Getting Some R & R, 1/35 dio

This project has been "in-work" for quite some time. I picked up Monroe Purdu's New Paint kit at a historical miniature show back in the late 1990s even though I didn't have a specific dio concept in mind. I was heavily into historical miniatures so I knew I'd get inspired by a figure kit at some point. That inspiration came when Miniart issued REST ON MOTORCYCLE in 2015 as part of their WW2 U.S. motorcycle series. Wine bottles would be a nice touch and complete the image. It took me a while to get my hands on Miniart's great Wine Bottles & Wooden Crates set. With all parts in hand, plenty of inspiration from people like Uncle Night Shift and COLDEMONSpl, in 2023 I was finally ready to take this on.

Harley-Davidson supplied over 90,000 WLA model motorcycles to the US and Allied militaries during WWII for messenger, military police and scouting duties. The WLA was based on a civilian model powered by a 45-cubic-inch low compression flathead motor. This Miniart kit is great, but to say it has fiddely bits would be a gross understatement. The quality of the molding and the fit is very good. But there are lots of small parts with very small connection points that make the make whole thing structurally delicate. The construction begins with arguably the trickiest step--assembling the spokes and wheels. The kit includes very good plastic molds to shape the spokes and some other PE parts. The instructions have you glue a set of spokes together and then glue to a tire. The glued spokes repeatedly came apart in the process. So after carefully sanding the inside of the wheel to the precise size, I glued in one half of the spokes and after it set up, glued in the other half. This set the tone for the rest of the build. Not a kit for inexperienced modelers-NKIM.

The biggest surprise in the kit was the absence of instructions for mounting the sleeping rider. It looks straight forward except that the box art illustration did not exactly match how the figure was actually posed. I found a picture of a built kit and discovered that his head needed far more elevated support than shown. Thus, I added his helmet and some extra baggage to his 'headrest." Again NKIM.

Then came the cafe. The kit, "New Paint" is a well molded 2-part resin facade & sidewalk with an multitude of laser-cut paperboard for the roof, sign, window panes and shutter as well as the painting equipment--ladder, toolbox, step stool, paint can, and a paint brush. It's a very nice kit that could be used in a multitude of settings. This was my first attempt at creating an aged and weathered structure this size.

The wine bottles and crate kit comes with small decals for the bottle labels. Given their size and the shape of the bottle its takes some doing and good amounts of setting fluid to get them to lay down.

I am mainly pleased with the outcome because I've had this unfulfilled ambition to create this kind dio/vingette for a long time. I only hope I that the next comes together a little more quickly in the future.

16 additional images. Click to enlarge.