Month: March 2024

When it comes to building my 1/35 scale military dioramas, I’m a lot more skillful at building vehicles, buildings, and terrain, than I am at the figures featured in them. In recent months I have read a lot about other modelers’ techniques for rendering figures. As these examples show, I have made progress, but I’ve a long way to go!

This fellow is the gunner for the 20mm FlaK 38 cannon featured in my current project. These days, one may purchase detailing decals of epaulettes, rank badges, hat and helmet insignia, and even eyeballs. (Honest!) I limit myself to the first three categories, as they’re challenging enough for my vision and fingers to add to figures. That said, I DID place a pipe to this soldier’s mouth.

Here’s the commander of the gun site. In addition to collar tabs, epaulettes, and cap insignia, I added binoculars, with a strap.

This is a gunner who’s tasked with inserting fresh, 20-round magazines into the cannon, when the existing one’s rounds have been depleted. I added an elastic band around his helmet, into which there are bits of foliage, for camouflage.

This final photo shows how I affix 3M painter’s tape, to simulate equipment straps. The tape takes paint well, and generally it sticks well to styrene plastic; sometimes it’s necessary to use quick setting glue to help the tape along, but the over all effect is pleasing. All I do is paint the tape the appropriate color, cut it to the desired width, and place it on top of the straps that are moulded onto the figure. I also use the tape technique for weapon straps.

This diorama’s almost finished. The next blog post will display and explain the completed scene, so be on the lookout for it! Thanks for your interest in my modeling adventures.

The works-in-progress diorama features a German 20mm FlaK 38 antiaircraft gun. It has more parts – almost 100 of them – than anything I’ve built of its size. A combination of styrene plastic and PE (photo-etched light metal) parts, some of which were practically microscopic, its assembly required a lot of time and patience. The result is far from perfect, but I’m satisfied with it.

In the imaginary scenario, a group of desperate German troops have created a makeshift position, to defend against the oncoming enemy. To gain a vantage point for their weapon, the Boche commandeer a farm wagon. A gun platform is built on the wagon, whose wheels are chocked with tree trunks. A screen, assembled from tree trunks, planks, and foliage, serves to camouflage the position.

Here’s a closer photo of the platform. To the right of the 20mm is a box I scratch built, wherein the crew collected spent cannon shells.

This image displays the platform from directly overhead. It gives a better view of the cartridge collection box. In actuality, flak guns like this had netting on a frame, located on its right hand side. (Firing the cannon ejected spent shells from that side of the weapon, the force of which resulted in their being collected in the netting.) Without such a mechanism, shells are scattered about the planks.

That ends this installment of the construction of my fifth diorama. There’s more to come, so watch out for what comes next. As ever, I hope you find my efforts to be interesting. Questions and comments are solicited!

Work’s well underway on my latest World War II diorama. I think it gives me an opportunity to explain the “philosophical underpinnings” of my modeling.

Whether its modeling, historical re-enacting, or restoring and operating of vehicles, one needn’t look far before realizing that many folks have an abiding interest in aspects of the armed forces of the Third Reich. Thankfully, this doesn’t mean they’re all in lock step – maybe that should be in goose step – with events in Germany from 1933 to 1945.

I think its fair to say that German militarism and the technology and tactics that underpinned its initial success on the battlefield, are a source of fascination for many history buffs. Not me.

My dioramas illustrate things one might find in the European Theater of Operations. They feature German troops and vehicles. But even a casual glance at those scenes ought to make it plain that my representations of the Hitler regime’s armed forces show them in DEFEAT, never in triumph.

I hope these observations help anyone wondering about my intentions to understand what’s what. On to the new project!

I apologize for not having taken photos of the earliest stages of this diorama, but the thing just took off, on its own! I believe that is because I wanted to produce something whose subject matter was very different from my previous endeavors.

The story being told will represent something that could have happened quite close to the end of the war in Europe. The picture above shows a farm wagon, upon which a platform has been constructed. Tree trunks has also been used to prevent the wagon from shifting. Makeshift stairs will enable the personnel involved to reach the platform, and whatever’s going to be placed upon it.

Camouflaging that “whatever” will be very important, so I have assembled a screen of sorts, from twigs, pieces of coffee stirrer, and model train lichen.

That’s all I intend to reveal at this point. Stay tuned for more!