The Italian Job----- IT'S DONE!!!!!!!

[deafpanzer]

What can I say? I LOVE LOVE LOVE it! It was blast following your build since day one.

[John Everett]

Aug 30, 2015 8:56:40 GMT -5 k1w1 said:

Nice work. Figures look great as do the paintings. The statue on the front seat of the car must be very small, did you make it or buy it ?. Also like the grapevines.

Thanks all for taking the time to post in.

The statue is an HO scale Prieser figure which has be slightly reshaped from the original. The vines are grass roots pulled directly from the backyard and painted with acrylics.

This was my largest diorama to date. But there are two more even bigger ideas on the horizon. I'll be lucky to have either of those ready for Omaha in 2017.

[Rapier Ape]

Absolutely amazing!

For the cork cobblestones, did you have to cut them all by hand, or were you able to use something as a "cookie-cutter" to make them a uniform size? Pasta machine?

A little while back I built a section of street in Red Square by laying individual cobblestones cast from a mold...it was looking like it would take me weeks until I hit upon the idea to build up a couple sections of 50 stones or so... I made sure that the stones on the edges of each section would interleave with the other edges, then I made molds of the sections and cast them in resin. Then I built up the street using randomly selected sections (I think around 50 of them total) so it didn't look like a repeating wallpaper pattern. It came out pretty nice, I think. Of course, Red Square is uniformly flat, so that helped

Also like the idea to use graph paper to keep the tiles in line...

The whole thing is just awe-inspiring. Congratulations!

[John Everett]

Sept 2, 2015 19:12:54 GMT -5 Rapier Ape said:

For the cork cobblestones, did you have to cut them all by hand, or were you able to use something as a "cookie-cutter" to make them a uniform size? Pasta machine?

A little while back I built a section of street in Red Square by laying individual cobblestones cast from a mold..Of course, Red Square is uniformly flat, so that helped

Exactly!

Thanks for stopping by. I did this 2 minute video on producing cobbles but the audio quality is terrible. I really need to put a fresh voice track over that.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=gi2w_EO2Ba0

I would love to see your Red Square cobbles! (early 2009)

[Rapier Ape]

That's a nice setup.
I've actually been thinking of getting a pasta roller for a while actually (for pasta!) ...seems they are useful for more than one thing, too.

When I was casting my stones, I used 2 molds of slightly different sizes, so they weren't completely uniform. I could make around 180 stones per cast.
At first I used plaster, which took a while, and the stones were pretty delicate. Then I did it with resin, which was better, but they were a little *too* durable...some batches would end up thicker than others, for instance, so they would have to be sanded or cut down to keep the street surface level. (LOOOVE sanding that resin!) Anyways, wouldn't have to worry about that with cork cobbles...

Anyway, here's how it turned out...

This one is made of individual plaster stones:



Here's some sections I made for the larger base. I can't remember which these are, but I think they might be the originals... Every time I cast, they would steal a little more silicone from the mold between the stones, so the first ones had more detail than the last ones... had to pick that all rubber out with needle tweezers too!



Assembling sections in strips...



I sponged on some Vallejo "Black Lava" acrylic paste...sort of a grout/wash combo (It never occurred to me to use real grout!)




And here's how it turned out. I'm reasonably happy with it, considering the time it took vs laying out the stones individually. Pretty sure I could do better now though ...lots of mistakes to learn from




New base next to the old one... it was just one of those Tamiya semi-textured paper sheets. This is why I decided I had to build my own...

[John Everett]

I remember these from the Denver show 2 months ago. Your Putin at the microphone took a prize as I recall. It was a neat little scene.

[Rapier Ape]

Hey, you're from Denver! Hi, neighbor!

That Commiesfest was my first model show...and actually my first diorama, I guess.

The street section was what I had left over from my first attempt at the tank base with individual cobblestones. I built the podium and microphone just in the couple days before ... too boring to just have them standing on the street.

Actually, I just bought the figure set for the tank crew (in the IS-7), but it was just too tempting not to use the Putin somehow.

Funny...I got into modeling for the tanks...figures are too hard. But none of my tanks placed, and both of my figure entries did

Did you have anything entered in the show?

[tiking]

Very nicely done.

[remarc777]

Hi there John,

So far I only saw one picture of this diorama (the one in the MoM contest) and I can't help thinking at the time: why did this dio win? Doesn't seem to be that great......

BIG Mistake!! Reading this topic I was amazed more and more by every step you took, every littele piece of detail, all the small but briljant home brewn recipes and sulotions for making stuff like the garden and the trees....

A win well deserved. Thanks for sharing.

greetings, Richard.