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.



3 comments:

Anonymous said...

This was heartening and inspiring. Falls into the laudable personal credo "Get 'er done". The digital clock photos are very arty, too.

David M. Knights said...

Neat idea. 72nd scale tank is a good choice for such a project. I once did a 35th scale German 37mm "doorknocker" at one of our club "all-night builds".

Matt Tauber said...

What the heck are you doing going to sleep?!?