Go Big or Go Home
Building a truly MASSIVE miniature!
10-21-2024 - Shwerer Gustav, Part 1
A little over a year ago I convinced my good friend Dave to get into miniature painting. Being the history guy he is, we decided on starting with ‘Bolt Action’, the game being well-supported with models that were reasonably accessible. We picked up ‘A Gentleman’s War’ starter box pitting the British 8th Company (the ‘Desert Rats’) against the German DAK (‘Deutsches Afrikakorps’, or ‘Afrika Korps’) in the hellish deserts of North Africa. It didn’t take long before Dave was waist-deep in the hobby.
Fast-forward a year and he bought himself not one, but TWO 3D printers: the Anycubic Photon Mono 2 followed shortly after by the Bambu A1 Mini. We quickly decided to we wanted to print the Schwerer Gustav at 28 mm, or 1:56 scale, as a terrain centerpiece. I figured we’d start on it early 2025. Dave, however, had other ideas…
The Schwerer Gustav, via worldwar2facts.org
But what IS the Schwerer Gustav, you ask? It was a piece of German WW2 artillery. That was mounted on a railway. TWO railways. And fired 7 ton shells almost 50 kms.
Suffice to say that even at 1:56 scale, the model was going to be…big. And Dave decided to start printing it more or less immediately. Because why not.
For model sculpt, Dave and I settled on the 1:72 scale stl files produced by Skyfox3Ddesigns (the files can be found here), scaled up by 128.57% to get the 28 mm/1:56 scale we wanted.
397 hrs 21 minutes and 1.97 kg of filament latter and the FIFTY pieces were done. Not bad for the little Bambu with its 18 cm build plate!
Go, Bambu! Go!
Gustav’s main body comes in at just under 3 ft. We included a Flak 88 for scale. For those of you not familiar with Bolt Action, the 88 is essentially the largest piece of artillery you can field, dropping what I like to call ‘pie plates’ on the enemy. The model itself can be difficult to place on the table given its size. In comparison, Gustav ‘s 31 in caliber shells have similar mass to an entire 88 and its 3 ft length takes up, quite literally, half the width of a gaming table (Bolt Action games usually take place on a 4x6 ft table).
Not that we plan on ‘playing’ with it, per se. The current plan is to use it for terrain piece for skirmish games, creating attacker-defender scenarios where attackers need to sabotage certain portions of the gun or eliminate crew to delay the big guns usage. I’ll be posting updates regarding this as Dave and I develop the idea further.
The finished print!
The model itself is mostly hollow and thin-walled. Some of the pieces are a touch fragile, but I plan on adding a few supports in hidden areas to provide rigidity and take and stresses associated with moving the thing. Fortunately for us, Skyfox3Ddesigns sculpted the model so that it can be built in subassemblies, with lots of tabs and mortis and tenon style joints.
With the printer no longer gone *brrrrr* its time to start the cleanup process! I’m a bit of a stickler when it comes to model surface condition, particularly when it comes to FDM, which mean everything is getting sanded. There are also a few print error spots that need to be address and a number of broken railings that require reprinting.
Good thing the shop is pretty quite during the day!
Me and my big head dry-assembling Gustav with Scotch tape.
I SHOULD have Gustav cleaned, in sub-assemblies, and ready for priming by the end of November so that painting can commence in December. By the end of the year, Dave and I should have a good idea of what the full 4x6 ft railyard is going to look like and we’ll need a finalized Gustav to get the layout right.
Wait. ‘Railyard’? Oh, I didn’t tell you? Skyfox3Ddesigns actually created TWO Gustav file sets: the gun itself and a full rail crane set with diesel locomotives.
And of course, Dave is already planning out the print for it. Because why not.
Until December!
BEHOLD! Gustav! A little ‘limp in the barrel’, but he should ‘stiffen up’ once he’s all glued together.
What the scariest thing Bolt Action has to offer versus a single round fired by Gustav.