PT Boat Forum


Moderated by: Dick, Jeff D

The PT Boat Forum ª PT Boats of WWII ª  PT Boats - General

Page: 1 of 1

« Back to Topic Index Page 188 | Replies: 0

 Author  Topic: Figures 4 PT Boats
PeterTareBuilder

TOP BOSS
  

    
Post a Reply To This Topic    Reply With Quotes     Edit Message     View Profile of PeterTareBuilder  Posted on: Nov 22, 2008 - 7:07pm
Hi there fellow PT boat modellers.

With extensive surgery and jcareful application of putty the 1/32 scale Lindberg PT crewmen can be turned into a fairly decent looking crew.

I am a longtime 1/32 scale and 1/35 scale armour and figure builder. I am 57 years young and I remember when these figures were few and far betwen. Often the only way to get a figure any where near what you wanted for my armour model was to cut the arms and legs off and swap them amongstt he remaining torsos and trunks. These figures were also very stiffly posed so to get an action stance required notching the legs and arms and then slowly press the notch closed and then cementing it. Sometimes hot water was used to help the bending.

Some of the arms on the Lindberg crew are good for gunners. I noticed that the .50 caliber gunner can be modified and figure bashed with another crewman to make a 20mm gunner who is crouching and who looks like he is swinging the 20mm around to engage a low flying aircraft.

You really need two sets of the Lindberg figures in order to make one boat crew. You can get arms, short sleeves are great for the South Pacific, by buying some inexpensive styrene military figures. If you get US forces figures then you get better faces and also helmets. The LIndberg faces are pretty plain but you can do a great job of painting various expressions on them if you are a decent figure painter. Believe it or not the plainess of the Lindberg faces can actually be a benefit.

I do have a number of styrene plastic military figure sets I am going to modify to PT crewmen in action poses wikth short sleeve shirts and possibly shorts. These figures come from the Academy German Tank Loading Crewset (they are wearing long pants and shoes not jackboots) and some Master Box Russian Tankmen Set who also are wearing shoes or low boots and long pants. With a bit of two-part Epoxy putty to model the lifejackets (plumbing pipe 2-part putty works well and is very inexpensive compared to MIlliput and mucheasier to get) works very well. I like using styrene plastic figures because I fing that the dtyrene is so simple to cement together and to paint. BTW, many of these styrene plastic figures are closer to 1/32 scale than they are to 1/35 scale. Mixing figures of each scale in one crew will give you crewmen of various heights jujst like the real crews.

Keep in mind that when the Italeri PT boat crew finally hits the shelves that you will need a whole set and part of another set if you plan to man all the weapons on PT-596. I will probably use some of my spare short sleeve arms for these figures if the figure set gets to th stores here before I have my other figures converted.

Cheers from PeterTareBuilder

"Give me a faster PT boat for I'd like to get out of harm's way!"

Total Posts: 494 | Joined: Jun 24, 2008 - 5:59pm | IP Logged


Lock Topic

 

Forum Legend

New Member

Reply to topic

More than 25 posts | Full Member

Reply to topic with quoted message

More than 50 posts | Advanced Member

Edit Message

More than 150 posts | MASTER

View profile

More than 300 posts | TOP BOSS

Email member