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Project Notes

#666 Axis Of Chess

Welcome to “Axis of Chess”, my little excuse for using up a bunch of spare Pit-Road 1:700 vehicles.

Build

Notes

I shamelessly borrowed the idea from @beckersmodels after seeing his brilliant armour chess in 1:100.

1:700 scale turns out to be a nice size to do little base vignettes on S$0.10 coins. It took quite a few weeks to make the pieces and a couple of modelling sessions to make the chess board. The chess tiles are actually plywood decals from @proper.plane; I was originally going to do two shades of wood tile, but I stopped at this midway point that I really like - gives the impression of a marble and wood hand-crafted board, though it’s actually just plastic and decals;-)

The Kit

I love these 1:700 vehicle sets from Pit-Road. They give you a good selection of vehicles and are wonderfully moulded and detailed for 1:700. At the moment the range is quite limited but there are more kits in development that will add US, Soviet and British subjects to the line.

At present though I could only get axis forces, hence the red-on-red action!

MI02

The MI02 WWII German Military Vehicle Set 1 features:

I decided to assign the pieces as follows:

aoc_axis_pieces

Paint Scheme

Main paints used:

Feature Color Recommended Paint Used
seats and trim Flat Black H12/C33 H12
tires and tracks Steel H18/C28 H18
Desert Camo Dunkel Gelb/Sandy Yellow H79/C39 70.824 German Camo Orange Ochre
Europe Camo Field Grey H32/C40 H32

Build Log

The Pit-Road 1:700 military vehicles are both incredibly small and also incredibly detailed

build01a build01b

A bunch of 5c (S$) coins and primed models from the Pit-Road kits - perfect together.

build02a

Afrika Corp ready for action

build03a

The only problem with the Pit-Road kits is that they are limited to axis forces, hence the red-on-red action!

build03b

Making a chess board - some plasticard and bass wood.

build04a

The magic starts to happen with plywood decals from @proper.plane

build04b build04c

build05a build05b build05c build05d build05e build05f build05g build05h build05i build05j build05k build05l build05m

Credits and References

About LEAP#666 Gamescale modelsCraft
Project Source on GitHub Project Gallery Return to the LEAP Catalog

This page is a web-friendly rendering of my project notes shared in the LEAP GitHub repository.

LEAP is just my personal collection of projects. Two main themes have emerged in recent years, sometimes combined:

  • electronics - usually involving an Arduino or other microprocessor in one way or another. Some are full-blown projects, while many are trivial breadboard experiments, intended to learn and explore something interesting
  • scale modelling - I caught the bug after deciding to build a Harrier during covid to demonstrate an electronic jet engine simulation. Let the fun begin..
To be honest, I haven't quite figured out if these two interests belong in the same GitHub repo or not. But for now - they are all here!

Projects are often inspired by things found wild on the net, or ideas from the many great electronics and scale modelling podcasts and YouTube channels. Feel free to borrow liberally, and if you spot any issues do let me know (or send a PR!). See the individual projects for credits where due.