I never want to see the color orange again.

Just a HAZARD tank update. I've been hammering at these things every day, and have some new progress pics. the bodies, turrets and tow hooks are finished and clear coated.

One of the features for the HAZARD is the use of a third party armored canopy, made by Shapeways (a 3D printing service) designer Yetibrew.

This is my first time working with anything from Shapeways, and I wasn't prepared for the deep print lines on many of the surfaces. For a customizer making one item, they would be an ideal way to get a unique part for your project, but for me, making 20 tanks with a deadline, they were somewhat difficult to work with. I sanded them heavily before painting, then put a coat of primer and a first coat of orange, then sanded them pretty heavily again. After several coats of orange, the lines are still pretty visible.

Another issue was that the canopies were a pretty tight fit to the tanks, and because of the color and type of paint I am using, the paint job is pretty heavy, and there is potential for chipping from repeated movement of the canopy. I tried to offset this by leaving the tank hinge area unpainted, but I think I'll be including a note with each tank to avoid excessive handling of the canopy. That is probably a no-brainer for most people that understand they are getting a custom painted piece, but better safe than sorry.

I have to finish the treads, which have to be masked twice and coated 4 times, and then comes the detail work. I have about a week left to delivery, and I need a working piece for pics for Hisstank.com ASAP.

H.A.Z.A.R.D. Tanks and the hell I am going through making them

This is a H.A.Z.A.R.D. Tank, a highly specialized HISS Tank for the Hazard Viper corps equipped for the creation, containment, and if necessary, termination of Compound Z infected special forces troopers, or Zombie Vipers (text paraphrased from the Cobrastickers decal sheet). How do I know this? Easy. I made it up.

The photo is actually the first tank, a "prototype" of sorts. The HAZARD Tanks are custom painted tanks that I am making for the May 6th New Jersey Collector's Con, to be given away as door prizes during the show. There are several people involved in the project, like parts casters and decal printers and Shapeways creators, all of which have done their part, and now I am tasked with the painting and assembly of them.

It is a lot of work. A LOT of work. Way more than I expected. Regardless, I am working on it day and night since I only have about 2 weeks left before they are to be given away at the show.

I thought it would be fun to post some in-progress updates as I went along. I've spent the last 10 days or so buried in these things, and I stopped to take pics here and there. we are doing a total of 20 tanks for this show, and I have never done 20 customs at once before, so it is proving to be difficult. Also, orange paint SUCKS to work with. My own fault, I guess.

First, every tank had to be disassembled, any decals removed, adhesive residue wiped off, and them every part had to be cleaned and prepped for painting. Most customizers have their own individual process. I scrub everything down with Comet and a toothbrush, and for broad or glossy areas, 400 grit wet/dry sandpaper. I also had to clean and prep all the add on parts, like the fuel tanks for the flamethrower, and the cast cannons for the turret. It took FOREVER. I was bent over my sink for 3-4 hours at a time, or as long as my back could take it.

Here I am gluing the flamethrower tanks in place. They are modified vintage Blowtorch backpacks with some styrene added for the hose stem.

One feature the tanks have is a custom built and cast set of cannons that I bashed together from old joe parts. The idea was that one side would be a Compound Z cannon, and would accept Z-canisters that are included with the Hazard Viper figure, while the other side would be a flamethrower for burning Zombie Vipers that became too unruly. These were then molded and cast for each tank.

One feature of the flamethrower side of the cannon is a removable flame. Each cannon barrel had to be drilled individually to ensure a good fit.

With all that done, I have started the painting process. these pics are where I am as of today, so hopefully i should have a totally finished tank by the middle of next week some time between multiple coats of orange, and clear coating.

One final pic, each tank will come with an assortment of Zombie handling accessories, courtesy of Marauder, Inc, painted by me.

That is all for today. I'm a little dizzy from the paint fumes and need a break. I'll post more pics as things progress.

Welcome to the 788th Armored Division!

My name is Kevin, and I have created this blog to showcase my GI Joe collection. I have been a GI Joe fan since 1982, when I was 6, and I have been actively collecting GI Joe as an adult since the mid 90's.

My collecting interests cover a pretty wide spectrum, from loose complete examples of Action Figures and Vehicles that I have been playing with since my childhood, to collecting the various modern incarnations from Hasbro's GI Joe line that have been sold at retail since 1997, as well as army building, customizing my own figures, vehicles and play sets, and buying many non-toy licensed items that I find interesting. I have also built up a small collection of pre-production artwork, hand made prototypes and assorted test shot VSPs that relate to both the vintage and modern GI Joe eras.

My plan for this blog is to share my collecting efforts, information, displays and dioramas I have created, as well as some current projects that are in the works, with other GI Joe collectors.

Now, there are many great resource and news sites out there who archive and showcase these types of items, like the long running yojoe.com, Joeintel.com, Hisstank.com, Generalsjoes.com, Joedeclassified.com, and others, and while I am very friendly or have even been on staff with many of these sites, I have never been comfortable blindly handing over photos of items in my collection, some of which could be sensitive due to the nature of the items or even the way they were procured, and in many cases, have cost me a lot of money, just to feed some site owner's pockets with hits and clicks and traffic or whatever. Whether it was a big corporate backer gobbling up sites with bandwidth issues, an ego maniacal collector hiding behind some self serving high and mighty community mission statement, or an overly ambitious site owner looking to be the biggest site ever no matter what, none of them felt right for me. (Though, I will say, by far the most selfless and community minded archival site out there is Dan Moore's Joeintel, and I wish more people would go there and discover the resource he has built, almost exclusively out of his own collection and pocket.)

For years I have wanted to do my own thing. Something where my own hard work and hobby enjoyment wasn't being used or exploited by others. I just didn't know what to do, exactly. I'm not a programmer, or a computer guy, and the ones I ask tend to roll their eyes at the idea of something as fleeting as a fan site, or they try to charge me an arm and a leg to set something up. I started blogging for the potentially dead 30pov.com in 2009, and I thought that format was easy enough for me to handle, so here I am.

I am hoping to make this place part archive, part showcase for customs and dioramas, part review and op-ed, part sharing stories from my experience as a collector and dealer, and hopefully fun enough that some people find it and enjoy it, and I can focus on a new aspect of my hobby.

Kevin Watts