Painting Trucks and Tanks

Still painting the little Christmas trucks.

And a Paul Heiser M46 tank.

Two more Christmas trucks, this time in Air Force blue.  Pick up trucks were all over the Cold War US military.

Painting the olive drab over the gray primer.  Since I had to strip the paint off the trucks and the Heiser Models are resin, both do well with a primer paint first.

Rust-Oleum Gloss Deep Blue is the color for the Air Force trucks.  I think I was moving when I took this fuzzy photo.

More olive drab for the trucks.  I constructed beds for about a third of the trucks.

They look much better with the beds but it is a lot of work.

I always paint the top and bottom of my vehicles.
 

Big Trucks and Little Trucks

Three searchlight trucks.  The dollar stores have sold a few different sets of construction equipment, police, fire and other vehicles that sometimes include a large generator trailer.

I chopped up the generator to fit sideways on a Roco 2 1/2 ton truck.

I am also working on more of the little Christmas trucks.

I am filling the roof holes with a bit of plastic sheet, gap filling super glue, and model putty.

Some of them turned out perfectly.  Others did not.  This is what they looked like after the paint removal.

The back of the trucks have an air hole in them because they are hollow.  I also patched them with gap filling super glue and putty, sanding them down afterwards.
 

Army Trucks in HO Scale

These little trucks are a variation of the little Christmas Trucks that I got a few years ago.

It has a low box body.  It had glitter on it and I got that removed with paint remover.  It reminds me of the old telephone trucks. 

I got this olive Krylon paint and it works nicely.

Not quite the same as the Testors Olive Drab which I like a lot.  I am using the Krylon as Post WWII Olive Drab.

It paint up really well.  Here with a search light truck I am working on a few of these too.

I have three searchlight trucks still to do.  I am also working on some resin bus I got a few decades ago.
 

Mike's Desk Top Projects

My desk and workbench.  I always have at least a small rubber mat on hand to minimize cuts, scrapes, and glue getting onto the desktop.  After 30 years it has not been completely successful.  This was my old desk when I was a patrol supervisor for Westec Security.  When the company remodeled the building they let us have the old furniture.  It saved them the trouble of disposing of it.

My little resin trucks are now in fire engine mode.  Years ago I got some cheap trucks at Dollar Tree and now I use their rear ends for these trucks.

Fuel truck and submarine.

Hot wheels van getting a new interior, the white and blue thing, the submarine and fire trucks and if you look carefully you can see one of the pick up trucks has had the glitter and Christmas tree removed!  That's a Johnny Lightening Lost in Space Chariot behind the sail of the sub.

Actually, it's just the glass dome part of the Chariot.  You can see another one of the vans waiting for an interior swap out in the lower right corner.  The submarine will be repainted, and decalled.  It has wheels underneath and I intend to use it as one for undersea exploration, sabotage, espionage, and commando raids.

I decant spray paint into these pancake syrup bottles to use for touch up.  This is the fire truck color.  By spray painting the spray paint into a bottle it allows me the perfect color match for small touch ups.  I get the bottles when I go to a local restaurant and dispose of them rather than try to clean them after use.
 

Pick Up Truck Work

Hobby Lobby pick up truck.

I put gap filling super glue into the holes on the roof and tail gate.  Then put in putty and then painted it with gray primer paint.

You can see this tail gate still is a bit rough.

I will sand these surfaces down and add more putty as required to make it smooth.  Shown here with a Hat WWI US Army soldier.
 

Pick Up Truck Display

Four trucks in each stage of completion.  It is a generic pick up truck, useful from the last 1930's to the early 1960's.  Trucks don't change much year to year.

The advantages of these trucks are that they are very inexpensive, easy to strip the paint off of, and take model paints well.  I fill the hole in the top and the tailgate with gap filling superglue and when dry, I use a bit of Testors Contour Putty, sanded down, to finish the job.

1/72nd scale Strelets Early WWII American soldier.  Headlights painted silver.

The model is one piece, durable enough for wargames, and being one piece require no actual assembly.

The tailgate has an air hole that I think is part of the manufacturing process.  I fill the hole and sand down the surface of the tailgate that has a mold seam on it.

The green truck has a lining for the hole in the roof.  Only a few of them have that lining.  I don't know why.  The hole is easy to fix.  These come on a card in a four pack.  They are a generic truck and my intention is to use them both as military and civilian.  I got three packages of them, 12 trucks.  Hobby Lobby has these most years and I have gotten one set a few years ago.
 

Pick Up Truck

I got some little Christmas trucks at Hobby Lobby a few years ago and this year they have them again!

It is a resin truck with paint and glitter on it.

There is a plug in the roof with a loop on it and the loop and glue hold the Christmas tree in place.

The paint and glitter come off easily when soaked in paint remover, paint thinner, or even rubbing alcohol.

This one has been soaked for a couple days and has been simply removed from the mixture and just rinsed off a little.

This photo shows the same truck with a good washing with soap and water and a little work with an old toothbrush.  MRS Bunkermeister saves the old toothbrushes for me and after running them though the dishwasher they serve hobby purposes and are free and disposable.

The same truck with Testors olive drab paint overall, Tamiya gloss black for the windows, semi-gloss black for the tires, and Testors 1164 flat green for the canvas over the truck bed.