Model Mate

brilliant job on what is a tiny model - very hard to believe it's 1/72.

fantastic paintwork - I didn't know the Tamiya/water tip either... it goes some way to explaining why my chipping isn't as good as it used to be (before I bought some Tamiya thinner!) - top tip!

After completing my mammoth scratchbuild, I need a new project. I threw together a lovely 1/72 T-35 kit, but it only took a handful of sessions, and whilst I’m happy with the result and thoroughly enjoyed it, I only have very limited display space, and it failed to entirely enthral me like a true DIY model does. I’ve not yet decided on a new full-scratch project and am not really ready for the commitment just yet anyway, so time to “scratch the scratch itch” in part at least…. Looking through my stash (not something that took long as there’s only a couple of planes, an old car and one tank) I found a nice looking Hobbyboss Vickers medium MkII. It looks to be a very nice kit, with individual link tracks, a little bit of etch and some clever moulding, all very neatly packaged. Some of this clever moulding includes a one-piece upper hull which has a number of separate hatches, so to my mind, it’s crying out for an interior. It’s also full of injector-pin marks, so the first job was to scrape (using a curved No.10 scalpel) and sand them away. I then set-to with the plastic card. I’ve found a couple of images of a resin interior kit online, which together with real interior photos, allowed me to start knocking up a raised floor, bulkhead and driver’s compartment from 0.5mm sheet. These are just blu-tacked in place for now. I’ll detail (and probably paint) them all before slotting them into place. It’s a nice, clear and open box basically, so pretty simple to make and easy to see why crews were apparently fond of this machine. I need some checker-plate flooring though, so I think I’ll need to order some textured card. It’s good to be back in the saddle, and while I get to scratch some fun bits, it shouldn’t take a year to complete (hopefully!)

Thanks for all the feedback folks! This was a nice palate cleanser after the MK1 beast (one week as opposed to one year!). I've got a Vickers Medium in the (limited) stash that might sit somewhere between the two extremes for my next job. It has lots of hatches, but doesn't have an interior......yet!

A bit of a departure for me in the sense that it's a kit rather than a scratchbuild. A really lovely kit, that just flew together and was great fun. I really need to find a fresh scratchbuild project though - if all kits are as quick as this, I'll fill my entire boat with finished models within a few short months! All pretty much OOB - I replaced most of the gun barrels with brass tube and cut out one of the side panels, but that's it for customisation. Painted with Tamiya, and weathered with oil paints, pastels and graphite pencil.

Well it’s only part two, and it’s finished! It would have been even sooner, but I haven’t had the modelling time lately. I applied a Matt coat (well thinned Windsor & Newton) using a brush - not my favourite method, but for various reasons I wasn’t able to get the airbrush out. Once this was dry I popped the turrets in place which was a mistake as I couldn’t get them off again. The main turret hatch and machine gun were immediate victims, although I somehow managed to avoid breaking the antenna. I then got to work with the pastels. First applying them to the lower hull before sticking the wheel bogies in place. Note that this particular bogie has a couple of bracing rods added as it’ll be exposed. Tracks next. The link and length tracks in the kit are really nice, and I’d already assembled the individual links around the sprocket and idler into curved sections using the sprocket as a jig. I’m pretty sure the instructions are wrong for this though - they suggest 8 links for the idler and 7 for the sprocket, but the sprocket is the larger diameter, so it makes sense to me to have 8 on that and 7 on the idler. That’s what I did and it worked for me. I glued the sprocket section and the top run in place, followed by the idler section and then the angled straight runs. These seemed a little too long, or rather, a little too straight, as they overshoot the tangent of the first and last road wheels ever so slightly: I simply bent their ends with my fingers to impart a bit of a curve: And lastly to the bottom run. This was clearly too long, so I cut it in two where a road wheel would lie, and removed a link’s worth of plastic: ….still too long, so I cut off another two links worth and it fitted snugly. Once both sets of tracks were done, I glued on the side plates which went on really neatly. And back to the mud…. I’ve never seen much point in expensive specialist weathering powders/pigments to be honest, and just use cheap artists’ pastels. I rub them on a coarse bit of sandpaper and mix the colours to get the particular earth/sand/soil tone I need. I then dab them into place using a short, flat, coarse brush…and then fix them with a little dash of white spirit: I keep a separate little jam jar of white spirit for this job as it soon gets pretty mucky. Once it’s dried, I give the edges a bit of a scrub using the coarse brush to eliminate the tide marks and blend it a bit. I also tried adding a dab of pastels to the white spirit and using it as a thin wash around various details: …again, scrubbed with the coarse brush once dry to blend. The last bit of fabrication was a length of plastic strip with some holes drilled to span the gap between the side plates which I painted un-weathered NATO green I glued the machine gun and hatch back on, glued the lights in place, added a bit of black pastel dust (dry) to the ends of the guns and the exhaust area along with another run over with the graphite pencil on tracks, guns etc. and that’s it finished - RFI coming soon!

Looks like another masterclass on it’s way; excellent!

2000 parts! This could take some time….. I’m looking forward to see what you do with this!

part tank; part car - the best of both worlds! You're doing a lovely job so far!

yours was a definite inspiration for this one - great build, and brilliant weathering...!

Another day; another project! With my recent scratchbuild out of the way, it’s time for something new – a lovely 1/72 T-35 that my darling missus got me for Christmas. Compared to my scratch projects, this one has been progressing at an alarming pace, so apologies for not reporting in until now, when it’s almost finished! These kits pretty much build themselves don’t they…! The kit is lovely – nice, crisp detail and it all seems to go together really easily. I drilled out the main gun barrel, but made a mess of the smaller guns I’m afraid and didn’t even try the machine guns – tiny! Instead, I replaced the 37mm guns with 0.8mm brass tube, with the fat end from the original plastic guns and a piece of Tamiya tape for the mid-section. The machine guns were similarly scratch-built from 0.5mm brass, tiny slivers of tape and little scraps of plastic. Everything else is just OOB, although I’ve cut one of the side skirts to show off a section of the suspension, so one of the bogies has had some additional bracing added. The paint job started with an overall Halfords black fine surface primer with some white primer highlighting squirted on from above. This was followed by Tamiya NATO green (looked a reasonable match to me) with a touch of yellow/green added for the highlight areas. The separate engine louvre/cover was brush painted in grey enamel beforehand and hairsprayed to allow it to be chipped and some burnt sienna rust patina was added with oils after. After the main paint had dried, everything got a round of dark grey chips using my Kevin brush, and the details were picked out. Some of the stuff got painted on the sprues – tracks in dark grey, followed by acrylic rusty splodges, oil washes and graphite, and the headlights model-air steel with a blob of gorilla clear glue on top. I then coated everything with Klear using a flat brush, added the decals (nice and thin, but seemingly resistant to micro-sol) and went over the lot with a burnt umber wash with black detail pin wash. It’s all a bit dark now, but I’m hoping a round of drybrushing will lighten it up again a bit.

Brilliant result! You’ve turned a terrible kit of a terrible tank into a wonderful model of a terrible tank-well done! Superb build, and great painting and weathering as usual.

Absolute masterclass in chipping. The effects you get are amazing!

that's a great looking Tiger - excellent job on an old kit, and what look to be even older figures - brilliant work on them!

Beautifully modelled and painted, and really nicely presented JS - very nice indeed!

The figures look really nice, but I wonder about the headbands too - might actually be easier to scratchbuild them I think. Looking forward to see what you do with this, if it’s up to your usual standard it’ll be a belter I’m sure!

Yes, it does raise a few questions…. I can understand the perceived need; big, heavy guns needing a team of horses to tow that get stuck in the mud, so the motor carriage comes to the rescue. Sounds like a good idea to me, and I don’t think these vehicles were so unreliable that going back to horses was necessarily a better idea, but for whatever reason it seems their original purpose was short lived. There were two types of gun they could carry - the huge, long barrelled 60 pounder and the 6” howitzer (the one I did). The 60 pounder had to be dismounted and reassembled in order to fire, so in that role it was very much just a gun carrier, but the howitzer could be fired whilst mounted, so a true self-propelled gun - an idea before it’s time maybe(?)

Thanks to everyone for the wonderful feedback! As suggested by George, here is the original photo of "Darlington"....

and done........! 1/35 Mk 1 gun carrier scratchbuild - Ready for Inspection - Armour - Britmodeller.com

And it’s done! After just over a year, a lot of plastic card, a Costa’s-worth of coffee stirrers and millions of tiny rivet balls I’ve finally decided that my Mk 1 Gun carrier is finished. It was a great fun project and I learned a lot. Everything is scratchbuilt apart from most of the figures. The large chap with the leather jerkin was scratchbuilt (well, his legs, arms and torso were) but the others are cheap knock-off resin figures. I tried to replicate a photo of “Darlington” cresting a small ridge while the top brass look on. I’m happy that I’ve pretty much captured the look although I shied away from covering the whole vehicle with quite as much kit as is shown in the photo. Painting was done using mainly Tamiya paints, with weathering being mostly oil paints with a little clay wash and a dab of pastel dust. I constructed it so that the upper hull can be removed to show the interior off. Things I’d like to improve next time…. Figures; there’s always room for improvement there. I’m very slowly getting better, but there still seems to be miles to go. Groundwork; this was my first attempt at painting grass and earth on a black-primed base and I’m not 100% convinced that this is better than using coloured static grass. I might try a hybrid approach next time. Foliage; my little bush is a bit sad, and the (real) cow parsley I used to represent real cow parsley isn’t particularly convincing I don’t think. Thanks to everyone who followed and provided brilliant advice, feedback and support during this extended build. The (12 page) WIP can be found here….. Mk1 gun carrier scratchbuild - Work in Progress - Armour - Britmodeller.com

Excellent job and a lovely grubby little tank! Very good weathering as others have said. The decals look great - completely “painted on” so no need to worry about Tamiya’s thick old decals. I have heard that Tamiya’s decals are intended to be applied with warm/hot water, and this overcomes what appear to be overly thick examples compared to other manufacturers, but however you’ve done them, the finished result looks superb.

Thanks Graham, excellent feedback as always. I did a few experiments with different fabrics etc. a while back for my adventures in sculpting and teabag fabric came out best, so has become my go-to, and works pretty well. I’ve used the loose tea for mud before, but not for anything else; sounds interesting. This one isn’t going to be particularly muddy, so I think just the pastels will do this time

I really must apologise – I realise that my last few posts in this AFV forum haven’t actually contained any info or pics of an armoured vehicle; just bits of greenery and wooden boxes! I’m nearly there though; the next post should be the “I’m finished!” one I hope. So to finish off the non-AFV stuff, I completed the stowage on the running boards by installing all the ammo and giving it a burnt umber oil wash, followed by a few of the crates on top. The upper hull then got its stowage fixed. I glued a crate in place and draped a piece of teabag cloth over it, soaked in diluted PVA with a drop of Vallejo olive brown added. I was careful not to make this too wet to avoid dark brown streaks and stains appearing around the edges, and once in place I dribbled more of the PVA/paint mix onto it to hold it down and get it to mould to shape. Before it was fully dry, I added darkened shadows of brown which could be wet blended pretty effectively. Once this was dry, I masked it off using the scraps of tape that always adorn my cutting mat and dry-brushed a series of ever-lighter shades. I added a coil of rope, and that was that. I did a similar job on a tarp/blanket hanging out of the large crate, added a length of chain and another rope and applied some rusty pastel dust to the exhaust. And that (minus a few drops of matt varnish here and there to hide glue stains) finishes off the upper hull… My reference photos show a bunch of other junk on the vehicle, but I’m going to stop here; I don’t want to obscure the whole thing, and to be frank, I just want to get it finished now. In other news (un-illustrated) I decided the grass did need to get a bit brighter, so airbrushed some lighter green tones on and matt-coated the crew. Lurch’s jerkin is now TOO matt, so I’ll have to go back with a bit of Future/Pledge/Klear and give the various leather bits a touch of satin. I also PVA’d the ammo crates, broken planks and so on onto the base. A little bit more foliage and the base will be finished too. The main vehicle just needs graphite and mud applied to the tracks and the doors gluing on and that’ll be that, so I really am nearly there with this one.

Returning to the base, I painted the various little stones and rocks with a selection from my recently procured and extensive collection of Tamiya buff/tan/light greys and applied a burnt umber oil wash over them and all the muddy areas, varying the density as I went. I was worried about tide marks, so everywhere got a coating, albeit pretty much clean white spirit for much of it. I toyed with the idea of going over the grass with some lighter greens – it’s all a bit dark – but couldn’t be bothered to be honest. I’ll live with it a bit longer and see if I can leave it as is. The various wooden boxes also got a bit of an oil wash, and again, I’m thinking they’re all a bit too dark and “wooden” (ironically). A brief glance at any wooden fence will tell you that unfinished wood exposed to the elements for any time tends to go grey, so had a go at some methods to tone these down. I made up a sample piece, stained it with oils as per the boxes and then tried different strengths of light grey acrylic wash/glaze and drybrush. I was happiest with the drybrushing, so applied it to a few boxes. Much better. Here’s the whole lot, ready to be mounted on the tank and base....

……speechless…… soldering at that scale?! Amazing!