Slow progress....

Not quite a 'I've done nothing' blog entry but I am waiting on a lot of stuff coming in the mail, and want to get it all together before progressing.

Today I received another Sherman Vc Firefly (resin model from Battlefront, bought via ebay). I cleaned this up a bit, taking off flash and excess resin removal. I did need to trim some metal, mainly along the inside of the tracks needed cutting to make sure it would fit in the grooves on the resin hull. It just needs a wash in some warm soapy water then I can put it together. This will be the Firefly in my 2nd Sherman troop... I took the plunge and ordered 3 Sherman I's so as to have a unit with the correct model of Shermans. I could have bought plastic Shermans cheaper but not Sherman I's... this is a big personal thing for me. As I mentioned previously the Sherman I was the tank my grandfather drove.

Yesterday I tried out the Vallejo Matt varnish spray I bought at Wappinshaw on the gun crew, passengers, De-frocked Priests and 17 pdrs. It went on nice and quick and did the job. A LOT less messy than doing the same job by hand. Next step will be decals for the vehicles and basing for the guns. I'll probably leave the basing till I am ready to do the 6 pdrs I bought as well. Decals for the De-frocked Priests should be easy - just WD numbers, some allied recognition stars and maybe artillery unit markings... they were not part of the 79th Division at this point so no markings for Hobarts Funnies. Although I would not put it past me to look up what units the Priests came from before conversion and mark them up as those.

One of the reasons for holding off on painting the rest is I ordered a new airbrush. Good friends of mine very kindly bought me a starter pack for my 30th last year. It consisted of a air pump with a oxygen tank and two airbrushes. Unfortunately being a total noob when it comes to airbrushes I made a bit of a mess of them. I've read some stuff online since then and I think I have figured out where I was going wrong, but I decided to start again - but part of that is making a fresh start with a (hopefully working) airbrush.

So yeah, lots in the works!