What the postman brought today (Armorama)

Excellent choice - I’ve had mine some years now and it’s changed my painting game! I assume you have one of those Sparmax jars to spray into when cleaning the AB? Worth its weight in gold…

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The tracks come already assembled?

Very envious, In UK (and Europe as far as I can tell) this kit is still only available on pre-order. Probably got something to do with shipping having to take a 10 day detour to avoid the suez Canal.

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Great purchase Al, I’ve had one of these spray booths for 10 years and it has served me very well. I set it up on my workbench when I go into “paint mode” and store it away underneath when I’m in “build mode”. I use Mr. Color Leveling Thinner 100% of the time in my airbrush and this booth sucks it all up. The one caveat I got from SWMBO when I built my hobby room from one of our daughter’s old bedrooms was that it had to have a bed in it so it could double as a guest room. I argued that we already had a guest room but lost. So 6’x3’ of my hobby room, which is plenty of space for a permanent spray booth and some more book shelves, is taken up by a stupid bed. This spray booth solves that problem very nicely and has held up very well.

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They are “printed” in such a way that the pins/connections/pegs are printed in place.
I presume it requires a fiendish precision (or magic) in the manufacturing process.

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Want.

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Sweet haul!

FWIW - At our last IPMS/Gaston County Model Builders (GCMB) someone had a built Border Merkava 2 they’d just completed. It looked really sharp! He was very happy with how well the kit build up saying like Meng quality or RFM. Mentioned the ball & chain is time consuming otherwise he said the kit rocks.

Love the workable printed tracks! Thank you for posting those!

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The tracks are preassembled, but this isn’t new technology. Minor and ETS-35 (via Shapeways) have been 3D printing one piece workable tracks for years, although this has been for “small” tracks like Hotchkiss H-35, Kettenkrad, Sdkfz 250, Borgward, etc., which is ideal for this since these small tracks are a challenge to assemble as individual link given their size. This is the first time I’ve seen it used on large tracks like the Panther. But they are fantastic and really show the benefits of 3D printing. Costwise, they are probably $5-15 more then “normal” 3D printed tracks, but the time savings is well worth the cost in my book. I’ll buy the early set as well at some point.

The Border kit looks great, only two concerns so far that I can see. The barrel is in two halves and like all Israeli barrels with thermal jackets it will be painful to clean the seam lines. And since Border’s barrel protrudes all the way through the mantlet due to the interior, it will take a bit of extra work to use the current aftermarket barrels available. And Border really needed to get a box an inch deeper! The parts do not fit (the box was not fully closed when I received it), and this is even after I re-packed it better then how it came to try and get everything in it.

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Now I can ditch my elderly Revell of Germany
Kanonenjagdpanzer.

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Postman didn’t bring them, but got my hands on “almost” all the MERDC colors offered by AK Interactive on their REAL COLOR line.

Only one missing is Insignia White (FS37875), which is flat white. I have plenty of Tamiya Flay white though.

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The right stuff :muscle:t3:

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A book, first issue 1952, for just €4,50
Language German (no prob).
Lieutenant Heinz Schmidt was a aid de camp with Rommels staff,
Gives a very good insight about Rommel in Afrika

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It has to be magic! :tophat::magic_wand:

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Late delivery from UPS

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Assembled the Chesapeake Model Design resin turret. Fused it with a Cavalier Zimmerit mantlet & Jordi Rubio metal barrel.

Test fit on Italeri Panther

Edit - sorry I posted this in wrong thread.

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Reinforcements arrived.

Adding to the growing armour pile

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The USPS, UPS, and Amazon all converged on my doorstep for a major haul of all kinds of different great stuff -

From Starbond, their revolutionary Medium-thick Black CA, and a 5 layer mask.

From Latvia, pre-ordered in October, the latest from CSM. Plus the PE set and all the 3D printed accessories for it. This is going to be one monster build. Free reference book with the pre-order too.

Amazon - $39 self contained .3mm airbrush. Fits in the hand really well and shoots for an hour on one charge. Thanks Al! @Arch-Stanton

A slew of VMS products from Michigan Toy Soldier. They undersell VMS and have lower shipping. Smart Mud is just magical stuff - the best mud product I’ve ever tried, and I’ve seen great things done with the Pigment Jockey line, so I broke down and bought all10.

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Arrived today!

In m790-el-pershing-ii-missile-mgm-31c-w-m1001-tractor-build saw @Arch-Stanton Al, had tried a battery powered inexpensive airbrush with good results.

We discussed details and I rolled the dice on what we think is the same airbrush supplied with a small compressor, airhose, 3 needles ( .2, .3 & .5) and cleaning kit for ~$60 via Amazon.

I’ve not painted with the set up yet so please keep that in mind but I was pleasantly surprised. Comes with instructions and a tech support email.

The cleaning kit even has a reamer (gold). I’ve been airbrushing for over 45 years and never had a dedicated reamer.

Likewise never had an inline moisture & oil trap before either. Haven’t ever needed one using a big tank that acts as said item. Thought this was pretty sweet.

Hose, color cups & airbrush needles w/tips

The airbrush. I was very pleasantly surprised. Trigger is cleaner and smoother than my Harder-Steenbeck, very close to my custom Paasche VL. Balance felt pretty good.

To me it’s nose heavy when loaded, wish the color cup was half size. I doubt that would be an issue for most folks. Call that ABS (airbrush snobbery.)

Playing around with this airbrush for five minutes so, other than the fat color cups :cup_with_straw:, I found nothing to whine about.

:astonished: :hushed: :open_mouth:

The compressor is small and very quiet. It says 40 PSI but given the volume of air seemed closer to half of that in my opinion. If it idles for a bit without with the airbrush trigger being pressed the compressor will cut off automatically.

Sprayed water to get a feel for the airbrush, mainly to see if it and the compressor would actually work. I apologize for the lousy pictures was the best I could do juggling cellphone & airbrush.

Clearly, I need to tighten the air cap/nozzle! The spray pattern has some turbulence and shows pulsating but given the small compressor is surprisingly good :+1:

I look forward to trying paint in the near future.

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@Armor_Buff Wade, that’s so much nice than the one I have….

:+1::+1:

I think I paid $15-20 for one of those golden paint nozzle reamer things 3-4 years ago. Works great in emergencies like when you spaced out and didn’t thoroughly clean the AB after shooting lacquer…

I always live dangerously and paint with my electric ABs with the needle cone protector removed.

The moisture trap is a carbon copy of the one that came with an Iwata Revolution AB I bought about 15 years ago.

@SSGToms Matt, I’m anxious to hear what you think of yours after you try it with paint…

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I’m sure you can, but i wanted to check first. Can you add your own airbrush to these battery compressors? I have one that has an air adjuster on the gun and would like to have the ability to turn the air up or down, rather than just the default settings of the compressor.

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Aaaah, the KaJaPa. I will have to pick this one up sooner or later. They plan to do the Raketen version aswell.

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