Being a bit of a tread head, I have a soft spot for odd looking military vehicles. This extends into soft skin vehicles. Well, I came across some British Terrapin amphibian transports at Battlefield3D. The Terrapin was basically a British version of the US DUKW. it is an odd sort of vehicle, in that is actually drove on four wheels and used the extra wheels for difficult terrain. When I saw them, I had to have them.
I got them in the mail and decided to put aside some of my other painting projects and tip them out. The models come in a single piece resin 3D print model. There is a bit removal of print rods required, but this is only a few minutes of work with an Xacto.
Since I was working on the Terrapins, I remembered that I had pontoon bridge from Peter Pig miniatures and pulled that out too. This is a resin moulded model of five pieces. It includes two pontoons and three bridge sections. The casts are free of flash, but not totally free of air bubble imperfections. As a piece of terrain, they fit the bill.
After cleaning up the models with a hobby knife, I sprayed them with camo green and camo tan on the wood planks. Next I painted the seat cushion brown and the tires with a black contrast paint. I later hit the green models with a black wash and the tan areas with a brown wash. I drybrushed up the green with Vallejo reflective green, to give a late war British bronze green look. I hit the tan areas with some tan (that I do not remember).
Next, I pulled out some decals and applied them to the Terrapins. I finished with an Iraqi Sand drybrush on everything and finished with matt varnish from Tamiya. I will just proxy these as DUKWs in FoW games, as I do not see a unique unit card coming anytime soon!
- Manteuffel