What's on my desk? Part 110.
Hi!
Another rainy week in sight, but that just means more modelling time!
First off, some service announcements:
- Sunday, February 15th: MKB's 2026 Modelbouw Happening. I'll be there, so -as per usual- if you'd like me to bring something, let me know. See you there! Come say hi!
- Next week's build meet will be on Tuesday (17th), instead of on Wednesday. This may become a regular occurence for the 3rd week...
- I have purchased the 1st additional paint rack for Citadel paints. The coming months I'll be slowly filling it at a rate of a random 5-6 paints per week. Please let me know if you're looking for a specific colour, so I know to stock it next.
On to the builds then.
The Bergepanther is nearly finished. I've painted and added the stowage:
You'll notice there's a house panther on top of the Bergepanther. It's a 3D print from a Belgian company called Matho Models (sadly the kitties are discontinued), painted in oils.
I still need to add a chain over the lifting jack. These came in bright shiny brass, so I used some burnishing fluid to blacken them. This is a blue fluid that tarnishes brass (photo etch or chains) or white metal (tracks). Just soak them for a few minutes:
This is the effect on PE. Above the original brass fret, below the blackened ignition wires for an aircraft engine:
The Panther just needs a little more weathering, I'll try to enter it in the competition on Sunday...
The Focus then. I found a picture of the interior on motorsport.ie:
Some differences between the Tamiya model and the real thing, but the model is basically accurate. One thing I can't replicate: the carbon texture on the door panels. One detail I CAN try to replicate: those wires coming out of the manual transmission:
Maybe not entirely straight, but i think it gives a little something extra.
Moving on to the dashboard, I found there was a piece missing from the kit. A21 was gone:
I scratch-built a replacement from a piece of sprue and a small length of aluminium tubing, pressed flat. Here it is in place behind the wheel:
Would you have noticed this isn't a 'real' part if I hadn't mentioned it?
As you can see, I fixed the roll cage and the door panels in place.
The interior is now basically complete. I can move on to the brake pads and wheels, and start painting the car body. Hopefully the decals are still good enough for this, because they're a big part of the build from now on.
Finally, I showed the Space King figures a few weeks back. Last week I painted the insignia on the shoulders of Bryce, Chestnut and Hatemonger using oil paint and a fine brush. Bryce's still need to be overpainted with yellow (we all know how hard it is to paint yellow...).
I use oils for this kind of fine work because they dry very slowly and as such flow readily off the brush. I also thinned my oils with Quick-drying Medium.
Chestnut's canister (and the green lights on the guns) were painted with Citadel Tesseract Glow. It's a nice bright green, even though it glows a little less than I had hoped.
Still to do: add a pink glow to the muzzles of the guns, add eye highlights and paint the bases. I really hope the customer will be happy with them, it's taken me far too long to paint...
That's it.
See you on Sunday!