Kitbashing

I have amongst the heaps of unpainted figures two little baskets that are the 'scratch baskets'. Any spare parts, sprue rubble, MDF and plasticard goes in there. This is a most useful thing. For example, I had this kit above for about 15 years now. One of my first models, an Airfix Universal Carrier with a 6-pounder gun. It was soundly beaten, too. But as I've got a lot of spare time, my little brother and I worked on it a little.

We sanded the sides off, added a plasticard piece above the right track, 'spare tracks' (paper slices) to the side armor. Lots of filing was involved. Then the gun was re-mounted and given a new, thinner barrel. The original is lost somewhere. The two figures are part of the set too, I have also got the loader but not the commander guy. The one behind the gun has lost his right fist so I made a new one out of green stuff. The gun's base is two pieces of scratch pine wood. Sandbags were added from GS to the front and a small roll of canvas or whatever to the rear, along with a bag from an artillery limber. It is so battle-ready now. It resembles little to anything ever deployed IRL, but it is cool.

This is an old toy too, no idea what is it based on. My little brother is going to practice painting on it. A sprue piece added as a barrel, some GS here and there, new tracks and side armor. As it's cheap but has lots of different surfaces it will be very good to show the basics. I'm going to show the proper techniques and then he will paint a second one, a plastic toy Sherman all on his own.