverse resource is now unnecessarily, through the decreasing quality of content and discussion, increasingly incestuous spam and unaccountable, dictatorial editorship, driven into the self inflicted buffers!

Anyways, as "they" say: "his site, his rules", so I wish him all the best and sincerely hope he manages to resolve, or gets help for, whatever personal issues prevail.