Military Scales 1/72 Peugeot 18 HP Type 146
By Matt Bittner
Overview
As I mentioned in my First Look, this is the first model I've had the honor of working on from Military Scales. They are one of the manufacturers that are making best use of 3D printing and the level of detail on this Peugeot is stunning.
Construction
To be honest, there isn't much construction needed with this kit, it will be all in the finishing. But even so, there are steps to perform. Once the parts are separated from their supports - carefully - then assembly starts with adding the one-piece chassis to the one-piece body. However, before you do that you may want to cover the area at the rear of the body which is hollow. I did this with plastic sheet. Now the chassis can be glued to the body and construction continues.
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The gun that sits in the bed of the armored car is all one piece, encompassing the gun, armor plate and mounting structure. To make it easier for painting this was left off the model until the painting and most weathering was complete. That means that at this stage of construction painting could commence as I left the wheels off. I first used Stylnrez gray primer.
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Because the model was finished with the wrong-side drive (they finished it with a left-hand drive when it should have been right-hand) I decided not to do any painting in the interior except spraying with the the exterior color; and hope no one would look close. But even if I was to decide to paint the interior, it would be difficult (even though everything that was needed was actually printed) because there is no easy way to get into the cab. So, in the end I "covered" viewing the interior from the bed by gluing on one of the extra wheels, and hope no one takes a light to the inside. Plus I broke off part of the steering wheel when trying to remove the supports. I definitely need to find a better way to remove 3D supports, but that too would be difficult on the interior of the model.
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Once I was finished spraying the overall color I then painte the tires a light gray, the gun an approriate "gun color", and the bench in the bed a wood color to give the model some diversity of color. Eveything was now glued into place and a gloss coat, in this case Quality Shine, was sprayed over the entire model. Weathering was started after adding the Black Dog decals (they have a sheet dedicated to French WWI armored cars). Once all weayhering was finished I think sprayed a Vallejo Matte coat over the entire model.
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Conclusion
I truly enjoy working on 3D printed armored cars, and tend to keep with my interest areas of WWI and between-the-wars. The Military Scales 1/72 Peugeot definitely fills the first bill and was quite fun to build. Even with the kit being finished with a left-hand drive - insead of right-hand as it appeared in its time - it's a great kit to track down and finish. As I mentioned in my Firt Look, I used the book Le grand album des automitrailleuses de la Victoire, from Historie & Collections as my sole reference source and highly recommend that as well.
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Huge thanks to Military Scales for supplying the review kit.