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Morning all, I thought you might enjoy this WIP. I saw someone post one of these on twitter and couldn't really resist. The first job is the 2 and a half million wheels (well, 74 I think). Individually these are pretty easy to put together and clean up, I found it best to actually build them and then clean up any sprue that was left. Being Meng there was no flash to worry about, if you're doing this kit I'd suggest you cut the parts for each wheel type and put them in separate tubs, then sit and watch a film with a file and a scalpel blade to hand. The wheels are held in place by rails that sit over the top (well, bottom when the kit is built but you get the point). I found the easiest thing to do here was to put a drop of extra-thin quick setting at the end of each bar. Obviously some of this seeped through so a few of the wheels don't spin, whenever I find myself in this situation I agonise about whether that's ok and then remember that it's not like I'm going to be driving this around on my bench going 'brum brum' (well not much anyway) so who cares if the wheels work. There are lots of details to attach to the hull and sponsons, these are mostly simple and fit well although throughout this kit I find the grab handles to be a bit fragile. I think I snapped most of them and, whilst they were easy enough to repair it was still irritating. I think if you wanted to you could cut the brackets for them out of styrene sheet, drill holes and put wire through for the bars, I don't think that would save any effort but it might be less irritating. When you assemble the hull the top section holds the drive wheels in place, then the bottom slots in. At this point I had a little bit of a fight to get it into place and to get the fittings at the ends to line up, nothing to worry about but I did manage to knock off one of the PE grilles, next time I think I'd leave the PE off until the end. I also found when I added the towing eyes some of them fit over the seam and are pretty good at pulling the two hull parts together and closing any gaps that remain. Char 2C The eagle eyed amongst you may notice I've left off the MGs, there is no need to fit them until right at the end of the build so I didn't to avoid breaking them. Char 2C I am really taken with the size of this beast, the 1/35 figure is for scale, it's so bit I struggled to get a photo on my bench. I've got a vague idea about setting up some sort of simple 'diorama' with some figures on the roof of the tank, maybe you'll get to see that later. Char 2C Finally the sub assemblies, the turrets are lovely and simple to build (although I draw your attention to the Stroboscopic Cupolas which are a wonderful concept - http://www.landships.info/landships/tank_articles/stroboscopic_cupolas.html). The gun barrel is in 2 parts and doesn't have any visible rifling which is a shame given the size but clean-up wasn't an issue. The top of the engine was a great sub assembly, almost a kit in its own right. It has numerous tiny pipes which, I must admit, I approached with some trepidation. In the end they required minimal clean-up and though fiddley they slotted into place fine. These are the only parts that would make me hesitate before recommending this kit to a real beginner, although I think if you did break one it would be easy to replace it with bent wire (I'm sure some folks are already doing this as standard anyway). As you can see, I managed to mess up the PE here as the grille came away from the rim when I tried to take it off the fret which was a bit frustrating, it was my mistake and hopefully with a little fenageling it should look ok. Char 2C by Stefan Bridle, on Flickr That's where I'm at for now, I think I'll probably prime the hull etc over the next couple of days and worry about the tracks later. I'm thinking of using one of the monotone paint jobs from the box (probably Normandie) using Tamiya XF-58 as the base colour. The instructions suggest Vallejo 'olive-brown' but their illustrations are dark green. I want to build this as it might have been in 1939 before war broke out, I think that means it should be in 'vert-olive' although I can't find any colour references for the precise shade so I might use a bit of imagination. One last thing to add is that these vehicles were mostly used for propaganda and moral building films. One of the cool things about this build is that you don't often get to build an individual vehicle that we have this amount of reference photography and footage of. This video is worth a watch: Thanks all and hope you enjoy the thread.

Here are pictures of my recently completed Menu Char2C French WW1/2 tank. The design is a disaster! the Frencha made 10 of them and they were shot up ion a train and blown up before they could be deployed in 1940. The French claim this, but the pictures of the train show one Char2C looking like it has been shot at on a test range, as the holes are marked in white. Others were blown up. Model was easy to make, took ages to dirty up, mainly with enamels and Windsor/Newton Pastels on top. Model was expensive, but fitted together very well. Photos were shot at 2 stops under on a black background, and brightened up a couple of stops in MAC Preview. I learnt that you can use a LED torch to shine down to give a more realistic lighting.