Greetings from the Home Front;
The good news from the war is that our troops are finally moving! The bad news is that they seem to be very cautious in their advance. Hit the ‘read more’ button and we’ll fill you in on the latest gossip.
OPEN ORDERS
As of this morning, I only have 2 open orders, and both of them came in after I had processed the orders for today. I’ll get to them first thing Monday morning.
CUSTOMER CARE ISSUES
As far as I know, I only have 2 open customer service cases, and one of those is due to the mail system.
OUR SPRING OFFENSIVE
Well, the spring offensive has begun — sort of. I will be posting several smaller items that have fallen off the web store over the years later this afternoon. And I do have several smaller M5/M5A1/M8-related items waiting to be posted, but I didn’t have quite enough time to finish the demo builds, so I can’t take the pictures, so I won’t be posting them until I can do it correctly. On the down-side, several of the masters I was re-working for the early M5 tanks didn’t come out as well as I had hoped, so a large part of my mastering time was for nothing this week. So, as you see, although the troops are moving for the first time in six months, they appear to be British or Italian (a cautions advance, you see). I mean no slight or insult to my British and Italian friends. I guess my Advanced Squad Leader mind-set is bleeding over into my modeling (caution is a character trait of the Commonwealth and Italian troops in the ASL game).
For those who might be interested, I will probably be posting a ‘JOE’s CORNER’ post so I can explain a little better what is going on with me. ‘JOE’s CORNER’ posts only go on the TMD Blog page, so you’ll have to watch for it if you’re interested. Otherwise, you won’t miss anything important — at least, not about modeling.
NEW PRODUCTS
Nothing has changed here — except the hoped-for pace of our advance. I hope to have a few smaller items from Karl posted very soon. These include a better muffler for the Tamiya M10 (and any M4A2); an un-mounted road wheel for the HVSS suspension; the jeep-mounted radio set from our M10 interior; an M3 belly plate for the Miniart kits without the escape hatch; and, finally, several small items to help fix the mold-shift issues found in some of the Miniart M3 kits. As for myself, I will have the newly re-mastered M5 Prototype conversion. This also covers the first 50-something production vehicles. I will also have new mantles for the M5A kits; alternative volute spring brackets for the M5/M5A1 suspension; and a host of spin-off items from these early M5/M5A1 kits.
As for which items will be re-released today, they are the U.S. 75 mm tank gun counter-weights, the 75 mm howitzer ammunition and packing tubes and the .30 cal ammo box, field-modified communications phone. Watch for them by the end of the day. The listings are already posted, I just need to take and post the pictures.
KARL VAN SWEDEN
Sorry, no news on this front — mostly because I am a bad friend and haven’t called Karl to see how he’s doing.
THE SHOP
The shop cleaning and organizing continues. It is slow going, but so is everything else with these new troops.
THE OFFICE
The office also got a little cleaning but, like I said above, it’s slow going.
THAT IS ALL
Well, that’s all I have for you this week. So, until next time, please stay safe and try to build something (preferably something using TMD resin).
Joe