A Painting Party

The crew

We had a very successful painting party today to prepare models and figures for the Rocco D-Day diorama. The crew included John Drye, Mark Franke, John Kephart, Tom Karsten and myself.

JD and Tom worked on the “boat people” aka soldiers.  They finished all of them- about 150 total figures including a few I did.  We filled up one boat with 32 infantry and 3 crew. We think it looks pretty good.  The plan is to proceed with 4 more boats full of ”boat people.” 

John K. worked on the US infantry on land. He will have about 50 done in a week. Some of those are casualty figures. We expect we will need 300. Mark Fastoso and his crew will also be contributing figures. 

Mark Franke painted the 2 DWF Shermans, and several boat hulls.  They are not finished but are looking good. 

I finished painting all the boat hulls after Mark left. JD stuck around to about 10PM finish all the boat people. Devotion above and beyond!

I also primed 75 hedgehogs with rust color. We probably only need about half of them for this scene. Still need the other obstacles.

Down in Florida, Rob is painting the Sherman DD. I'll get it when I go down there in 11 days.

I had previously trimmed out the diorama with a ¼ inch hardboard trim. I also added bolts with tee nuts to make assembling the diorama easier.

We made a lot of progress today. Scenery and structures on tap for next week. There are lots of details and additional items to add.

We also started planning for the next diorama which feature the 29th Infantry and Rangers at Vierville.