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| Bomb disposal in Iraq | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Oct 27 2010, 04:06 PM (5,545 Views) | |
| f4sooty | Oct 27 2010, 04:06 PM Post #1 |
Advanced Member
  ![]](http://z1.ifrm.com/static/1/pip_r.png)
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I am building the following diorama as part of a group build over on Promodeller. The basis of my diorama will be an EOD technician starting his long and lonely walk to disarm an IED in Iraq. As well as the EOD guy I will be adding a M2A3 Bradley with ERA in front of a block of apartments. Here are the various components of my diorama starting with the brand new figure by Blackdog of an EOD expert  As well as the EOD expert there is his EOD tactical robot by AFV club  On to the M2A3 Bradley with ERA, for this i will be converting the Tamiya M2A2 Bradley.  To make the M2A2 into the M2A3 Bradley with ERA i will be using two conversion kits from Legend productions   The Bradley will be placed in front of a two storey apartment block. For this i will be using the Verlinden productions Middle East Ruin. The building is made from plaster.  I will also add a few other figures to the diorama, mainly US soldiers like these from Blackdog  Once I work out the size i will be placing everything on a base made by www.just-bases.co.uk . The bases from here are superb and the owner Paul is more than happy to do custom bases. As well as the various components above i will be adding loads of extras such as stoeage on the Bradley, signs, broken glass and rubble. I will be starting this build very soon. |
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| Gary West | Oct 27 2010, 04:35 PM Post #2 |
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Great idea Steve - I'll keep an eye on this one 
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| snipersmudge | Oct 27 2010, 06:05 PM Post #3 |
Release the hounds!
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Looks like you will be busy for a while, nice dio idea and I like the look of the figures, what's the casting like? |
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| MemberOne | Oct 28 2010, 02:40 AM Post #4 |
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Looking forward to this one 
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| phantomdriver | Oct 28 2010, 12:41 PM Post #5 |
Fox Mulder's soul brother.....
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Look out, he's at it again................ |
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| f4sooty | Oct 28 2010, 02:00 PM Post #6 |
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Pete the casting of the figures is superb, some of the nicest figures I have ever bought. They sculptor has added loads of detail to the figures. would highly recommend them, they are not the cheapest but you are paying for a superior product. I go mine from the link below, superb service. http://www.fireflymodels.co.uk/sitemap.php |
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| snipersmudge | Oct 31 2010, 02:15 PM Post #7 |
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Release the hounds!
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Cheers Steve I think a few may end up in my figures box soon! |
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| f4sooty | Nov 2 2010, 04:52 PM Post #8 |
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I have made a slow start to this diorama, first of all I decided to assemble the building. With the building made up it would make things alot easier as i have to decide upon a layout for the diorama so as I can get a custom base built. The building from Verlinden is made up of six pieces of moulded plaster   The detail on the plaster is quite nice  The pieces were glued together using two-part epoxy glue. Even after alot of dry fitting the overall fit was pretty awful. As you can see in the picture below there is some awful gaps were the parts mate up. At a later stage i will tidy up some of these seams by filling them with Milliput epoxy putty. I won't go over the top to make the joints perfect as this is after all a ruined building  With the building assembled I made a template of the base. To start with I taped four pieces of A4 paper together then placed the building on top. I then took a model that I have already built of another M2 Bradley and placed that in position on the paper. To simulate the figures I used paint pots. Using a marker I marked out the shape of the base. i try nd stay away from straight edges on my bases as i think it looks better. The pictures below show the layout of my diorama   I still may added to the base or tweak things a little. I will now send the template to just-bases.co.uk who will take the template and make the base for me. |
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| f4sooty | Nov 11 2010, 03:32 PM Post #9 |
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To start this project I will be building the M2 Bradley. I will be converting the Bradley into the M2A3 variant and adding ERA armour. As always with armour work starts on the lower hull and as with most armour kits the lower hull and upper side come in two halves. Here is a series of photos showing the construction of the lower hull     The upperside was then put in place, the fit was excellent. As I will be adding side armour I had to add the wheels first. The wheel parts were glued together. Here is a picture showing the wheel, sprocket and idler wheel. (Hope I got the names right!!)  The wheels were painted with Xtracrylix XA1812 US gulf war armour and the rubber part was painted with Vallejo Panzer aces 306 Dark rubber. The tracks themselves have been given a basecoat of Vallejo Panzer aces 302 Dark rust. The running gear will be weathered at a later date.  With the upper hull in place the Legend Productions Conversion set comes into play, the set consists of a big bag of resin parts and A PE fret.  A few panels had to be added to the left handside.  The casting blcoks on the sidepanel were removed using a razor saw. The areas that needed removing are in red.  With the side panels and various other parts attached the next stage was to upgrade the drivers hatch. the Legend productions instruction consist of a series of photos showing the resin parts in place.  Here is the drivers before and after the upgrade.   More later...... |
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| Mike W | Nov 11 2010, 04:40 PM Post #10 |
Hook down, wheels down... call the ball
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Seriously inspirational and interesting stuff Steve. Your WIP makes me wanna start some armour, though i'm not sure I could it justice. |
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| Mike R | Nov 11 2010, 06:57 PM Post #11 |
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Great idea!! I will be keeping a close eye on this one. Was "Hurt Locker" part of your inspiration by chance? Truly excellent movie! |
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| f4sooty | Nov 12 2010, 11:42 AM Post #12 |
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Mike R, inspiration first came from the release of the AFV club Robot and the excellent figure by black dog. When I saw the two products the diorama screamed out. Also you are right about the "Hurt Locker" that was in my mind when it came to putting the diorama together. Just hope I can pull it off. |
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| f4sooty | Nov 22 2010, 01:35 PM Post #13 |
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Again I have fallen behind with my updates, so hopefully over the next couple of days I will bring you up to date on my progress. The next stage of upgrading the Bradley to the M2A3 variant is to add some armour plates to the hatch which is above the passenger compartement. Some of the parts to be used  All the additional resin parts area dded and as well as the kit parts. The resin parts needed alot of dry fitting and tweaking to get them to fit. The numbers on the resin parts denote the part number.   The upgrade of the hull to A3 standard is now done so I moved on to fitting the ERA armour. The only problem with the Legend ERA set is that the instructions that came with it are from the M2A3 upgrade set. This meant I would have to try and figure out where alot of the parts would have to go. This was quite straightforward however some took alot of thought as to where to put them. First I added the large side armour panels.First the panels were removed from thier casting blocks, some rescribi=ng had to be done to the area where the casting block joined onto the panels.   The panels were attached using CA glue  The front ERA panels were then added and that completed the ERA armour on the lower hull.    The last part to be added to the hull were the headlights. Legend provide resin and pe alternatives to the kit parts however no matter how i tried I could not get the pe to bend into the correct shape for the headlight casing. I even anealed the pe first but was still defeated. Not to worry the kit parts are sufficient for my needs. After fixing them in place I added the prominent wire that runs to the headlights from the hull. I used some lead wire for this.  Next I will work on the turret. |
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| snipersmudge | Nov 23 2010, 07:33 AM Post #14 |
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Release the hounds!
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Nice work there Steve the extra armour certainly changes the appearance of the Bradley
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| MemberOne | Nov 23 2010, 11:39 AM Post #15 |
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Stunning stuff Steve
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| f4sooty | Nov 24 2010, 03:26 PM Post #16 |
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This update will concentarte on the Turret. To convert the M2a2 into the A3 meant adding alot of resin and some PE. First I had to remove part of the turret (area in red)   I then started to add the kit parts to the turret   The Bradley has a stowage area at the rear of the turret. Legend provide a new pe one to replace the kit part. To get the complex shape right there should have been a forner in with the Lgened upgrade kit however this was missing. I tried to get the shape right by bending the pe and test fitting but I never really got the shape right. Therefore i used the kit stowage basket. As the M2A3 Bradley has an additional sensor on the right handside of the turret I had to remove a large section of the stowage basket. In this picture you can see the removed basket section  With the section removed I could move onto adding the new sensor.   Some additional detail was added using pe, plastic card and a lead wire grab handle  I then worked my way around the turret adding the resin parts    Then came the ERA tiles.   And that was the construction phase over. The Bradley now a M2A3 was now ready for paint, the resin made the Bradley looks as though its on steriods and made it more intersting    |
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| MemberOne | Nov 24 2010, 05:04 PM Post #17 |
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Lovely work Steve
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| Mike R | Nov 24 2010, 05:09 PM Post #18 |
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Wow that is Sick (in a good way!) You are making me want to build an armored vehicle now my good man. Can't wait to see this all come together. |
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| snipersmudge | Nov 24 2010, 07:35 PM Post #19 |
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Release the hounds!
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The extra armour really does make the Bradley look like one mean beast. Lovely work on the turret Steve
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| f4sooty | Dec 1 2010, 04:02 PM Post #20 |
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Its been a while since my last update as I have been suffering from a rather nasty ear infection. I will bring you right up to date with this post. Before I started to paint the Bradley I decided I would assemble all the figures that i will be using for this diorama. I will be using three sets of Blackdog figure sets. Each set contains two figures which have been moulded in resin. The figures come in several piecs and they are very easy to glue together using CA glue. The first set of figures has just been released, they are so new that they weren't available when i started this thread. The good news is they fit in perfectly with this diorama    The other sets:       Here is a picture of all the figures together. Please note that the figures in the bomb suits come with a clear resin visor which I will attach once the painting is done.  Now on to the painting of the Bradley. this was first given a primer coat of tamiya Xf-19 grey. I then pre-shaded the panel lines with Tamiya xf-2 black.  The Bradley was then given a base coat of Xtracrylix XA1812 US Gulf war armour. I then sprayed the ERA panels with Lifecolour UA020 Isreali grey and UA019 sand. I forgot to take a picture of the bradley at this stage...sorry. Now to the weathering, I spent alot of time gathering different images of the M2A3 Bradley that were taken in Iraq to use as inspiration. A large percentage of Bradleys were quite clean but I wanted one with some grime on it. Therefore I decided to use this picture as a reference  As you can see in the picture there is some streaking on the ERA tiles and the side panels look rather dirty. To simulate the straeks I used some MIg Abteilung Abt130 dark mud oil paint. This paint has a grey tone to it and is a good match to the dirt shown in the picture. The dirt in Iraq always appears to be a grey tone. To get the streaks right, I put tiny dots of the oil paint onto the ERA tiles and the rest of the side panels. I then dipped a flat brush in white spirit, wiped of the excess then using a downwards stroke I streaked the oil paint on. I also blended someon the oil paint into the paintwork.     I then gave the sides a wash of Mig Neutral wash. I left the oil paint to dry overnight before applying a coat of Klear. I always apply a coat of clear after using oil paint, that way when I add some lighter streaks to the side panels it won't blend in with the Dark mud oil paint. More later.... |
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