What's on my desk? Part 31.

Hi! Another Tuesday, another blog post.

Still some open spots for the workshop on Saturday!

The builds then:

First off: the 35(t). Only thing I did was clean up the tracks. These are individual link tracks, which I very much like because it allows for realistic sag, and which I very much dislike because they're a lot of work to cut and clean.

They come in 20 sprues of 12 links each. This is how that looks:

You can see a small dot on each link. The tracks are handed (there's a left and right side), so I guess these are meant to indicate R and L. But I don't like that. It gets in the way of weathering. So: each link has 3 attachment points and a side mark. So for each link I need to cut 3 times, and clean 4 times. So 120x3x4=1440 actions in total...

This is something you need to be in the mood for, and have a few hours time to do. It's annoying to do at first, but once you get in the rhythm it becomes a bit... zen-like. Especially when you have the Olympic cycling on in the background. :-)

In the end, you end up with 120 individual links, unpainted and unassembled:

One more problem in this case: there's no indication of how many links per side. Usually there's more links than are needed, and in the instructions it says something like '83 links per side'. This is only indicative; you may need to add or remove a couple to get the correct tension around the wheels, but in this Bronco kit there's nothing:

Just a 'right' and 'left'. At least they're 'cement-free' (supposedly; experience has taught me that this claim is not always true in reality).

Alright, on to the houses. I added a reddish colour to the window sills of the grey house, stippled with a sponge. Then I used white oil paint to drybrush the crumbled plaster and lighten the edges of the cracks. Really makes them pop, I think.

The same was done on the yellow café. Here I already painted some individual bricks in different colours.

I'll try to add the advertising on the building sides, maybe do the wallpaper on the inside. I also need to make some progress on the roofs.

That's all; see you next week!