No More Odds’n’Sods!

I really think I’ve exhausted this title theme now!  Just as well ’cause I’ve sort of got back to a more settled routine with painting stuff, and even fitted it in with this month’s community painting challenge!

 

With a WW2 Russian theme to them, just painted are an SU-1-12 self-propelled gun and two BA-6 armoured cars, primarily for the Russian force I’m building to fight the Japanese in the Far East in 1939.

I’ve recently read the Osprey New Vanguard book on Polish armour in the 1939 campaign and it mentioned a Polish tankette knocked out by an SU-1-12.  Since I wasn’t familiar with that designation I looked it up on-line.  It turned out I’d seen a plastic kit of the vehicle a while ago, but I didn’t realise they were actually built and saw action in the Far East and Poland in 1939 and in the Winter War of 1939/40.

Not wanting to build what was probably going to be a plastic kit with loads of fiddly parts, I had a look on Shapeways for a 3-D printed model and found a shop with an SU-1-12, although not in 20mm/1:72 scale.  I dropped the designer a quick message asking if he might consider creating a model in that scale and next day it was available!  Brilliant!  Can’t fault that for service!  Although I bought this model in October, and had it primed and ready for painting at the beginning of November, it’s only just got finished because of all the intervening odds’n’sods getting painted.  I’ve painted it in the same way that I used for the Russian T-26 tanks finished a few months ago – although it’s a plain scheme, I think the model has some character to it!

I’ve always wanted some Russian heavy armoured cars, but finding a decent model put me off.  I got a white metal model of the later BA-10 armoured car years ago, but the front axle and mudguards all looked a nightmare to fit (in addition to the nasty flash lines) and I never got round to making it.  These two models are fast-build kits in 1:72 by Pegasus Hobbies that I’ve had assembled for years, but I thought I might as well get them painted alongside the SU-1-12.

 

The chassis has the mudguards and front bumper moulded integrally and you just have to add axles and wheels, so it’s quite robust.  Detail overall is good and the kit fits together well and is easy to assemble.  The machine gun mounted in the front plate next to the driver is a sort of vestigial representation, but I left it as it was on the basis that at least it wouldn’t get broken.  Painting was exactly the same as for the SU-1-12.  As far as fast-build kits are concerned, I was quite impressed with these.

The Russian Civil War and WW2 Russian figures are shown as a scale comparison, but I need to paint some more infantry to go with these vehicles.  And paint some more tanks.  Sounds like another round of odds’n’sods!