‘Sup Killers, and welcome to MGWK Pt 3! Hope you have been enjoying the ride thus far, its sure been fun writing 🤩
It’s been a big, BIG week on Hummers! I have completed 7 trucks, or around a 1/5th of the total…! It’s been a wild ride, so come on and I’ll walk ya through it 😉
As you know, this army is based on GK and so the trucks need to bear at least a passing resemblance to the main ones used in the film. As we said last week, BF Hummers are Army, we need Marine ones. The main visual differences at 15mm are fitting what is known as the ‘Wading Kit’. This in the main consists of a higher air intake (Snorkel) mounted on the hood at the passenger side, and a higher exhaust mounted on the drivers side rear.
I started with the air intake and initially was making them by hand from a 5mm piece of plastic rod, and 1mm sliver of sprue. After I had made two I wished I hadn’t started, and the prospect of making another 29 just didn’t feel me with joy…😑
I was then fortunate to have a phone call with my good friend and Ex-USMC Sniper, Adam. He talked to me about the wading kits and then sent me some pics of his own 15mm Hummers that he had converted. What had he used for the Snorkel..? a NAIL! Yup, a small nail… SO I checked my extensive collection of nails and screws and found a bunch that were perfect! Now all I had to do was drill a small hole, snip the nail to size and we were GTG! First lifesaving event of the episode…
This is one of T-Boss’s ‘plain’ Hummers that I added the ‘nail’ Snorkel to, WAY easier! This one also gets door rolls, a spare tire with a tissue paper cover, and external stowage. The shiny panel on each truck is made from a Tomato Puree tube and will replicate the hi-viz warning panel that is on each truck in the show in that location. These differed widely in their placement in the real world, but I guess someone in the show’s art department liked it so they’d stuck with it for all the trucks.
This is LT Fick’s, the PL COMD’s truck that he rolls around in with G/SGT Mike ‘Gunny’ Wynn. It’s a 2-door ‘Wendy House’ stores / general use Hummer that has a large hoop-framed canvas back. This one was cut down from one of the 3D Hummers and was fairly easy to do. The canvas cover is once again, Puree tube and you can see the nail Snorkel and high-level exhaust. The exhaust is made from a piece of household solid wire with a few bends, covered in a 40 year old, that’s FOUR DECADES! Old, piece of Verlinden etched brass that I have had in the spares box since I was 15… 😂 I KNEW it would come in handy one day!!!
Although making these little extra bits is fiddlly, I really feel that they change the look of the trucks and make them stand out from the norm. Pic below is the same truck with the canopy removed to show the wire hoops and flooring made from, yup, you guessed it, Puree tube 😉
So, back to the title of this episode, I am Greenstuff-ED…! What’s that all aboot eh..? Well, it’s a known fact that Greenstuff and its derivatives are used in the modelling world to make changes to things, add extra parts etc. I haven’t really dabbled in this before apart from using it to fill gaps etc. So making 15mm stowage was certainly going to be a challenge… To aid me, I bought ONE pack of the BF metal stowage at $17.50. This was to give me ideas on size etc, and allow me to use the parts on some of the trucks to add weight.
So I started making thermal mats, and once they had dried, packs to add them to. The pack-straps were a challenge and probably scale out to about a foot wide…! But hey, you need to see them from 2 feet away, OK?! These are a bit of a strain on the eyes and after making a half-dozen or so, I am done. Below are some shots of trucks with various Greenstuff stowage on board.
Rear of Brad’s truck showing the packs, spare tire with cover and WWII period BF Jerry cans in frame, perfect! Note the high level exhaust.
Front side of SGT Rodolfo ‘Rudy’ Reyes 2-door flat-deck truck. This was also converted from a 3D one and involved cutting the top off, filling the rear doors smooth and installing the side rails and flooring. I also needed to make the .50 cal mount as shown and added a spare tire and a heap of stowage.
Same truck from the rear, the gaps will hold 3 Marines, one manning the .50 and the other two in firing positions. There will be Marines in all of the open top trucks, and I am also fitting them to Brad’s truck as the ‘signature’ vehicle in the army.
Another open-top truck, haven’t decided if this will be the 2nd HQ truck to go with Fick’s or if it will be one of the other signature trucks, maybe Pappy’s or Shady B’s. This one was another 3D conversion, this time loosing the roof and all the doors and adding the framework back in. This was the only other vehicle apart from Brad’s that had the OG 2-piece Snorkel arrangement. This one was fun to build, and I expect I will do some others.
One thing you cannot see, as I removed it… All the 3D Hummers have open, and folded flat front windshields. Now that doesn’t work for my needs, so I had to painstakingly remove each one… It’s a pain but the hi-viz panel covers the damage well 😉
No, I am obviously no Evan Allen when it comes to sculpting in Greenstuff or any other medium! So its a good job that the real Evan Allen is a good buddy of mine who only lives 40kms away… On a visit to see him today, he not only gave me a spare BF Hummer sprue, awesome(!) but we also got chatting about me making stowage out of Greenstuff. Now Evan is a Master Sculpter and was the BF Lead Sculpter for 25 years until they decided to ‘retire’ him recently… (That’s a story in itself..) He told me to use Grey Milliput as the best option, noted, and then had a rummage in one of his bits boxes…
Upon finding what he was looking for, he held up the OG masters for the stowage I was trying to replicate!!! He then casually told me he would make me a mould from this so I could cast my own!! Second lifesaver of the gig!!! SO now instead of having to make around 120 Greenstuff packs… I could just cast them to my hearts content!!! RESULT!!! 🤩
Well, Ladles and Jellyspoons, that about wraps it up for this episode. I am away on a course all next week so progress will be light, but I plan on churning out some of the figures I will need to crew these babies and post about that at the end of next week.
In the meantime, please hit me up with any patai (questions) or comments and I will do my best to answer them. Thanks for reading this far, and I do hope you are enjoying the ride!
In the words of the Iceman, ‘Stay Frosty People’…🫡
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