February 12, 2023John@justneedsvarnish

Time To Retire?

Some people reading that title might think I’m retiring at last, but not just yet!

Back in January 2017 I featured the model above, a 20mm scale Vickers Utility B tractor for my WW2 KNIL (Netherlands East Indies Army) forces. I said then that it was a stand-in model, using the Belgian model of the tractor because I couldn’t get a model of the Dutch version.

In the same post (and shown above), I featured a very old, scratchbuilt, Norwegian Army Erhardt 75mm mountain gun that I’d repainted so that it could stand in for the Bofors 75mm mountain gun used by the KNIL, once again because I couldn’t get a model of the Dutch weapon and the Norwegian one looked vaguely similar! Well, after six years, I’ve managed to track down the correct models of these for the Dutch and will therefore be retiring the older models!

The new models are shown above, but with the same 47mm anti-tank gun and crew figures.

The Vickers tractor is a 3D PLA print (maybe from Garden Shed Printing via eBay) and quite nice for such a small model. I substituted the driver’s head with one from the HaT plastic WW2 Romanian infantry set, since both armies wore the Dutch steel helmet. For the Dutch version of the tractor the sides folded down and formed seats for the gun crew (sitting three men per side facing outwards), the gun being towed behind a small ammunition trailer. It’s now possible to buy a model with the seats folded out but I’d rather have this version (since I don’t then have to paint seated crew figures). It’s finished in bronze green shaded in black, with the trackwork being painted black/brown and drybrushed with dark earth. The whole vehicle then got a sandy dryrush to pick out the detail, although I got a bit heavy handed in places!

The new Bofors 75mm mountain gun is a resin 3D print from Paint & Glue Miniatures. This is a really nice, well detailed model that comes in four parts – left wheel, right wheel, gun/cradle and, lastly, the complete carriage with trail spade, lifting bar, trail, axle and gun shield! Given that resin prints can be brittle I had to handle this carefully during painting but it survived the process. Painting was as per the Vickers tractor. I think what appear as specks of dust on the gun shield are actually very slight marks left by the print supports and exaggerated by the slight sheen of the varnish – first time I noticed them was on this picture (and they’re too evenly spaced to be specks of dust)! Despite featuring the tractor and gun together in this post, the tractors were used to tow 47mm anti-tanks guns and the Bofors mountain guns were broken down and transported by mule.

I’ve now caught up with a lot of the stuff I had partly finished so I might go quiet for a bit while I start preparing more troops to paint! The stuff featured here might be my last entries in the Paint What You Got community challenge for this year, but I think it got me painting quite a bit, so thanks to Dave Stone for hosting the challenge!

37 comments

  1. Very nice stuff. 3d printing allows for the production or more rare or obscure stuff at a price we can all like. If you get yourself a 3d printer you can deal with the brittleness factor by using more rubbery resins, or mixing resins to increase durability. I’ve used a resin that has a slight rubbery nature if I only cure it for a minute or two (especially for thin pieces) versus 5 like seems to be the general cure time. There is a quite expensive (tho you mix it with other resins) resin that is almost an engineering plastic and very strong when cured.

    If you want to skip a printer, maybe ask your printers if they can use a tougher/more flexible resin?

    Either way, these look great and cure the rivet counter blues!

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    • Thanks Harry! 🙂 Interesting comments that all make a lot of sense! It’d be interesting to know how much businesses offering printing services evaluate such things as curing time and resin composition etc. I think in the case of the mountain gun I was being careful because some of the sections are quite fine and the combined carriage and shield is a complex shape. I don’t think I’ll buy a printer as I can see just where that will lead, but I’ll try and remember to ask about the resin if I think it might be an issue.

      And I’m pleased I’ve got the right models now, even if no-one knew I had the wrong ones!

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  3. Excellent work on all your updated versions John, this is where 3D printing really shines filling in the gaps the companies don’t produce. Must be great to have the perfect pieces now.

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  4. Nice play on words with the title there John, had me worried for a second or two!
    Lovely find, mate, these look great. Got to echo Dave’s words about 3D printing being able to fill the void, I’m sure it will keep you busy for many more years to come yet😉

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    • Thanks Justin! 🙂 Funnily enough, although I’ve been getting on with painting quite well at the moment, I have wondered if I should paint less and game more. Of course, if I do that, I’ll just post more pics of games rather than minis finished. But finishing what’s already been started, and the couple of essentially unstarted but long-planned projects that have waited around for years, will take me a while yet!

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  5. Great work John. Agree with Pat I wouldn’t retire the old ones as modifications were always made in the field and the ones look great. 3D printing has truly revolutionised the hobby and unless mdf and figure producers change with the times they will struggle down the track.

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    • Thanks Dave! 🙂 I’ve got a couple of nice 3D printed buildings as well that need to be painted at some time. The advantage of 3D printing that I see are that you can print to order so don’t need to have a large stock (as long as people are prepared to wait for their orders). 3D printing is also used to create masters for models that are then made in other media that may give a better finish, but that still needs moulds being made. Certainly are interesting times!

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  6. Glad to hear you’re not retiring! Well, at least from painting, work would be a different matter! The new minis look great (nicely painted) and I bet you’re happy to finally have to right ones! 😀

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  7. Nice to be able to get models of the actual equipment, 3D printing coming in handy once again! Although I do have to commend you on your earlier stand ins they do look the part, and I (once again!) would never have picked the gun as scratch built.

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  8. All I can say is that I hope your boss doesn’t read the blog or that title could get you in trouble, John! 😉 You did a great job painting these latest minis and it is great that you’re able to upgrade the old models. That can be a very satisfying thing in our hobby or at least I think so!

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    • Thank you! 🙂 It is nice to be able to fill in small gaps in armies after so long I must admit! I have a feeling that original Norwegian gun model was scratchbuilt about 40 years ago so I think I’ll keep it around for a few more years yet!

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  12. Like others, I was initially concerned that you were cashing it in. Glad to see that’s not the case John. The new stuff (and the old) look excellent and are painted well. You must be close to completion on the KNIL, so when do you get to game?

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    • Thanks Mark! 🙂 I’d like to think I’ll stop working before I stop painting stuff! I’ve got two other KNIL vehicles and a 105mm howitzer model to do, but not sure if I really need them all, so maybe just one vehicle. The worrying part is that neither the old Vickers tractor or the old mountain gun got a game in before they were retired! Need to have more games!

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  14. Wow that’s what I call dedication! Once I’ve painted something be it right or “stand in” all memory of them drifts right out of my head through my ears (not a lot to hold it in you see!).

    Fantastic painting on the old and new items by the way mate.

    Cheers Roger.

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    • Thanks Roger! 🙂 To be honest, I was quite happy with my substitutes, but it was nice to see the proper models eventually appear! They’re all small models so not really much extra effort to paint the replacements.

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    • Haha, thanks Chris! 🙂 I’ve got more plastic Romanians than I have metal Dutch so that’s why things happened that way round! Unfortunately my WW2 Romanians are a project that never seems to have got started, short of me robbing the box of box of HaT plastic figures for spare heads!

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  17. Seeing that tractor-vehicle I’m very sad, that forge world doesn’t want my money and have discontinued there Death Korps one and no 3d-printing designer has taken it up to make those universal-carrier like things!

    I’m not very well versed in WW2, did the Dutch overseas colonys keep on fighting against the axis or were they assimilated?

    Your scenery is absolutely top-notch, your images look like there from wargaming magazines or like from the old army codicies for Warhammer!
    Really love them.

    Also am a fan of any field gun, so that’s great too.

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    • Thanks Anthony! 🙂 I’ve seen the Vickers Utility tractor, French UE carrier and various bren/universal carriers as 3D prints in 28mm scale so you might find something to suit you and you could swap any driver’s heads for Death Korps heads no doubt (ETSY will be worth looking at).

      The Dutch colonies remained under Dutch control after 1940, although the Japanese subsequently invaded and occupied the Dutch East Indies in the first half of 1942.

      Artillery is a “must have” for any historical army but I find it harder to work on than any other model, even cavalry! It’s because you can see every detail from every direction and that makes it difficult to hold and paint!

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      • I should look through my hdds then, I probably have downloaded one of the original stls somewhere, as most of the historical tank stuff is actually free to download & can print them myself – although bigger stuff is still a consideration if others print for me, as it isn’t as cheap as one might think and very time consuming…

        This is quite interesting,as the Netherlands themselves had been under German administration/occupation I would have thought, the colonies would have as well, but turns out, the exiled government still held on to them more than to their actual country. Strange story.

        Tbh, I haven’t painted a single artillery piece yet lol. I have quite a few, like the light Krupp guns from 1866, Warhammer stuff and a ton of stls for everything biggerm but never have actually painted something different from infantry & cav, although I started one of those smaller knights from 40k once.
        But I can guess it’s a ton of work, especially as you have to do the crew as well!

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        • I was going to say that I don’t mind painting gun crew, but unfortunately you also need to move the gun and for 19th Century armies that means a limber and horse team! For convenience I tend to use generic limbers without crew and only two horses so that cuts the work down. The only exception I made to this was for my 1850 Austrians and 1866 Prussians – since the colour of the limbers was distinctive and not used by other nations I actually added seated crew (and a horsed rider for the Prussians). Painting a small one man tractor for my Dutch is getting off lightly!

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