On The Bench 12/1/20: 1/56 Rubicon CCKW aka " deuce and a half"

An addition to my Bolt Action  US forces arrived in the mail. The kit consisted of two sprues of parts and two bagged individual parts, the canvas covered bed top and the cab/hood. A set of simple instructions and a decal sheet completed the kit. Your options are open bed vs closed which require almost entirely separate parts, and either a canvas cab top or a gun ring. Of course the CCKW could have both, but the kit does not provide that, it's either/or. Oh, one other thing. You have a one piece dash/windshield for use with the cab top, or a separate dash and windshield, intended to be folded down for the gun ring.

Being incapable of leaving well enough alone, I decided I would make a folding windscreen and a removable gun ring.

The folding windscreen required me to fab some small hinges from .015 bronze wire:

pin vise drill holes for wire hinge

forming a hinge

now for the other side. I used a dot of slow setting acc to glue the wire in at the bottom, leaving the windscreen free to rotate about the upper.

Now to make the gun ring removable took some fiddling. It's not a particularly sturdy assembly on its own. I glued the three uprights to the ring, and tacked their bottoms down with Testors window glue, straightening as needed and let dry. I then marked the fit of the 2 outboard uprights with the tip of an exacto, and fabricated some "stops" out of sheet styrene. The ring was removed, and the stops added. 

Once dry, I could test fit and make sure it can be added and removed without undue difficulty. 

Test fit before priming

Disassemble and prime using army painter army green primer. I've used this on Warlord and Rubicon, white metal, plastic, and resin, without a hitch.

After adequate dry time,  back in the booth for some Mr. Color acrylic  H304 Olive Drab, my in-house standard for WWII US vehicles. The cab roof was hand painted in Vallejo Green Brown 70.879, to offer a nice faded contrast. Wheels had their tires painted by hand before installing. 

After adequate dry time, decals. The sheet has many options, but no OOB fender markings, just lots of 0-9 sets and some armored triangles. In this scale they're awfully small for individual application...

Additionally,  there are no instructions for placement - you are entirely on your own here. Here it is with gun ring et. al.

The driver sits a bit too tall for a good canopy fit, you may want to shorten his neck a bit, I had to. The gun ring, gun, and, gunner will be swapped in as an entire assembly. 

I took the time to do a bit of shading before it gets flat sprayed. 

Nothing extreme, just increasing the contrast.

Oh, and start getting the crew ready.

Driver painted, installed, window glass installed. 

Here it is lined up with my GI vehicles.