Display in 7 Days??

OR it could be named "how to polish a turd in 7 days"....

But anyway.....

My Wife as some of you know is a very active member of the Veteran Artist Program called  VAP for short. Well last night she told me that she was asked to set up an Art display at West Point Academy to showcase Veteran Artists. She asked me if I would provide a showcase model for her to display and of course I said OK.... Then she told me she's leaving on the 2nd of May.... ONE WEEK!!!

SO I dug about and found an old trash Chimera that I was planning to maybe make some terrain out of. This will be my "7 day showcase model"..... I had done a little work on the model before thiss was taken, but it was a HUGE glue bomb but fairly complete.

I want it to be something unique and not a part of my Armies so Im converting it up to resemble a M113. This is mainly because whoever assembled it was a glue monkey and put superglue EVERYWHERE on the model. So Im tearing it apart and sanding/filing all the places out and will have to go in and redo the rivits as Im taking all of them off...  Im going for kinda a stream lined look so the dumb gun ports will be covered also. Here is "inspiration" of sorts

And the "look" Im wanting to go for

OK well I pulled the hull apart and wanted to go for the "2 hatch over under" look that the M113 had so I trimmed back some of the hull and made a driver hatch low and will put the "gunner hatch" high. Im putting a Heavy stubber on it because it looks like a .50 Cal and will have the gunner in a "Name tape Defilade" and the "driver" (actually more like the TC  but Hey...) will be in the lower hatch with Binos on the lookout. Im also Short on track so Im adding Track guards and "Cheater Links" to compensate for my Lack of track. Here is my Initial fit up....

and my "cheaters" that add the height of track but are not track.

NOW we all know that the differance in a great model and a mediocre one is the details.... So Im trying to spend most of my time doing them.... Little details that come together and make the whole better. Im doing Braided wire tow cables and lots of rivit work using microbeads. Im also going to weather it like crazy to bring out some depth to the paint but not take hours and hours to do.....  Here are some of the "detail" WIP pics

And a pic of Microbeads im using for rivets  to show scale....NOTE not my hand.....

I also plan to put a dozer blade on the front to help hide some fitting issues and extra glue that is being a pain to remove.....

And for those of you wanting to replicate these steps and techniques I will try to take pics and  describe how I did it, but if your really wanting to know, Just get this book..... as its mostly how im doing things

 Well thats all I have done in the 5 hours I have spent so far, But I plan to work on it later tonight before work and tomm morn when I get off. Its going to be close but Im hoping I am able to finish in time.... If not I guess I will have to submit the old standbys.... Some painted models from my Army....