Tuesday, January 8, 2008

Build a tank in a day?

I may be the slowest model builder on the face of the planet, so when one of the online modeling forums I frequent decided to do a build a model in 24 hours Group Build ("Blitzbau"), I wondered if maybe I should give it a try. Being I'm slow and get distracted easily, it seemed like a bad idea. However, I decided it would be fun to make the attempt, but I expected to fail. Last Sunday was pretty open so I decided to try to build the Hasegawa 1/72 Churchill tank in the marking of a Canadian regiment from the Dieppe raid. It would be my first model tank ever.

I started late at 11:55pm on Saturday night.


By 12:34am I had the rubber band tracks primed with Mr. Surfacer and the body assembled. It was then time for bed.



After a good night's sleep and some chores around the house, it was back to the build. By 12:33pm pretty much everything was together and ready for paint. I decided it would be good to give the kit a few hours for the glue to set up before paint.


At 5:02pm I noticed that I was starting to fall behind my schedule. The tracks were painted Tamiya Metallic Grey and washed with a sludge wash of Polly Scale, and the body and turret painted were painted Tamiya Khaki Drab. It was then that I noticed I forgot one side of running gear, so needed to be cleaned up and painted. Doh!



By 8:19pm the tank was painted and I was willing to concede defeat...somewhat. I would not finish it in 24 hours; however, I will admit I got much further then I expected. I'm sure I could have rushed and finish it, but the model was looking pretty good and I decided I'd rather finish it in the next couple of days/weeks and be happy with it. So while I didn't finish under Blitzbau rules, I'm more then happy with this experiment and I consider it a success. I want to give the paint some time to dry, so that I can weather it up a little bit. I will finish it in the next week or so and post the final item then.