My one foray in braille scale
Simon N's excellent work has inspired me to share the results of my only try in small scale. It's Trumpeter's 1/72 scale JS III, very loosely based on photos of abandoned Soviet armor on Shitokan (sp?) Island off the east coast of Russia.
It's a decent little kit, very tiny of course. Fit was pretty good and molding/detail was, I thought, pretty good considering the limitations imposed by the model's size. Even the rubber band tracks played nice.
Here I found that Braille takes a different skill set than larger scales. It made my eyes hurt, could only work on it for about an hour at a time. Cleaning up mold lines and cutting off fenders resulted in a little blood loss as I am not accustomed to have the razor knife that close to my fingers, and holding on to the parts being worked on is quite interesting.
Painted with enamel rust tones, hairsprayed, and then covered with MM acrylic Soviet Armor Green. The hairspray coat did not work over well so I had to take a short bristled hard toothbrush to it in order to get some rust to show thru. This provided the additional benefit of color variation much to my surprise; an accidental discovery I'll use in the future.
Fantastic result, Mark! Hard to believe it is only 1/72!
Thank you brother
Hi Mark, I think it's really great that you share this work with us!
And if I could really contribute a small part to it, I'm really happy about it:)
You did a fantastic job, I would say you have captured the "spirit" of an abandoned vehicle well!
Hope to see more of you on this scale in the future.
However, only if you do not really run the risk of going blind;)
Thank you sir, and you probably will after I did this I got stronger optivisor lenses
Mark,
Your experience reminds of the time I watched a X-acto knife roll off the bench and into my thigh. It landed vertically. Went to the doctor who closed the wound with crazy glue and a band aide. Two things that I had on the bench. No pain no gain. The tank looks great. Its a proof of concept model for when you want to up scale the project? In a bigger scale with more details and the grass that too would look interesting and be more safe. 😉
Two thumbs up.
Well the hand's a long ways from the heart, and a bit of tape worked to keep the mess off the model. Odd you should mention a dry run...there's a Trumpy 1/35 JS III partially completed on the shelf that I had the exact same plan for. It's not nearly as good as the 1/72 kit and right now I'm seesawing on replacing it with a more modern molding...if I want to pony up another seventy bucks that is.
Thank you for the nice comments
Looks great, love the faded paint and realistic ground cover. Does anyone else remember when “Braille Scale” meant 1/32 and larger scales?
Thank you sir, grass on this one was actually pretty easy
The paint work is incredible to get such a realistic "abandoned" result.
Thanks Mr. C
The laughable part of this is while I was scouring away with the toothbrush and water I thought I'd ruined it. Once it dried out I thought "Hey that looks OK" which prompted another round of scrubbing
Excellent work on this tiny machine, Mark @markh
You presented it very nicely in the high grass.
Thanks my friend while the project was going on I was not sure the results would be acceptable I was rather chuffed when it turned out like it did
Nice work!