BEF – A9 and A10 from SHQ

These tanks are the latest addition to my now growing force of BEF vehicles. I bought them years ago, and they got totally wrong colours then. A bath in acetone made short work of the paint (and super glue).
The kits are of descent quality. It's quite a lot of work to get them presentable, and there are some prominent mould missmatches and partly destroyed moulds making for less than perfect detail. 

Painted as my other BEF-vehicles; camouflage Dark Green G4 and Khaki Green G3 from DOA. Tracks Vallejo Panzer Aces 304 drybrushed with Vallejo 865 Oily Steel. Rubber GW Black. Everything washed with a dilute wash of Army Painter Quickshade Dark Tone.

Decals from ‘BEF – set 2 AFVs’ from Dan Taylor, and ‘UK – Tactical Markings UK-4’ from Aleran Miniatures.

A dusting with pigments to make them a bit dirty.

T-26 by Frontline

First a quick view of my workspace. Crammed with paints, models, miniatures, modeling equipment and a computer. I’m working with the T-26:es shown below, a couple of Pz 38(t), some Italian 6 mm, a bunch of familiars for D&D, some odd fantasy figures and the blasted old GW giant (which I never get done), 20mm British 2-pounder that are waiting for me to mix paint for them, the infamous Finnish 37mm Bofors awaiting more cloth and some modern zombies. I’ll try to get everything on the table painted before I start another project. Maybe… probably not…

Well, first off the table are the three Frontline T-26:es we are to use in a participation game on Stockholm Spelkonvent.

They were painted with Vallejo 892 Olive Yellow and given a wash with Citadel Badab Black. Weathering with assorted Vallejo pigments.
The models were a bit of a pain to clean, they are made of resin, and rather crude. Had to fiddle with them quite a lot to get the turrets to fit. But they are relatively cheap, easy to assemble (four parts) and the result is OK.

They will be supported by this monster, a T-28 by SHQ. A lovely model I made last year.

Forza Italia!

The mighty Italian armoured forces are shaping up. They will be used (why do I get flashes of burning wrecks…) in East and North Africa, together will masses of tiny soldiers waiting to be painted.
Here we have the first batch of armour and vehicles.

M11/39 and lorry from GHQ

Semovente and CV3/35 from Heroics & Ros

M13/40 and Autoblinda, also from H&R.

Here’s the whole bunch, probably speeding back from the front-lines as fast as they can go.

It’s obvious that the GHQ-vehicles are far superior when it comes to detailing.

All vehicles are based on Flames of War (FoW) bases, the smallest model, painted with a mix of fine sand and beige paint (Flügger Egg Dream), followed by a wash of Devlan Mud. The models are pinned to the bases, and after that a dry-brush of Egg Dream (without the sand obviously) giving some shade beneath and around the vehicles.

I’m thinking about how to distinguish the vehicles from each other (Let’s see, Commander Pescatore sits in the right-hand M13/40, or does he? He did turn left two rounds ago, so it could be the front left one, or… Look out, British armour! Bam! Boom! Crash! Bummer, never mind, it doesn’t matter anymore…)

Bofors 37mm anti-tank gun, camouflage

Bofors 37mm anti-tank
Time to experiment, you remember the ripped bed-sheets camouflaging the Finnish AT-gun. In order not to experiment my nice gun to pieces, I built a mock-up from plasticard and brass wire.

Ripped sheets – paper anyone?

Silk paper

I bought a couple of sheets of silk paper in an arts shop and I got more paper than I will ever use for less than SEK 20 (approx $3/£2/€2). I need white camouflage, and the paper was white.
I cut thin strips of silk paper with a new blade in my knife. After that I try to get them in place, and get them to look like cloth and nothing else. Sounds simple…

- Silk paper – dry

When I take my thin strip and try to wrap it around the gun, I quickly find that the down-side of silk paper is that it is ***** thin. To have a strip stay in a singular form is easier said than done. And the result… well, it doesn’t look like anything even remotely close to what I saw in the movie. And it falls off as soon as you stare at it.

- Silk paper - whet

To get an authentic fall of the “cloth” I had the excellent idea of wetting the paper-strip before wrapping it around the gun. Considering my previous statement about fragile silk paper, this was positively stupid. I might as well dip the gun into paper pulp. Would have been easier too.

- Silk paper –dry and wet

I started with dry paper, drape it around the gun, wet it to get a natural fall. Hey, that doesn’t look to bad. You can call me the Miniature Armani! Or not…
Well, not. Wet paper dries, and it turned out to be rubbish. But I might be closer to the solution.

- Silk paper – now with glue!

I got this excellent idea! I wet the silk paper strips with diluted white glue instead of water. Then I let them dry for a while, to get optimal strength, and I easily drape them over the gun to get an outstanding result. That’s my theory.
“There is nothing as practical as a good theory” I had a colleague once tell me. He was smart.
I guess he wouldn’t give this theory much credit. Fortunately I can rinse my mock-up, my hands and clothes…

- Silk paper – all in one

I wrap the bleedin' gun with dry paper, wet it with glue, and…
That will be a future project. It might even work.

Ripped sheets – why not plate armour

When I discussed this via e-mail with a fellow gamer (this is entirely your fault, Thomas!) he suggested metal foil. Let’s see how it turns out…

Aluminium foil

This should solve the strength issues I had with silk paper. Metal = high strength! Right?
I grab my trusted knife and carve me some thin strips.

- Kitchen foil

I wrap thin strips of kitchen foil (the type you wrap food with) around my mock-up. It looks just as if the Finns had wrapped their gun with plate armour, even when painted. Cloth doesn’t look like this, I’m sure. Not a good result.

- Champagne!

I will do everything for you, dear reader. I went out and bought a bottle of champagne, just to get my hands on the soft metal foil that is wrapped around the neck and cork on the more expensive brands. Hmm, hobby or pleasure, how do I account this? (Well, I’ve had this foil laying around in a bits-and-pieces box for quite some time. I knew I would find a use for it!)

Not too bad, it’s falling much more naturally. It looks just like the Finns had melted a long strip of lead-plate and draped it over the gun. I guess the gun would have been a hit in Ukraine nearly fifty years later (or Fukushima around now, when I translate this into English).

(The picture was so blurred you could think it was taken in Area 51, but believe me, you won’t miss anything.)

No more experiments with metal foil!

This is it for the time being. When my blood pressure is back to normal (in a couple of months) I’ll continue my quest for Finnish bed-sheets.

Note: No liver was damaged during these experiments

Bofors 37mm anti-tank gun from SHQ

Bofors 37 mm anti-tank
This model comes from SHQ Miniatures (£4,50) and you’ll find it amongst their Polish stuff. Good details, but it is made of rather soft tin, so I had to pin one of the ‘legs' when it decided to live its own life. It’s darn thin and the pinning was really fiddly.
This gun will serve in the 1939-40 Winter War, obviously on the Finnish side.
Painted in Vallejo 888 Olive Grey and then unevenly with white paint. Finished with a wash of Devlan Mud and of course matte varnish.

It could have been finished now, but why do something in a simple way…?

I want to do something like the camouflage seen in the excellent film Winter War/Talvisota. In the film some soldiers push a Bofors-gun through the woods, and fire a shot against a T-26, and then they quickly drag it away. That gun is wrapped in white cloth to break up the silhouette.
But how to do this in 20mm?

More on this later.