Small Scale Military Headquarters

Desert paint schemes have never interested me, so my plan has always been to convert my M1s and my LAV-25s over to woodland camo schemes.

Well, my first LAV-25 is almost complete, and I thought I would share my work and my thoughts.

First, you have to take the LAV apart. The tires come off pretty easily. There are eight screws in the bottom of the hull. Two will require work with a drill bit to cut through the "plugs" in the nose.

Then, three screws later and the turret is ready to come off the upper hull. Some dremel work and all the muffler, gas cans, hull stowage and headlight/mirror assembly are off. Some more dremel work removes the stuff from the outside of the turret. I had to cut the antennas off the turret, but c'est la vie.

Now comes the fun part. After a base coat of green (I used Testors Medium Green), I masked parts off and painted tan. This is what it looked like when I finished with the tan...



I used Silly Putty for the masks. This it what it looked like when I masked off the front for the black. I couldn't really afford enough Silly Putty to mask the whole vehicle off at one time, so I used plastic wrap to cover the rest of the vehicle.



This is what it looked like after I painted the front.



Then I masked one side of the hull and turret.



This is what it looked like with painting in progress..



More pictures coming soon!

looks nice. those things are cool...i saw a lot of them fly up and down the road when I was in Iraq. We were stuck in a Bradley. I guess the grass is always greener on the other side. Although the Stricker BDE guys like their new toy

that's looking great....i like the woodlands camo better for the most part too, although i do like my desert LAV. I was always hoping there would be a woodlands repaint but i don't think it's going to happen.

I really like the look of a woodland camo vehicle in a desert enviornment, for some reason...

Excellent
I love the modern armor repaints - don't see many of those. I too like the nato camo in the desert - and it's easier to weather the vehicle with sand colors.
Good stuff.

As a former LAR Scout, I'd say you've done a fine job. Almost makes me want to shrink down and hop in. (except there are no opening roof hatches.. )

Really paint job! Are you planning to put all the stock accessories back on or will you replace them with customized ones (build-a-rama)?

Excellent work on the camo so far

Must admit would have been great of BBI had released this in the first place in Woodland camo.

Your doing a mighty fine job with your`s so far mate

Ja
Steel Bonnet

Are you planning to put all the stock accessories back on or will you replace them with customized ones (build-a-rama)?

Initially, I had planned on just putting the stock accessories back on, but I think I've changed my mind and will do custom ones. I'm going to build some stowage racks where the original stuff was, and fill them instead of just having the stuff attached to the hull. I may still re-use some of the original accessories, but I'm not sure yet.

The paint job is finished (as is the initial weathering job), the tires are back on and I put the muffler and antennas back on last night.

I had never thought of using silly puddy before---learn something new everyday. I like the technique---it looks great.
Aaron

I learned about it from reading Fine Scale Modeler. In fact, it was in an article about a 1/35 LAV-25 paint job...

The biggest problem I had was that it takes a LOT of Silly Putty to mask off a 1/18 vehicle. I had eight "eggs" worth and I would have needed about three times that much to do the LAV in one pass. I hate to think how much I will need to do the M1...

I like your technique,
great concept with the "putty".
keep up the cool work.
HOOAH!