Welcome To My Flamethrower Repainting Page.

This is my repaint I have done on the Dragon M1A1 flamethrower, I obtained this item through a trade I did some time ago now, and I believe that it came with the DML Sonny figure. The first thing I did with this item, was to sand off the seam lines on the tanks, as they stood out like a sore thumb to me. Once I had done that I repainted the tanks with a base colour paint was from the Revell enamel paint range number 46 matt NATO olive, as this was the nearest that I could find at the time for WW2 US military paint colours.

The pictures above are of the flamethrower unit as supplied with the figure, it is a nice piece but the main problem I found with it is the way the hose from the tanks creases up when bent as shown in the picture above right. This was one of the main problems with the unit that stopped me from using it in a kitbash, because the hose would not look right with a fold in it like that. So that was my second problem with the unit, just how to get the hose to stay in shape when it was bent or positioned on a figure.

Flamethrower Hose

It was when I was looking for a small part for another kitbash, that the idea came to me about the hose... Fill it with some very fine railway modelling gravel...

To do this I removed the hose end from the tank unit so I just had the control unit still attached, I then got a small pile of the gravel and pushed it slowly into the open end of the hose. Then after putting it in I took hold of the open hose end and shook it to make sure that the gravel went all the way down, added some more gravel, shook again until I was almost at the end of the hose. This is where I got a paintbrush and pressed it into the hose to compact the material inside, when I was happy with the shape of the hose and that when I bent it no creases appeared. I got a small piece of tissue scrunched it up and plugged the hose end with it, making sure I still had enough left to put back onto the tank unit.

These pictures are of the base coat repainted flamethrower unit and hose with the much better bends in it now. I still have to repaint the centre part and the straps, then give the whole unit a drybrush of a lighter base coat.

Another problem that I found in doing this project, is actually finding a decent reference image to use to see just how accurate the Dragon flamethrower is. Luckily, I managed to find a picture and from that I made the three images above. The two main pictures I wanted was of the clip around the middle tank and the connection for the hose to the tank unit.

The clip on the model's middle tank is different, and I have just added a small piece of plastic onto the band to represent the part that would be pressed down to hold the tank in place. The hose end will have a small piece of Duct Tape cut to size and wrapped around it, both to hold the hose in place and make it look like the crimped end as shown above.

Flamethrower Back Padding

The moulded plastic pad part on the flamethrower unit was another item that was beginning to annoy me, as it would have taken a bit of time to repaint it to what I wanted and even then it may not look right. So out came my model knife and I cut it out as shown above left, after first checking that the canvas straps were not attached to it.

The reason for doing this is that I had a mad moment and wanted to replace the plastic piece, with the cloth pad from a spare backpack carrier I have. The centre picture above shows the carrier and pad separated which was just a case of untying the threads, with the picture above right of the cloth pad in place on the flamethrower unit to check for size.

Once I was happy that the pad was lined up correctly I put a pencil mark on each of the side rails where I wanted the holes for the threads to go. Then I got out my model makers drill and then made 8 holes on each side, so that I could tie the canvas pad in place. The picture on the right shows the holes in place and the rails drying off, because I had to glue them back in place, as they came apart during the drilling process.

Now I had the back off the unit I could see which parts I had not painted, plus I could also get at the seam lines better to sand them off. Once I had done that, I then had to repaint the unit again with a base coat. A bonus I found in replacing the back pad, was that now I had just the metal parts of the flamethrower and doing the drybrushing of it would be a lot easier. It was only after having the unit in front of me, did I realise that the colour that I originally used was too dark. So seeing as I had to repaint it again, this time I used Revell enamel paint range number 39 matt Dark Green.

The picture on the right shows where I have tried the cloth pad for size on the flamethrower unit, as I wanted to makes sure that I have the holes lined up correctly so I could tie the pad in place. I have also tried the unit out for size on one of my figures, and with the new cloth pad in place, the whole unit now sits better on the figure's back and to me it looks much better than the plastic part that was originally in place.

All that needs to be done now is for me to take the pad back off and drybrush the whole flamethrower and control unit. Apart from that the repainting and changes to the unit are finished.

The pictures below show how I have tried out the flamethrower unit on one of my kitbashes, to see what it looks like and to see how the loop on the hose hangs. The ballast in the hose has helped a lot to add some weight and remove the creases, also the whole unit does pull in tighter on the figure's back with the cloth pad. To get the figure's left hand to hold the trigger unit, I separated the fingers with my knife blade so I could make that a trigger finger.