CV9040B - finished!

[Will Vale]

Hi folks,

I've been waiting for this GB to come around since I've had a Draken looking at me for most of the year, but I'm going to attempt this IFV first since I'm a bit planed out at the mo. This is the Academy kit, which seems pretty generous with the box contents and is supposedly (I know nothing, just reading internet stuff) a bit more accurate than the Hobby Boss version.

It also has nice box art:

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Inside the rather large box is this rather large hull:

plus lots of sprues of nice-looking tan plastic:

Note the scary-looking two part track links, and the turned metal barrel. Also the pink polycaps - oo er.

In case I give up or chicken out of the individual links, there are also vinyl tracks and a small etched fret and decal sheet:

I need to go and find the instructions, but I suspect it'll start with cleaning up the road wheels. Soooo many...

Cheers,

Will

Edited January 27, 2013 by Will Vale

[Will Vale]

Left the instructions in the bathroom, now recovered! I spent a few hours on Sunday afternoon adding bits to the lower and upper hulls - mainly suspension parts and hatches - plus building the rear door.

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So far it seems like a nice kit. The plastic is a bit bendy but it sands OK. I might add some internal bracing to the upper hull since it's very thin in places. It also has something I've seen with other Academy kits where the locating holes for parts can be a bit big, I might need to fill around some of the inserted pieces like the tow eyes on the rear panel.

I had to swap some parts around on what I think is a collapsible stowage bin at the back because I broke one while cleaning it up. I also noticed (later) that I'd unaccountably managed to glue the rear door in so that it was proud of the frame at one side - no wonder the hinges didn't fit perfectly. I was able to remove and re-fit it without problems though. I also removed the spade holder loops from the door since they weren't quite lined up and I can easily make them from wire.

Need to do some lights and things soon, plus eat my greens in the form of the road wheels...

Will

[oldhouse]

Promising Start !! lnice work so far !! Peter

[CliffB]

Nice to see some armour in the GB Will

Cliff

[Will Vale]

Thanks guys, I've actually just realised something else that I'm making in 1/35 is in Swedish service. Hint: It's not a land vehicle...

[Will Vale]

Sorry at the lack of progress, we were on holiday, then it was Christmas, then I realised I ought to try and finish my what-if GB entry first (and failed...) but I went to find the IFV today. And guess what - I've lost it! It was all in the (large) box, which I thought would be in my office/workroom somewhere, but I can't see it anywhere.

This is obviously a bit embarrassing. I'll have another look around tomorrow

Will

[CliffB]

Sounds like a particularly voracious carpet monster. Better take care!

Hope you find it OK.

Cliff

[Will Vale]

Thanks, I hadn't made the carpet monster connection, now I'm scared!

[Will Vale]

Found it!

You can see why it took a while - from the outside there was no way the Stuka box was big enough. Or so I thought...

Now to get on and do the wheels like wot I was supposed to have done a couple of months ago.

Will

[Will Vale]

Well I got the wheels cut out and sanded - the soft plastic meant this was easy but has also made it easy to create flat spots. I don't think they'll be obvious though.

I primed the wheels (14 + 4!) today, painted them and put them all together. One polycap has gone missing so I'll need to find an alternative. Unfortunately I then broke my airbrush while cleaning it afterwards. I think it might be fatal - when I re-fitted the nozzle I must've leaned on the spanner slightly too hard (I was gentle, I swear...) it sheared off.

So now I have a little bit of nozzle thread trapped inside the brush body. I can't see that I'll be able to dig it out without destroying the holding thread, but I might as well have a go since I don't really have anything to lose.

In the meantime I need to find my backup AB and hope it still works. Onwards etc. Sorry for the lack of pictures, there hasn't really been anything exciting to photograph.

Oh - one bit of good progress is I think I have some decent colours picked out for the splinter camo - Tamiya Deep Green for the dark, and a 50:50 mixture of Flat Green and Dark Yellow for the light, together with Nato Black. The greens are quite saturated, which seems to fit with pictures on the web, and the Deep Green is a touch blue-ish.

Cheers,

Will

[HOUSTON]

Ooh this is quite a good thread/ build to follow..

Nice start already..

[Will Vale]

That's weird, I'd posted some more tangible progress but it seems to have disappeared - maybe I didn't click submit?

(click for bigger)

I've also got the tracks together, which was a bit of a mission but not as terrifying as I expected. My first brush with individual links!

Next job is to finish various bits of building (the light clusters, fitting some PE parts, and replacing the spade bracket which I broke) and get some primer on the hull and turret.

Cheers,

Will

[Roland Pulfrew]

Looking good there Will. Nice to see something a little different. Looking forward to her paint scheme though - good luck!!

[Will Vale]

Thanks Roland, I'm nearly at the scary bit. I've done all the construction I can do before painting, sworn at the tracks some more, and now have some primer on:

It's only a thin coat of primer at the moment, but most of the places where it's a bit see-through will be caught in the pre-shade. I did a bit of extra work on the turret side baskets, since they were just big blobs and didn't really look like fabric. I haven't made the shape more accurate (the internal frame cants down, and the bag is a bit narrower at the bottom I think) but hopfully they're a bit less vague than they were:

I also drilled out the exhaust since it was really really shallow:

The barrel looks cool, it was worth using the metal one:

And lastly those pesky tracks. The initial construction wasn't too bad, but I broke them more than once while fitting the rubber contact pads. I'd have been better doing this before assembly, but I wasn't sure if I wanted to use the separate parts to make painting easier or something.

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I had two goes at filling the ejector pin marks inside the track links, but they're still pretty dire. I'll have to resort to mud At least I can show off my model of Sweden's own Stealth Tank if I don't get anything else finished...

Will

[Will Vale]

Managed to scrape together one semi-functional airbrush last night from one broken and one not-very-well-sealed one, and got some paint on. I pre-shaded with Rubber Black and then sprayed a mix of Flat Green and Dark Yellow, only aiming for good coverage where the light green will be visible, so that hopefully the other colours will show the pre-shade a bit:

It might be a bit less saturated in real life than in these pictures, but it's still fairly bright! Hopefully it'll look OK with the dark green and black on there.

Now, the masking commences, at least it will after I sand down the paint a tad. Also need to prime the lower hull after sanding a bit of filler on the rear panel join.

Will

[Will Vale]

Various things happening which I haven't taken pics of yet - I've primed, pre-shaded and painted the lower hull, or at least those bits of it which I won't be able to reach later, and the insides of the skirts.

Then, weirdly enough, I've had to varnish and weather the roadwheels and suspension, and do some basic painting and weathering on the tracks. This is because I opted to join the skirts to the upper hull rather than fit them at the end. I don't see that you could really do it any other way, mind you, since the gluing surface for the skirts is tiny, and you need to mask and paint the camo across the join. There's almost no clearance around the tracks so you can't really squeeze them in later either.

So now I have a lightly weathered running gear and tracks, all fitted in place, and the upper hull glued on. I'll come back to the weathering later depending on time, but at least the bits I can't get to don't look entirely clean now.

The fit was great except for a 0.5mm gap in the rear overhangs. It's underneath on a plain surface so no big deal, the filler is drying as we speak. I do think maybe the upper hull is warped a little - there's a slight but noticeable "sad eyes" look to the front, which is sort of in pictures of the real thing, and sort of not. Too late to worry about that now though

I'll try and take some more pics tomorrow, then wrap up the tracks (clingfilm?) touch in the light green across the joins, and get masking.

Cheers,

Will

[Will Vale]

Not done anything yet today - I'm feeling a bit fumble-fingered for some reason. I did take some pictures though - always good to see things in a bit more detail than my eyes manage

I think I may have had the saturation up a bit high (not on purpose, side effect of something else) in the last pictures. These seem a bit more realistic:

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Looking at the extreme close-ups, I think there's a mould line I didn't spot on the headlight fairings, I also need to clean up the seam which has opened a tad below the top armour plate - there should be a small step there, but not a gap!

Quite like how the tracks look given how little effort has gone into painting them so far - just brown, a coffee colour, and a brown-grey airbrushed over black primer, with a wash and a bit of graphite on the pins and guide horns. Hopefully I'll have time to do more to them once the paint and decals are done.

One other problem I can see in the close-ups is it looks like the track links around one of the sprockets are gaping a bit. I'm wondering if I can close them up with liquid glue and clamping tweezers? It's not a huge problem but it does stand out I think.

Cheers,

Will

[CliffB]

Will, I took me quite a while to spot the concerns you raised - even with the close-ups and your narrative!

 

Still, I know what it's like - once you've spotted things on your own model, they can nag away at you  . 

 

Looking brilliant though as it is.

 

Cliff

[Will Vale]

Thanks Cliff, I know they aren't huge issues but I've been trying to get on top of mould lines recently (I used to forget or ignore them more often than not) and it's annoying to miss one. Worse than the above (because they're so hard to get at) I haven't cleaned up the sprocket teeth I think because the road wheels didn't need anything doing and I assembled the sprockets at the same time. Oh well.

I spent all afternoon masking, then some painting, then this evening more masking, and more painting. Working from light to dark, I made positive masks for the light green, then sprayed the darker one and made negative masks for the black. I put pieces of tape together (and used some masking sheet for the big ones) and applied them where I wanted the mask. Then made pen dots on the vertices following Academy's painting diagram, and removed the tape. Finally I cut them out with a scalpel and re-applied. Quite fiddly, but doable. The bits where they go over the relief tended to need some help from 6mm tape.

Lots and lots and lots of tape to fill in the gaps made it look like a dog's breakfast:

But to my delight (and surprise...) the end result is quite satisfying!

(click for bigger)

I think I've missed a black patch inside the large light green section on the left hull (which would complete the black section from the turret) - I'm not sure if I missed it in the painting diagram (the dark green and black are almost indistinguishable in print) or if Academy did. I did compare against photos before going with their version of the camo, and it seemed generally correct, plus there was enough variation between machines that it probably doesn't matter too much.

I thought the deep relief on the rear door came out pretty well, there are a few soft spots but it's not half bad. Annoying that the paint peeled off the gun and particularly off the brass sheet on the right rear corner - I'd cleaned that with a fibreglass pencil. I guess I should be using a metal primer before the normal primer?

Anyway, not too much to put right now, so I should be able to get a bit done towards finishing this in time for the deadline.

Will

PS: What I learned today: Luftwaffe splinter camo is no preparation for the real thing!

[pigsty]

Looks sharp!  One day I'll be doing a Strv 122 in the same colours - which greens and not-black did you find most useful?

[Will Vale]

That should be an impressive beast!

I used Nato Black, Deep Green (dark green) and a mixture of about 3:2 Flat Green and Dark Yellow (light green) - all from Tamiya. I think maybe the mid green is a tad cool now that I can see them on the model and compare to photos, but I'm hoping a brown-ish filter will bring it all together.

Will

[Roland Pulfrew]

That's looking really good Will. Always loved the Swedish splinter schemes (even if they are a real pain for us modellers), well done.

[Iain Ogilvie]

Love the camouflage - looks brilliant!

 

Iain

[Will Vale]

Thanks for the kind words guys, I'm glad I did it although I would think twice (or more) before attempting the four colour splinter on something like a 1/72 Viggen!

Over lunch, I've just masked up the bit which should be black (it turns out the painting diagram was wrong, although the box art wasn't) ready for a touch-up:

I like negative masking, it's a lot less effort since you don't have to create any thin points. I used some Post-Its to avoid overspray and repainted the blob:

I've also sorted out the barrel (hopefully) plus a couple of other mistakes - the left antenna on the turret got painted dark green by accident, and I didn't like the horizontal line across the left rear sponson (?) - it should be more complex than it is, I think it was simplified on the diagram, but I've compromised by changing it into a vee.

I also masked up and painted the brass part which had lost paint, the new bit stuck nicely, but another patch of primer came up when I removed the tape, I think I'll have to take the paint off with lacquer thinner and re-do the entire panel. Not the end of the world, it's only an inch square and mostly black.

I experimented with using Klear as a metal primer (since it sticks so well to just about anything) and it seems to work fine - the barrel hasn't chipped (yet) and it felt really solid with just a couple of thin layers of Klear on it.

Will

[Will Vale]

Just when you thought there could be no more masking, the optics appeared:



After taking the above, I roughly masked the backs and sprayed the rear of the mirror silver, then removed the second mask and sprayed black over everything. I won't know until I get it all done and take the front masks off, but the hope is that the "mirror" will be visible through the clear part. Who knows? Might be cool 

I also built, painted and fitted the laser device on the top of the turret (target painter, or rangefinder?) - I painted the window clear red on the inside, drilled a hole for the optics (which shine up into a mirror) and made a little reflector from a spare suspension arm and tinfoil. Again, I won't know what it all looks like until the end, but it seemed more interesting than leaving it empty. If it looks messy I can always close the shutter...

Apart from messing about with fun things, I've fixed up the rear quarter - I removed most of the paint from the brass, painted it with Klear and restored the camo. The masking came off cleanly, and the whole vehicle has now had a coat of Klear to seal the paint and get ready for the handful of decals.

I like modelling in the summer, everything dries quickly and you can get more done. 

 

Will