Entry for January 25, 2007

Ok...I can finally say my Marines are standed on textured, painted bases and have their uniforms base coated!

The remainder is mostly detail work (which I enjoy). I also found a color I like for the Marine's equipment and vehicles. I mixed up some Vallejo Brown Violet & US Dark Green with some white to shade it and came up with a nice green color. I tested it on one of the 37mm AT guns and liked it so much I painted the remaining three with it.

I am now staring at my SPMs which are a different green and wondering if I should strip them or leave them be. I can always strip them later...

As for my trucks...sigh...I need to mention something. I ordered some vehicles from the War Web by Quality Casting. I an guessing here that Quality Casting is a division of Battle Honors. Everything I ordered from the Quality Casting page showed up in Battle Honors packaging. The down side is that I know I don't like the Battle Honors stuff. The figures are on the small side (12-13mm); the models have trouble with tires (no detail on the reverse side; usually too small and obvious casting lines down the center of the tread) and they have way too many pieces.

The M37 3/4 ton truck is typical of QC's offerings. It comes in nine parts: body, frame, four tires, windscreen, soft top and steering wheel. I was particularly impressed by the steering wheel and frame. One of my gripes about Battlefront is their lack of steering wheels for unoccupied vehicles. With minimal flash removal and cleanup I began to assemble the trucks. QC uses soft lead so it was easy to bend/align the parts correctly. The frame, body and windscreens went on nicely. I decided to leave the soft top off.

So far so good... Then I tried to install the steering wheel. The "dash" of the M37 has a hole cast in it so I tried fitting the stearing wheel. It was so big that most of it was above the dash top. Ok, no big deal...I will solve the problem by placing a driver in the front seat. Using one of QC's drivers (which is a small figure) his knees come up over the top of the dash and his head over the top of the windscreen. Ok... I decided to revisit this later and at least complete the M37 and get it painted. Next I went to install the wheels...Looking at pictures of this vehicle I noticed the tires are pretty close to the fenders (see picture above). The model's tires were way too low (or the tires too small). I thought about all the things I could to do correct this and decided to consign them to the parts bin and never order from QC again...never!

What really annoys me is that someone sculpted these miniatures and even accepting they were working from a smaller scale then traditional 15mm, you would think that a driver from the same company and the same line would fit in it's own vehicles (I had QC's SPMs and they have the same problem with the drivers). Does no one test fit these things? What about the steering wheel? That came with the M37 model. Why doesn't that fit? These things aren't cheap and I don't understand how a company can continue to market and sell something which to me is substandard?

I am going to order some 15mm items from different companies and do a complete review and comparison (with pictures).

Tim, they call him...