SdKfz 251 ambulance

 

This 15mm (1/100 scale) Hanomag SdKfz 251 half-track ambulance is a model I designed and printed some considerable time ago, but the print was a partial failure — the nose of the vehicle is distorted, and the wheels didn't print at all. I just got around to making some new wheels and gluing them in place.

I'll add it to the rest of the ambulances I've been modelling over recent years. I've got a few of them now. 

Found (again)

 

I'm in the process of re-re-re-re-reorganising my workroom, and I found some 15mm WWII figures I've been looking for for quite a while.

They're Battlefront 15mm WWII Mediterranean Brits in BD trousers and shirt-sleeves, ideal for representing troops in Italy in summer. It's quite an old set, and I don't think they're still available any more.

Plus, I found some other Brits that I didn't even know I had, and have no idea where they came from: to the left of the photo are a bunch of prone figures, some in stocking caps, and a couple of Bren gunners in berets.

In the background are some PSC 15mm kits: a "Pheasant" 17pdr on the 25pdr carriage, a Morris Quad and limber, and a Loyd carrier. I put them together some years ago, and then they got shunted to the back of the queue and eventually put away "somewhere safe".

So anyway, there's my next painting project. 

 Next day....

This is what you get when you combine ownership of a 3d printer and the attention span of a mayfly. These have been sitting in their file drawers for who knows how long, and there are more stashes all around my workroom.

I really should do something about getting one or two things finished before I make any more. (It's probably helpful that neither of my 3d printers are operating very successfully at the moment). 

Pantherturm (15mm)

 This is a freebie STL of a WWII German Pantherturm, an emplaced Panther tank turret used extensively in the Italian campaign and during the fall of the Reich as a (relatively) cheap protected anti-tank bunker.

 https://www.wargaming3d.com/product/mojobob_hoochyman_pantherturm

The model is designed at 1:100 scale for 15mm, but it will scale up for 20mm without any issues, and even 28mm at a pinch. It'd also scale down to 1:150 or 1:144 for 10-12mm gaming, though the gun barrel might start getting a little fragile then.

Both the turret and the base have sockets to accommodate round magnets up to 10x1.5mm.

 It printed successfully on my Ender 3 FDM printer, but the print failed on my Mars Pro resin printer — I don't know why. That printer's been getting quite flaky in recent times, and the failure rate has increased markedly. 

The base will need to be embedded in an appropriate terrain diorama. For Italy, that would be most often rural terrain, but in the invasion of Germany they were often dug into city streets to overwatch important road junctions. 

 Here are a couple just sitting on top of a terrain sheet, and they look okay just like this. I'd still like to embed at least one of them in a scenic base though.

2026-03-13

I've now included a groundwork STL that the base piece can be pressed into, for those who don't want the trouble of making a scenic base the traditional way.

 2026-03-14

Here are my prints, now encapsulated with grass and dirt collars so they look more dug-in. 

These are 3d-printed bases, but really it would be a trivial matter to make the exact same thing out of air-drying clay or the like. 

 2026-03-16

Here's one in a base better suited for urban rubble, this time created from scratch using traditional modelling techniques and materials (polyfilla, kitty-litter and matchsticks). 

Bristol Beaufort (1/144)

 This is a 1/200 model by PlanePrinter (on Patreon), up-scaled to 1/144 scale and printed on my elderly Ender 3.

It's intended for my WWII Desert Air Force, to support my 15mm WWII Brits in North Africa and the Mediterranean. 

Ambulance

 

Once upon a time I had an Airfix kit of the Austin K2 ambulance, from the RAF Emergency Set I think. I have no idea what happened to that model.

Now I'm taking Bergman's 1:100 model of the same vehicle and titivating it a bit for my own purposes.

The dark yellow bits are all the original model, all the other coloured bits are my replacements. 

It has a separate cab roof, to ease both printing and painting.

I think they more usually had a tin cab roof, but I like the look of slightly flappy canvas, so I've modelled it like that.

 

I'm painting it in all-over SCC2 (Service Brown), so it will fit in all over the place for mid-WWII service: Tunisia, Sicily, Italy. Later on the base colour changed to SCC15 (Olive Drab), but older vehicles weren't repainted unless they'd gone in for fairly major repairs.

SCC2 is a slightly tricky shade. There seems to be quite a lot of variance in what people think it should look like. The official description, of (I kid you not) "slightly milky tea" is pretty vague. This model is sprayed with Vallejo Leather Brown surface primer. 

I find I need a much better circle cutter for cutting my masks. My ad-hoc compass-and-craft-knife is only barely adequate. 

2026-01-11

Finished.

And I've about had a gutsful of painting crosses for the moment.

15mm Stuff for Italy

 

This is all the 15mm stuff I currently have that is suitably painted for a 15mm British force in Italy 1943-ish. It's not a lot, but it's a decent start. Now that my copy of Battlegroup: Italy has arrived, I've got them out and dusted them off.

At a pinch, I could draft in some of my North Africa kit as well, but they tend to be painted for the earlier pre-Tunisia campaigns. 

Somewhere I have some old BF "Mediterranean" British infantry, which I shall have to find and dig out. They're modelled in shirt-sleeves and BD trousers, so they look the part — in fact, if I recall correctly, they were some of BF's better offerings in metal, which were a bit.... shall we say, variable in quality. 

Staghound

Back

Front

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I've been occupying my insomnia the last couple of nights with this — it's a British armoured car, the Staghound Mk.I, from WWII, modelled in Blender in 1:100 scale.

It's not completely finished yet, as usual. There are bits that I've forgotten, like the headlights. I'll get around to it.

I've piled it up with a whole bunch of clutter, and there may well be more of that to come. 

 A bit later on...

I like to have human figures in my vehicles, both to give a sense of scale and to make them seem less like an army of autonomous robot vehicles when I'm playing at Toy Soldiers with them. 

To that end I've opened up one of the hatches and bunged a generic AFV commander in the hole. 

NOTE: I've put the STLs up online, and they are available at https://www.wargaming3d.com/product/mojobob_hoochyman_staghound_mk_i 

 

An Indeterminate Number of Days Later...

Here is concrete evidence that I am in the process of printing this model. It's my Mars Pro, printing this model.

I would have got on to it sooner, except that I had to replace the FEP after a misprinting disaster about a week ago, and I'd been putting it off due to my Chronic Procrastination Syndrome (I hear that a cure is years away).

 ...and later that day

The test print went well. No issues at all to speak of.

We see it here with both turrets, closed and open, though I only printed one hull and set of wheels. 

I've given it a brown primer coat, and I'll be painting it in the Light Mud (SCC 5) and Black scheme for Italy.  I already have a Battlefront Daimler armoured car in those colours, so I might as well continue.

 

 

 These are the Vallejo paints I'm using:

• For SCC 5 Light Mud — VMA 71.028 Sand Yellow.
  VMC 70.987 Medium Grey is a good brushable match.
• For SCC 7 Dark Olive Green — VMC 70.888 Olive Grey 

I have, in the past, used VMC 70.988 Khaki for SCC 5, and it looks okay, but in scale I think it's a touch dark, especially when washes and what-not have gone over the top. 

 

 Xmas Day

Shiny! So shiny!

 We're at an intermediate stage of painting now.

All the various bits have their base colours on, along with a few washes here and there to accentuate detail, and now I've given everything a couple of coats of gloss varnish in preparation for some oil washing.

The gloss finish helps to stop the pin washes from discolouring the underlying paint, and it will be mitigated at the end of the painting process with an overspray of matte varnish. 

 Boxing Day

All finished (probably). 

I do have a tendency to discover things I've missed, but I don't think there's too much left undone on this one. 

Next day:
I sprayed on a bit of dust, which I think helps
to tie it all together.

 

Raupenschlepper Ost 1942 - test print

Quite some time ago, I designed this model in Blender. It's a simplified version of the Raupenschlepper Ost, with the cab made from plywood instead of stamped from steel, and with a canvas roof. They went into production in 1942, with the aim of making production faster and cheaper.

But I never did actually get around to printing it. Mainly because its hollow cab would have made printing quite difficult.

Today I filled in the cab and cargo bed with a solid block, but in the cab I kept half of each of two crewmen visible, so that they could be painted in a kind of bas-relief style. It seems to have worked reasonably well, and the model printed on my Ender 3 without any issues at all (except that I initially assembled the running gear the wrong way round, and had to tear it off and re-glue it). 

It means, of course, that there's no interior detail visible, but for a gaming model that doesn't disturb me too much. 

 Several days later...

I've got it painted now, in a post-1943 colour scheme. All in all, I'm reasonably happy with how it turned out. 

Buffalo

I've been tinkering in Blender again, this time building a Brewster Buffalo, ostensibly for my theoretical 15mm WWII Burmese British army that I haven't really made a start on at all.

It's available at https://www.wargaming3d.com/product/mojobob_hoochyman_brewster_buffalo_1_144 

The Buffalo in British service had a largely undeserved bad reputation, but its failures were mainly because the RAF overloaded and underpowered it. The Finns and Dutch both used lighter, more powerful versions of the same aircraft with considerable success.

This is a 1:144 scale model, intended for wargaming, not display, so I've included panel lines and ribs on the fabric-covered control surfaces on the upper sides only. It has a 3mm hole in the fuselage bottom for a flight stand. 

I've started painting an earlier iteration of the model, printed on my Ender 3. This one comes from a time before I added any panel detail at all, when I thought I could just paint in any panel lines I needed. Which I could do, I guess.

I doubt that I'll bother finishing it; I'll just print a new one and paint that instead. 

 Coupla days later....

I did eventually finish it to a usable state.

I haven't done any panel lining or weathering at all (yet). In truth, my heart sinks at the prospect of drawing on all those thin, straight lines.

 

 

 Next day....

 I've added some panel lines with a black 0.05mm Copic Multiliner.

I think a warm grey liner would have been a better option, but I don't have one to hand. 

More Italian Artillery

 

Another Italian 75mm, this time painted up for Europe or Russia.

Exactly the same model and figures as last time, with just a different colour scheme. 

Italian 75mm Howitzer (15mm)

 

Finished (more or less) the Battlefront 15mm WWII Italian 75mm howitzer base I've been using as a learning exercise for myself.

Overall, I'm fairly happy with it. And I've figured out a few things that will make building future ones a bit smoother. 

Shells for bases

 

I made some artillery bits to populate some of my 15mm artillery bases, to give them a bit more of a lived-in look.

The STLs are available at 

https://www.wargaming3d.com/product/mojobob_hoochyman_howitzer_shells_15mm_ for a couple of bucks.

They're specifically modelled as WWII Italian 75m howitzer shells, but they're pretty generic and could stand in for a whole bunch of short-case one-piece ammunition variants.

There are three sizes of ready-ammo stacks in the set, plus an array of individual shells, plus one of expended empty cases.

The gun and 15mm minis shown here are from Battlefront. 

Flak 36-38 88mm (15mm)

 

This is the 3d printed 15mm Flak 36-38 88mm gun that I've been working on the last couple of days.

The crew are all Command Decision 15mm metals. 

Overall I'm reasonably happy with it, except that the groundwork is a bit garish. I might hit it with the airbrush and see if I can tone it down a bit. 

 A bit later...

The groundwork is now definitely less gaudy, but I don't know that it's really any improvement.

Ah well, never mind. 

88s In The Offing

 

This is a Flak 36-38 88mm in 15mm scale (1:100) that I FDM printed a few years ago. Dragged it out of the junk pile, since I want a couple of 88s for certain reasons.

From a distance, it looks roughly like a Flak 36, but any closer than about two metres away it looks like absolute rubbish. So I think I'll reprint it in resin, which should be less pants. I hope.

I'll take the opportunity to separate the gun shield off from the mesh and thin it down a bit.

 Next day...

To nobody's surprise, I'm sure, the resin print is a bajillion times better than the old FDM. The modified, thinned-down shield is much better, and looks a bit less like it's made from a chunk of armour plate from the Tirpitz.

At the moment the gun shield is just sitting in place. I'll glue it down permanently when it comes time for basing the thing. 

 A bit later...

The gun has its initial base paint applied, and I've glued the cruciform chassis to an MDF disc with a bit of basing dirt on it.

I've also added a Command Decision crewmen on one of the seats. 

I'll be giving the gun a 3-colour camo paint job. I was considering putting the crewman in an Italian motley of European and tropical uniform, but I think I'll probably just do him in overall field grey for maximum flexibility.

There are more crew figures yet to be painted and mounted on the base, and more ground flocking to do. 

Old Gun

 

This is a WWII German 105mm LeFH howitzer, 15mm (1:100), 3d printed quite a long time ago and finally finished off.

The crew are a mixture of Peter Pig metals and 3d printed, and the base is a honking great big fender washer. The big washer may have been a mistake; it adds a lot of weight to the group, and it may imperil the figures a bit under the mashing of great sausage-fingers.

The gun is a later model, with pressed-steel wheels and a muzzle brake, but painted in Dunkelgrau for pre-1943 service. After then they would have been in Dunkelgelb, and most likely in a three-colour camo scheme. 

As far as actual wargaming goes, it's largely pointless, as guns like this are almost always going to be off-table. Never mind though. 

Marder 1 (Lorraine)

 

I started work on this model, a German WWII Marder 1, quite some time ago. But then I forgot all about it, until I happened upon the beginnings of the project a few days ago, and finished it off. Working on the digital file zoomed in all the time, it was easy to lose track of how small these vehicles were.

I've put the STLs online at https://www.wargaming3d.com/product/mojobob_hoochyman_marder_1_lorraine_ 

I did a test-print this evening, which was mostly okay, though there are a couple of things that I think might need attention.

 

The main issue is the gun shield:  printing at the angle I did meant that it was lying pretty flat to the platen, and I got some delamination and distortion at the corners. I think it might be best to detach it and print it as a separate component.

Nashorn Crew

 

I like to include some crew figures in my little 15mm (1:100) model tanks, both to give a sense of scale, and also so that it doesn't look like a bunch of autonomous robot machines tootling about on the wargames table.

I think the Nashorn actually had a crew of about six, but any more than these two in the fighting compartment would be unfeasibly crowded, so these guys are symbolic of the crew rather than actually representative of it as a whole. 

I kitbashed these figures from a bunch of others. The main bodies came from 3dBreed, but things like hats and helmets and shells and so forth I made myself and added to the cut-up original figures. They were printed on my Mars Pro resin printer.

Nashorn #2

 

Nashorn No.2

This is another model I printed quite a while ago on my Ender 3. Compared with similar prints from my Mars Pro, the FDM layer lines stand out like dogs' balls.

I've painted this one in a three-colour scheme suitable for  Kursk or Normandy or Bagration or later. 

I have to do some crew for it, as I do for the earlier Nashorn and the Hummel I completed recently. 

Hummel (15mm)

 

This is a 1:100 (15mm) model of the German 150mm SPG Hummel (Bumblebee), a 15cm gun-howitzer mounted on a PzIV chassis.

I've painted this one for North Africa, but it would also do for Italy. 

I still have to do some crewmen for it (and for some other models as well), and they're in the pipeline.