BUILDING AND PAINTING MODEL TRUCKS

After a few years of hard graft, I'm delighted to announce that my new book, Building and Painting Model Trucks, is about to be published by Crowood Press. 

The book offers a complete guide to building, detailing, painting and weathering a whole range of plastic truck kits from 1:76 to 1:24 scale. Packed with over 650 colour images, each stage of assembly and finishing is shown in clear, easy-to-follow steps. 

I've tried to include as broad a mix of projects as possible, featuring European, North American, Russian and Asian trucks. There are plenty of tips for fitting off-the-shelf detailing and conversion parts, while I've also striven to get the best out of a kit's original components, so there should something for everyone with an interest in building and enhancing plastic vehicle kits. 

The book goes on sale imminently and will be available from all good bookstores or direct from the publisher at www.crowood.com

This is a good opportunity to showcase the book's cover star, a 1:24 scale Ford LTL9000 built from an Italeri kit. As featured in previous blog posts, this truck started out as a Wrecker, but has lost its sleeper cab and gained a crane. A number of extra detailing fittings have been added along the way, including resin wheels and fifth wheel from Kit Form Services, but much of the rest has been created from stock materials. The susie cables, for instance, are formed from copper jewellery wire.

This is perhaps the truck that I'm most proud of. Indeed, the trucks featured in the book are some of the best models I've ever built - which is kind of amusing, as I'm usually associated with model railways!

Look out for more images of my truck models in the coming weeks, both here and on my Instagram account: @dentmodelmaker