From SamuliS - Captured Universal Carrier (29 Points)

A slightly smaller entry this time with only one vehicle! Sticking with Germans, but this time in a slightly larger scale. What we've got here is a tiny Beutepanzer in the form of a captured Universal Carrier fitted with a Pak36. I got the kit as a christmas gift from Secret Santa run by Ian of the The Blog With No Name fame who is also taking part in the challenge.

I must admit at first I was a bit baffled as out of the packaging came a Universal Carrier box and I don't really have anything that could actually use it. But then opening the package up I noticed it contained a PaK36 and German crew along with some plasticard and building instructions for a Germanized version. Building this up was great fun and will certainly prove to be a striking vehicle for my 28mm Jerries. So if the mysterious benefactor is reading this thank you for a great and very thoughtful gift! This definitely wasn't thought up in a short last minute panic.

I had planned to do this already in early January to honour the gift, but unfortunately it took me a bit longer to finish than I though as I looked for readymade rivets to add to the gun shield. However none were to be found in a proper scale, so I had to do my own in the end.

The Universal Carrier itself is pretty much straight out of the box with the driver and machine gunner figures being the normal British bodies that just had a head swap for conversion. I believe the PaK36 with it's crew come from an PaK36 Sdkfz251 kit. The gun was pretty much unchanged except for the fact that the gun shield was built up from plasticard with rivets added with Tamiya plastic filler. To make the carrier look more German I threw in some equipment I had left over from different Warlord plastic kits. There's some breadbags etc. hanging from the sides and Panzerfausts stored in the crew compartment as well as personal weapons.

My other German vehicles are all painted with a soft edged camouflage pattern so I decided to do the same with this one. I painted a three tone camouflage with my airbrush and then painted in the details wtih a brush. At this point I messed up the first time as I forgot to add decals before chipping and other weathering. I constantly had this feeling in the back of my head that something was missing, but couldn't really figure it out until the vehicle was going into a final matt varnish after everything was done. So I had to go back a few steps and add the decals. As these were added last they are a bit less weathered compared to everything else with no chipping and only some streaking done on them.

With the basic paintjob done I applied two different enamel washes on the carrier and let them dry before wiping most away leaving some streaking pattern down the sides. With that done I then added some rust and oil coloured streaks on the sides. The second error (or the first that I noticed) came in at this stage with Vallejo base coat paint starting to peel of at some edges when wiping away washes. At this point it was going to be hard to fix, but luckily it was mainly just on the lower part so I could cover it up with mud. The keen eyed can probably spot the areas from the photos though.

To finish the model up I applied a generous amount of mud in two different tones on the tracks and the lower part of the chassis. I prefer my vehicles muddy so there are quite large chunks in various different places. I also used mud to cover up the areas where paint had started to peel off a bit due to the basecoat sticking to the surface badly.

All in all a very enjoyable little project. As I've come to wargaming through scale models I really enjoy the building aspect of the hobby a lot and am really fond of plastic kits. A little conversion work is also fun and this did provide a lot of enjoyment. Yet again if my mysterious benefactor is reading this, a big THANK YOU to you!


From Curt:

Wow! That is a spectacular little model Samuli - well done! The three-tone camo came off brilliantly and I would not have been able to spot the supposed 'gaffs' if you had not pointed them out. The fabricated gun-shield turned out amazingly well (the rivets really do add to the overall impression). What a wonderful gift and reciprocated by an excellent build by you.

Well done!