Book Binge

The Great Singapore Sale is here! And coinciding but not related to it, I went on an almost uncontrollable book binge this weekend. Resulting in my wallet being S$204.14 lighter. The culprits from left to right are:
Military Modeling Manual 19 - some really cool vignettes are feature in it.
Mak Profiles 1 Falke - one of the poorest price/value purchase I made. Still if you bought the new hasegawa falke model kit and can read japanese, then this book is highly recommended.
AFV Modeler Tamiya Anniversary Special - a nice compilation of built Tamiya models and a great selection of interviews from well known modelers. Including our very own Dinesh Ned.
Shimada Humikane Art Works - features girls (cyborgs?) that have parts of military aircraft and vehicles fused to their body. I think this is from a computer game. More on this later.
Exodessey - a great selection of concept art from Steambot Studios. Totally inspiring art works ranging from landscapes to characters and vehicles. I'm well pleased with this piece.

Minimized Maxim MG 08

It's a scratchbuilt 1:72 scale Maxim MG08. Used by Germany during WW1. Built from bits and pieces of plastic sheet, plastic rod and metal foil.
The machine gun itself is about 2 cm long.
When finished, it will be part of a ww1 diorama where a FT-17 is attacking a German trench.
The whole thing is built up from 3 main components. It is still missing the muzzle, handles and a mechanical bit on the gun mount. I'll also probably need to build an ammo box, ammo belt and the water can that cools the barrel. Stay tuned.

DIY laptop

Well, not really. It's actually my home made backdrop holder for taking photos of my projects. The photos from the last mazinger Z stikfas post made it painfully obvious to me that I need a nicer background to have better photos.
The list of materials used:
2 x cheap balsa wood framed cork boards
2 x metal hinges
4 x self tapping metal screws
2 x packaging string
3 x paper clips (made from sheet aluminum)
double sided tape
Various colored papers for use as the backdrops.
Process:
The hinges were aligned with masking tape and then screwed onto the back of the boards. A couple of screws were then attached to both sides where the strings were looped over. I made sure the angle of the boards was more than 90 degrees when opened to prevent it from closing on itself while I'm photographing.
Aluminum sheet was cut into small squares, corners were rounded, the edges were sanded and then folded over to form clips that would hold the paper backdrop. These were attached via double sided tape. 2 at the bottom and 1 at the top. Locations were based on the size of my paper backdrops.
The sheets of paper I got were quite small but were big enough for small projects. Eventually I'll need to get larger sheets and I might need to adjust the clips position or add new clips.
We'll see the backdrop in action for my next posts.