Maddog Manufacturing 2023 Grand Reopening!

[Duke Maddog]

This has been a rather wild few weeks. I'm surprised I actually had time to work on my models. Now that I'm fighting a mild flu, I'm taking the time while I'm home to start a new tour showing what I have been able to get done in between fighting this thing and taking care of other things.
For those interested: all aboard the trams now for our next tour.
As always, we'll start in the Hangar...
Quite a bit has been done here, particularly since I've been sick and tired of some of these long term shelf queens. This particular one comes to mind:
The A-400 I started six years ago has been fighting me almost constantly. While I was applying the decals for the French Armee del'Air in this first bay, the main landing gear and nose gear constantly broke:


Because almost all of that won't be seen, I decided to try some out-of-the-box thinking to make these landing gear stronger. Here's one technique we used, gluing an angled piece to the main gear to support the forked wheels:


That's just one example; the rest glued just fine and I was able to finally call this beast done! One Shelf Queen finally off the Shelf of Doom!
Moving on to the next bay, we were able to slather a bunch of Mr. Surfacer 500 over the Spitfire Mk. VIII, give the number of crazy gaps and seams we had after gluing it together:


After a good amount of sanding, things started looking better on this Mk.VIII:


Once I was satisfied with our sanding job, we added the canopy and windscreen to this so we could mask it all later and get ready for paint:


I was very pleased with the fit of this.
The Spitfire Mk. XIV in the bay next door, did not need nearly as much attention, a good sanding took care of those issues. However, I did lose the little cockpit door so we replaced it with some sheet styrene:


Later on that canopy and windscreen went on too:


While we were doing canopies and windscreens, we decided to finish off the canopy/windscreen assembly on the Me-110 as well. All six parts fit together nicely:


Finally in this last bay, our improved cockpit assembly for the Tu-95 Bear was test fit inside the forward fuselage halves to see how it looks. It's a vast improvement over the kit supplied parts:


The forward fuselage halves were taped together and then taped to the rear fuselage assembly to see how this beastie is gonna look. She's a long one indeed as you can see by the Exacto blade next to it:


All we have to do is add some 50kg's of nose weight to this before we can close it up. Shouldn't be too long if I can recover quickly enough.
That's all that's happening in the Hangar for now. We'll bypass the Shipyards as they've been dormant for a bit and move on to the Motor Pool...
Here in the Motor Pool, we started a little Ford Model A car in 1/72 scale from Zebrano. It's a cool little car that started well:


I can't wait to start the little Stakebed truck I got and place it next to this!
Moving on, we found another Shelf Queen languishing in this back bay since 2015. It had been started for a "Modern Armor Group Build" on a Forum I left long ago, and while cleaning out the Motor Pool, we found it back here. Wheels were missing from it, and idler had broken off, but it was overall intact. It was time to start moving forward on this.


First of all, this is my Swedish Leopard 2A6, and here is what it looked like once the wheels were all glued back on. It is a Revell kit and was quite brittle after all this time. So, to preserve the wheels as much as possible, we took the one run of track and glued it to the bottom of the main roadwheels and then to the idler and drive sprockets to hold everything together:


The tracks don't wrap up far enough on either side, but it is enough to at least keep everything together. We can add more tracks later to close things up. You can also see we started the second of the three color splinter camouflage.
Later, the third color got applied. It was a mix with a gloss green to try and get the closest match to a field green I could so once I gloss this, decal it, and then flat coat it; everything should blend:


Another couple steps and another long term Shelf Queen will be off the Shelf of Doom....
Finally, I decided we should tackle the Armory ZSU-23-4 Shilka. Now you'll see why I am reluctant to get more Armory Shilka variants.
First, the four lower hull parts were glued together. Looks simple right? There was an interesting amount of shaving that was needed to make these parts fit this way, as the flash was so misleading:


And now for the craziness to begin. I shot all the first four steps of the lower hull assembly so you can see how much was needed to do even before adding the torsion bars for the roadwheels! The hull should show you how tiny these parts were too:


That pic above shows steps one, two and three for the lower hull. Next I thought we could start on the upper hull. Again, six parts to build this before getting to the hatches and engine deck details. It's obvious Armory does not have slide mold tech. I understand it is expensive for many smaller companies, but it shouldn't be too hard to simplify things a bit to make this fun. I don't mind detail parts but to break things down for the sake of adding to the parts count, is not cool. It did go together a bit better than the lower hull:


I decided to test fit the upper and lower hulls; as you can see from the inside, they will need a bit of finagling to sit right:


One other critique on this kit: there are no numbers and letters stamped on the sprue. One has to follow the sprue map on the instruction sheet:


That makes thing tough when you have to keep flipping back and fourth to find where the part is on what sprue. Once more larger parts start getting used, finding parts like this will be even more difficult to find, thus complicating this build even more. I've dealt with worse, so yes, this will get finished.
Well, that completes this short tour of Maddog Manufacturing again. Thank you to all who have joined this latest tour. Comments are always welcome.

[tempestjohnny]

Nice to see you building wingy things. Very large wingy things and Spitfires, me like Spitfires

[LyleW]

Nicely done, Mark. They look great. I do still want a Bear at some point.

[keavdog]

That bear looks so cool. I want to do one, but maybe in 1/144. I bet it will be pretty impressive in 1/72

[Duke Maddog]

Thank you Johnny! Yeah, the Spits were a gift from Saul, who sold me a speed control box for my Dremel. Since I didn't have these two marks in my collection, it was only right that I start them.

Thank you Lyle! Yeah, that Bear is a cool looking plane. So far it has not been much of an issue, but if you get one; toss the cockpit seats in your spares box and find something more appropriate.

Thank you John! Yes, this Bear is quite impressive in 1/72 scale. You can see in the last pic how the fuselage compares to an Exacto knife.

[Stikpusher]

From small vehicles and fighter to The Bear… you would think that the Bear doesn’t leave any room on your bench for other projects…

[Duke Maddog]

Thank you Carlos! Yeah, the Bear does make working on other things a bit difficult. But adapt and overcome.

[BlackSheep214]

He's been a busy bee finally! Lots of good stuff. Can't wait to see the Bear completed.

[Duke Maddog]

Thank you Steve! It might be awhile on that Bear, but I do hope it won't take nearly as long as the Grizzly did!

[Duke Maddog]

Well, it has been awhile since the last tour, mostly because of difficulty with the PC which ended with erasing my entire ten-year history of photos taken with my camera. I'm also dealing with an unknown condition that has made driving for me too dangerous. At least I still have my hobby and now my PC is fixed enough to be able to start some more tours.
All aboard the trams, we will be departing soon for the Hangar....

Here in the Hangar, there has been only one project that we worked on, but a serious amount of work was done on it. This is a simple yet difficult kit from RPM; a very short run kit that I decided to start just to get it off the stash. It is a Russian Be-4 float plane, and the instructions had us start on the engine and cowling. After some intensive sanding, test fitting and sanding again, thwe engine finally sat in place correctly. There are no attachment points or guides for any of these parts:


Next we started on the "highly detailed cockpit". That consisted of adding the pilot seats to the main floor...that's it. Only they wanted us to place the seat bottom first and then 'scratch build' the seat backs! Forget that... I went straight to my parts box and added these seats instead:


Next the bulkheads went in place. They took a bit of finagling, as again; there's no guides or attachment points to put them in their proper place:


Finally, the "interiors" were added; I happen to find a third seat for the gunner/radio operator's station that matched the two pilot seats. You can see in this pic how the floors and bulkheads will need to be trimmed and sanded before the fuselage will close:


After a test fit, we moved the seats back:


After some snipping, sanding, test fitting, adjusting, readjusting, we finally got the fuselage together. It went together better than expected for such a short run kit:





There were still some seams and steps to deal with so out came Mr. Surfacer 500:


After test fitting the gunner's dome, I realized that seat needed to be trimmed so we got that trimmed down to fit:


Another test fit later; this time of the wing, we noticed that the pylon was too short and that the propeller would cut off the nose of the plane so an adjustment had to be made. We took some sprue from the kit; cut it to length, bent it a bit and then glued them into place:


Some judicious trimming and sanding later and the pylon is ready to take the wing and the propeller will be able to spin freely:


Speaking of the wing, it came in six parts. the center section is here:


The two outer halves on each side needed to be cemented together as well. We did this along with cementing all the outrigger floats and the tail plane halves together as well:


This poor molding leaves us with a butt joint that would break if you looked at it wrong:


Well, if they were not giving us a proper way to cement this together in any manner that would hold, we added some sprue runners that the end parts would be able to grip:


Here is the first attempt to glue the ends of the wing to the center:


You can see how poor fitting these are, worse than the fuselage. So, further adjustments were made...


...and made....


And since I still wasn't satisfied we took them apart and re-started them, hopefully finally getting the wing to look right. Pics of that forthcoming later during a follow on tour..

Meanwhile, the pylons were added to the outrigger floats:



You can see where we had to fill some holes where the pontoons themselves were short shot. They are ready for installation one the wing turns out satisfactory enough.

While waiting for the latest adjustment on the wing to take, we painted the interiors:


When test fitting the main canopy, we found it was too short to cover the whole cockpit opening, so we trimmed a piece of black sheet styrene to shape and added it to the front of the cockpit opening:


The results look much better and will look even better under paint:


Well, that completes the latest work in the Hangar, let's move on to the Motor Pool...

Here in the Motor Pool, a lot has been happening. We have two civilian automobiles in progress, one big scale and one small. On the small one, the Zebrano Model A Ford, we finally got the main body assembled and fastened to the chassis:


You can see all the dust that blew in from the Hangar after all the work on the Be-4
Later all the rest of the fenders, headlights, and radiator, as well as the wheels were added:


That's as far as we got on that one. On the larger one, the Monogram 1/24 scale Packard, a lot got done. The main fenders got their coat of gloss brown:


Since the fenders were being painted the dark brown, we also masked off the main body and shot the same brown trim on it:


A bit of a test fit later, we see how well this is gonna look....provided I don't screw it up first. You can also see that the seats had been painted leather.
The main hood over the engine had been giving us problems with the green base coat, but it finally went down smooth and the gloss coat as well. This was then masked off for the brown trim to be painted as well as some chrome bits molded in place:


Final result, better than expected:


You can see we started painting the chassis as well. More to come on this later.
There's a third civilian vehicle we're working on the ACE 1/72 scale Ford 1937 stakebed truck. First assembly was the chassis:


We then got half the cab finished:


Finally, the stakebed:


Great detail on this ACE kit. Here it is all mocked up:


These next few vehicles are ones we started since I've been wanting them in the collection or awhile. First is this French AMX Mk.61 self propelled gun. Basic lower hull was assembled first:


Another French AMX vehicle, this time the AMX-13 DCA. Again, lower hull assembled first:


We got a little further on the South African Eland 90, even building the basic turret:


Finally there's the Russian Br-5 280mm mortar from ACE. This one took a bit of time since the main tracked running gear had so many parts to assemble. First were all the road wheels on the main part:


Then the two outer casings went on, trapping the (twin) idler wheels, drive sprocket and roadwheel assembly inside:


Had to do this twice:


And we still have to add the link and length tracks! Moving on, we assembled the main carriage:


Finally we got to the gun:


The trunnion will be a tough build so we left it at that....
Our last project to look into is the M1070 gun truck. We took some time to get the main chassis almost fully assembled:


The cab was started next, leaving room for painting the interior before it is closed up:


Finally the gun bed was built up, sans barriers. There's lots of interior detail that can barely be seen:


There's still a center section to build up, but these three components are pretty much done overall:


One last treat before we conclude this tour, Rocket the Raccoon has been mostly painted up. I still need to do his nose, eyes, teeth, gun and his outfit:


That concludes this latest tour of Maddog Manufacturing, I hope you enjoyed it. As always, comments are welcome.