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I have spent many hours thumbing over the pages enjoying the beauty of the german wool uniforms. I have always felt that the only way to capture this beautiful uniform in 1/6th scale is to make them also in wool. Any other material does not seem to do it justice. |
 
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german helmets (M40/M42) are my own sculpture. There are many
commercially available helmets but for expediency sake it was easier to
duplicate my own. As mentioned before on other
projects, the head sculptures are my own work also. However not
every soldier in this project has a newly sculptured head.
Some of the heads were taken from other projects. Frankly coming
up with so many unique faces gets tiresome. Of the 15 soldiers in this
project about 6 head sculptures were made specifically for this
setup. |
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This photograph was staged using the Armour Hobbies SdKfz 250. It is however not yet complete. For this reason I have not taken any detail photographs of it. It may be a future update. I have brought out my rendition of General Hasso Von Manteufel made a couple of years ago for this photo session. The officer and NCO wear the M40 field blouse. The woven collar tabs for the NCO are from "Glory Venture" The shoulder boards were custom made from cloth, silver ribbon and yellow vinyl. The GD emblem was sulpted and cast into resin and then applied onto the shoulder board. The splinter pattern field cap is from DML.(Ernst figure). One can recognise the head sculpture of the officer from the RCAF pilots porject. The NCO head sculpture is of a good friend(you know who you are!) . The officer's sunglasses were made with a DML metal rim glasses. A mold was made and tinted resin was used as casting material. Wires for the arms were embedded into the resin before setting. The crusher and the Generals cap were made with my usual technique. The insignia for the crusher was printed on fabric, cut out and applied. |
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this project, I made 12 M40 field blouses from a pair of trousers
I found at the thrift store. The wool was a good quality
gray thin wool that I could tint with green dye to a final field gray
colour. Eventhough the wool is thin it was still very difficult
to make pocket flaps with scalloped edges. I did managed to
sew "boxed pleats" for the pockets. I have tailored the
fit of the tunics for a slim body because I prefer this
appearance. Although every body used in this diorama
is a Dragon body. everyone had to be modified by bringing in the
shoulders and decreasing the chest dimensions. I have chosen to work with Dragon bodies because they are inexpensive and are easy to modify. They are also readily available. Paul, at "Toy Soldier Brigade" was very kind in helping me with the aquisition of an ample body supply. |
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per my usual technique, the insignia was printed through my
inkjet printer on "June Taylor" printable fabric. The
GD cuff title was done the same way and stitched onto the sleeves
of the field blouse. The shoulder titles were also printed
onto "June Taylor" iron -on fabric, cutted to shape and ironed onto
yellow vinyl (reconnaisance) and further cutted into shoulder
boards with the appearance of yellow waffenfarbe. |
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last photograph is of a young grenadier wearing the great
coat. The head sculpture was taken from my "Assault on Bresken"
diorama. The set-up for this diorama was done on a 4 x 5 foot piece of plywood set up in my back yard. The back ground trees were branch cuttings from my fig tree. The back drop is the same one I used for most of my dioramas and was made with a old bed sheet stretched over a wooden frame and painted with left over house latex paints to represent the sky. As a last note , all the "Y" straps, belts,ammo pouches and weapons are from DML. . Without the availability of these items parted out by e-tailers (listed on the main page) this diorama would have taken me 3 times as long to prepare.
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