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1/35 Scale Engineers laying mines near St. Vith


Old Marine
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Old Marine

Another Covid project.  This is going to be a small figure vignette depicting the Combat Engineers laying mines in the road way near the town of St. Vith in December 1944.  The figures are all my typical mish-mash of parts bashed together from the parts box, DLM Dragon, Tamiya, Miniart, Masterbox, resin, etc.  

 

The land mines are from the old Tamiya figure kits.  Each set of figures always had a few of these mine included on the sprue.  I never used the mines, they are not real detailed, and over the years I just tossed them in the parts box. I had about 30 of them and finally, having a lot of time to kill, I decided to do something with them.  This whole vignette evolved from those little lumps of plastic.   The crates are scratch built from bass wood and coffee stirrers.  The markings on the crates are not correct, but all I had were some old ammo box dry transfers.  It's not 100% correct, but it gets the idea across.

 

The other photos are reference I found online to help with the poses and placement of the figures.  

 

Depending on how long all this lasts I am going to try and do one of these little vignettes or vehicle models for each Division.  We'll see how that goes.  

 

Anyway, thanks for looking, stay safe. 

 

Dennis 

103 Engr 04.jpg

103 Egnr 01.jpg

103 Egnr 03.jpg

103 Engr 02.jpg

engineers St Vith.jpg

engineer anzio.jpg

Engr setting mine.jpg

Laying mines on the road.jpg

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Another fine piece of work in the making. Your "mine" boxes came out great. Looking forward to seeing this one come to fruition.

 

Semper Fi.

 

Manny

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Dennis,

 

Looks great so far! Your talent is amazing! I love to watch your builds.

 

I hope you stay safe and well...Kat

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Manu-Military

Hi Dennis,

Your vignette is astonishingly great, I love those very vivid guys.

The crates are a little on the thick side but they do the job as the markings do as well.

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Proud Kraut

I always love to see your kitbashed figures before they are painted. Looking forward to the next steps. Keep up your amazing work!

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Old Marine

 I worked on the terrain last night.  The base is foam board glued to a thick sheet of plastic sheet then covered with air dry modeling clay.  You could also use spackling compound to cover the foam board.  You need to laminate the foamboard to the plastic sheet with some strong adhesive.  If you just put the clay or spackle on the foamboard it will warp, the plastic sheet should prevent the warping.  Also, once the foam board is firmly glued to the plastic sheet you can seal up the foam board with a coat of primer or acrylic paint.   

 

After the clay dried up completely, I just painted on a brown earthy color with craft acrylic paints.  I used a dark and light brown and just let the color mix together to get that uneven look.  

 

After the paint dried up I coated the raised areas, not the road way with withe glue and applied static grass.  After the grass dried up I built up the small stone wall with super glue and small rocks and pebbles from  the drive way.  I found these Green World shrubs and then just glued them in place along the far side of the  road.  I think the stone wall and the shrubs help to frame the figures keep the viewer's focus on the figures.  

 

After the wall and the grass and the shrubs were all securely in place I applied the snow.  I used the tube acrylic paint because it is very thick.  I put some of the thick paint in to an empty Vallejo white bottle and squeezed out a line of thick white paint along the top of the wall and on the bushes.  I applied the paint like cake icing or silicone caulking.  I then did the same on the ground along the font of the shrubs and wall and on the grass.  Using the little squeeze bottle give you a nice, rounded, natural looking pile of fresh snow.    On the ground I used a small flat brush to smooth out and blend together the lines of white paint.  While the paint was still wet I dusted the whole thing with the craft store snow.  I intentionally left some bare spots and lifted some of the static grass through the white paint.  

 

I will let this all dry up for a few days while I work on the figures and them go back to work on the road to give it a wet look.  

 

 

103rd Engr 08.jpg

103rd Engr 09.jpg

103rd Engr 010.jpg

shrubs.jpg

Snow.jpg

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Wow, Dennis incredible work on the road and terrain. Your snow effects look very realistic.

 

Semper Fi.

 

Manny

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Proud Kraut

Fantastic! Thanks for sharing another awesome dio with us, Dennis! This one is one of my favourites.

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Browninggunner688

Very nice, I love the way the figures are interacting with each other and doing their respective jobs, I also like the way you paint your figures, the clothing and webbing look superb. Well done.

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Great work Dennis! The soldier with the pickaxe definitely has his work cut out for him trying to make holes for the mines in that frozen roadway. All in all another masterpiece.

 

Semper Fi.

 

Manny

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Garandomatic

Outatanding. They'd probably be from the 291st Combat Engineers. Little unit almost single-handedly punched Peiper right in his stupid nose.

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  • 1 year later...

I missed it too.

 

Very nice.

 

I knew a paratrooper in WW2 who hid mines, on a hard top road, under little piles of manure.

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