diablo rsv

You've made a lovely job of that Simon, I'm glad you found my build helpful. I've got a half finished Italeri Mk.I sitting on the shelf of doom, seeing your build has given me the inspiration to get it finished. Wayne

You can't go wrong with a Crusader, personally I think it's one of the better looking tanks. I built this kit a little while back and thoroughly enjoyed it. The only disappointment was the amount of ejector pin marks on the track links that need to be removed and the metal barrel is completely the wrong profile but the plastic one is fine. Wayne

That is a cracking model! An unusual subject and interesting camouflage scheme which has been very well executed. Wayne

Not much progress to report really as I have mostly been doing some research. Firstly regarding the 1920 car, I have been looking at stowage options to add some interest. I have noticed on a lot of the cars in this period there seems to be some sort of weighted bags on a long strap hanging from the hooks on the hull. @Kingsman? I'm not sure if they are all of the same thing but on the car I'm modelling there seems to be some remnants hanging from the hooks. On the 1914 car I have been looking into camouflage. It would be impossible to determine the exact colours just by looking at old black and white photos so all I can do is make an educated guess and go with what I feel looks right. It looks like three colours have been used. I'm reasonably happy that the base colour would have been grey and probably a light admiralty grey, and the other two colours were most likely a green and a brown. Around the period that these cars were in France the artillery had taken to camouflaging their guns with patches of green, brown, grey and cream separated with thin black lines. The photo below is of one of the R.R Armoured cars towing a gun painted in this style. I assume that the car would have been painted in similar colours. The problem is I don't know what these colours really are. After a little research I found a contemporary painting by Capt Kenneth Forbes of his "6in Howitzers in Action". So it is these colours that I shall try to replicate. Using a piece of scrap card I tried out a number of combinations. Eventually I found something I am reasonably happy with. The green is a mixture of Tamiya XF-58 and XF-59 with a drop of X-15. The brown is AK RC031 and RC034. I may tweak them a bit when I see them on the model with filters. My next problem was deciding which tone is which colour. Film of this period often depicted red as a dark tone and as this is likely to be a reddish brown I shall assume the darker tone is the brown. This should be a fun masking project. Wayne

Lovely job with the crosses. The Silhouette cutter is one of my favourite purchases, I hardly ever use decals anymore. Wayne

Lovely job on the camouflage, I can see why it would be challenging but I imagine the end result makes it all worthwhile. Wayne

Just looking through my reference photos and found this one. Looks like you have the small roundels in the correct place for this car. The roof does appear to have the large roundel painted on it but the light makes it look white. Wayne

Very nice John, I see what you mean about the Vickers but should be easy enough to replace. From what I can see there doesn't seem to be much between the kits. It looks as though the Roden turret is the correct shape for the 1914 car, something that Meng didn't get right. If only I had know I could have saved myself a lot of work. It also seems that Roden didn't have the issue with the misshapen rivets on the curved surfaces. I guess their turret was moulded in separate sections. Wayne

That's looking very good Simon. I hadn't realised they had released a Mk.II. I enjoyed building the Mk.III, it's a nice kit to build apart from those ejector pin marks on the track links. Wayne

There are a couple of subjects that I'm considering both of which have plenty of rivets. I have a bit of a back log of kits that I really wanted to finish first but I may well make a start on one as a side project and see if I get hooked. Wayne

Very impressive, an excellent display of scratch building, you're tempting me to have a go. The colour looks right as well, so I have just ordered myself some for a future project. Wayne

Wishing everyone a Happy New Year and hope you all had a great and productive Christmas. Personally I thought I would get plenty done over the festive break but I don't seem to have much to show for my efforts. Mostly It has been a case of adding a few details and making some alterations to the 1920 car. I also applied pin washes and some chips and scratches. First thing I noticed when studying my reference photo was a couple of hooks on each side of the car body. I'm not sure of their purpose but the are quite noticeable. These were made from flattened lead wire. To fit them some moulded on detail needed to be removed which resulted in some difficult repair work. In close up it still looks a little messy but it looks ok to the naked eye, However, looking at the photo, it appears that the front one needs to be reattached. The guns have been painted and added to the turret. I have decided to keep the chipping and scratches quite restrained as it appears to be in the reference photos. The underside was given some token paint, most of this will probably disappear when I add the weathering. The exhaust was given a little more attention as it can be seen. I went a bit heavier with the wear and tear on the wheel arches. At the front I made some headlight brackets for the mudguard lights, the Meng ones are the wrong style, I also added a wing mirror all made from brass wire. The Meng radiator doors and the armoured plate below them were too thick so I remade some from plastic card. I also made a stencil for the W.D number as the decal bares no resemblance to the reference photo. I have applied the flat coat varnish using Mr Colour GX113 and I'm now at the point now where I need to start on the weathering and dust effects. I would imagine the next post will be of the finished result on this car, unless of course I decide to press on with the 1914 car. Wayne

It will be interesting to see this one being built up and how it compares to the Meng ones that I'm building. I believe that the Roden kit is a little older than the Meng one but the detail on the sprues looks pretty good. Wayne

Fair play to you! I would struggle in 1/72, 1/35 was testing my fat old fingers. Thank you all very much, I appreciated your taking the time to comment. I have a couple of weeks off now but don't know how much time I will have for model making. It would be nice to get at least one of the cars finished. Have a merry and productive Christmas! Wayne

Coming along very nicely George, the stowage will look great. I've not seen the model degreaser before, it would save me having to head to the kitchen to wash the model before painting. I use the VMS version, which seems to work pretty well, and I wash the brush off with Tamiya Extra Thin Cement. Wayne

I thought I would start with the painting on the 1920 car. I have done the Caunter scheme on a few models now and depending on the vehicle it can be fairly straight forward or really awkward. The shape of the Rolls Royce makes it look like it would be one of the easier ones, how wrong could I be. It took a couple of long sessions to get the masking done. A fair bit of that time was taken up by checking my reference photos to get it as accurate as I could but not all the angles of the same car are available and there seems to be a lot of variance between cars so a little guess work was required. This is the masking for the final Slate colour. The satisfaction of removing the masks and revealing the paint work underneath with only a tiny bit bleeding and overspray makes all that time spent masking up worth while. The wheels aren't fixed yet, that will be done after the weathering, but I just wanted a peek at how they would look. There is a little bit of tidying up to do but that wont take long. Once again the paint used was MRP and to answer your question Ed, I love them. They suit the way I like to work perfectly but may not be for everybody. Most importantly, for me, I have found that their colours have matched the colour chips in the @Mike Starmer books perfectly and to me they look right. They are a lacquer paint and really need a proper spray area with ventilation to use them safely, fortunately I have a workshop with an extracted spay booth . The paint is airbrush ready and so it doesn't need thinning however that means that it is useless for brush painting, which makes touch ups and detail painting difficult. I have ordered myself the Vallejo set just for that purpose, fingers crossed the colour match. It does go down very well giving a smooth and semi gloss finish, ideal for applying washes and decals. It's not very opaque, especially the lighter colours, but that means you can build up the opacity by applying multiple light layers and therefore adjust the amount of preshading that you want showing through. It is quite durable but can be worn off in the areas where it is thinner with too much handling but once the final clear coat is applied its fine. Whilst studying my reference photo I noticed that the front of the top rear mud guard was cut back flush with the upright and a box is fixed onto it. I'm not sure what the purpose of the box is but in the photo I can just make out some cylinders placed in some of the openings. I made up the boxes out of some plastic card but won't put anything in them for now. This car is now ready for the lights and details to be added, I haven't decided yet whether I will start on the 1914 car's camouflage or carry on with this one. Thanks Stuart, I'm glad your enjoying the thread, until I started this project I didn't realise how diverse these cars were. I can see why it appears that none of the model companies have got their cars right but between them you could get enough parts to get somewhere near one. Wayne

Really nice Ian, a very clean build and great paint work. Wayne

Good progress Ed, looks like the bodywork is nicely engineered. Can it be left removable? Keep the handy hints coming, you could save me a lot of frustration when I get round to mine. Wayne

Excellent detailing work Kristjan, this going to be another cracking model. Wayne

Very nice John! You're braver than me adding figures, those are absolutely fine though and add a bit of life to the model. Wayne

Thanks John! The Meng kit really isn't that bad. I think the problem some have with it is that despite the claim on the box the 1914 car can't really be built OOB. There is also the Warslug model but as I understand it there are a few issues with that one as well. I just find that matt white is too coarse, as I'm only putting down light mist coats satin or gloss gives a much better finish. Thanks Pete. Looking at the reference photo I have I found it difficult to determine which is the base colour. I came to the conclusion that the lighter colour is the base because on the full size image you can see what looks like brush marks on the two darker tones. I could be wrong of course, maybe the mid tone is the gray and the light could be a buff colour but the car in the photo below appears to be a lighter gray. As much as I would like to build an accurate model I think that I will have to settle for a possibly looked like this representation. Wayne

The last bit of fiddling before I started to get the paint on was the Scarff mount for the Lewis gun on the 1920 car. Meng's effort isn't bad but as I couldn't find an after market alternative I refined the kit one a little. The notched uprights are moulded as a solid piece but these really needed to have a slot cut into them where the curved gun support would move up and down. It was a little awkward to do but I managed it with the use of some micro drills, a scriber and a scalpel. The other addition was the 'pully system,' this was made from some fishing line. Not perfect but I think it's an improvement. I have also added the hook system to the front of the 1914 car. I believe this was a local addition and would have been used to remove barricades and barbed wire. The models had both been primed in black. I prefer black primer as it helps with adding the depth to the recesses and shadowed areas but an undercoat is required for the lighter top coats. For this I use thin coats of gloss or satin white mostly sprayed from above. Once all that had dried I could get the base coats on. For the 1920 car I used MRP's Portland Stone. On the 1914 car I decided to go with a light gray. It's neigh on impossible to tell from the photos I have if this is correct but I'm pretty sure that armoured cars at this time would have arrived in the light gray scheme. That's the easy part done, all I have to do now is get on with the masking and that may take a while. Wayne

You're gonna need a pretty big shelf for those two. The Typhoon is an impressive model but it looks like it could be a bit of a pain to build. Like your Dad mine never evolved his modelling, he carried on building them though until his passing twenty odd years ago. I often wonder what he would of made of all of the products available now and just how easy it is to find references and tips on the internet. I'm sure he would have spent many hours on this forum. This is what started it all for me over fifty years ago! Wayne

Glad to see this progressing again John. That doesn't look like the easiest shape to scratch build with all of those angles, I admire your patience. Wayne

The Lanchester is a lovely little kit Darryl and the replacement wheels would be a great addition to it but the kit wheels aren't that bad, I do have another set for mine though and they are one piece. If I get these Rolls Royce's finished I may just squeeze it in to this group build. I managed not to succumb to the Black Friday sales but I am tempted to buy the new Airfix 24th scale Spitfire although I have no idea what I would do with it when built. I think it's a nostalgia thing, my dad built me the old one when I was a kid and that's what started my interest in model making. Wayne