French WW1 Pair - FT & CA

[Kingsman]

While I had the airbrush out for the Bedford I thought I might as well catch up with the other WIP still in primer.

 

The FT will be in the scheme pictured above.  The CA in a more complicated multi-colour scheme.  Both will be brush painted.  That colour is the French Milky Coffee from the AK Interactive French WW1 set.  It doesn't really show in the photo but I tried to let some of the brown primer show through for a bit of tonal variation.

 

[J.P.]

Dis gunna be good!!!

[Kingsman]

You haven't seen my brush painting skills......................... Or lack of same!

 

The colour hasn't come out too well in the photo above, even under really white 6400k bulbs.  It is a real sandy colour, despite looking grey.  Her's another pic in daylight against a different base colour (sorry about the pink!).  Looks sandier here.  These will need a satin coat after the camo to represent the finish of the time, which will change how the colour looks.

 

[Kingsman]

Some paint on the FT17.  I tried as best I could to copy the scheme on the restored Weald Foundation tank I pictured earlier, relying on the evident comprehensiveness of their research and paint layer analysis (from speaking with them for a while at Bovington Tankfest).  I am intrigued that the front is mostly sand and the back is mostly brown

 

As you can see from the spotty underside I tried several red-brown colours before settling on Revell's Reddish Brown 37, brush-applied.  I do quite like Revell acrylics, but this one kept skinning over and thickening in the pot so I had to keep stirring and thinning.  Mind you, I had the pot open for a couple of hours or more doing this.  I wondered about the black swirly effect, thinking first of having black paint to hand and swirling it in with the brown.  In the end I settled for using Vallejo Black Wash over the brown.  Sort of works, and it's what the French apparently did.

 

For the black outlining I thought of black acrylic ink and a lining brush (long bristles), but in the end I resorted to black Faber-Castell Pitt pens in varying widths.  Much easier to use.  The ink is supposed to be light-fast.  I guess we'll see .........  Quick blast of Mr Color rattle can matt varnish: I tried satin on the underside but it didn't look right.

 

The Weald tracks were painted grey, which troubled me despite their assurances of correctness.  Period photos don't seem to show grey tracks.  But then I discovered that the similar tracks on Saumur's restored Schneider CA are grey too, and I don't imagine they would have goofed that after all their effort.  So, grey it will be.  Certainly unconventional.

 

  

 

  

[Redcoat2966]

Nice camo there DA......pretty good idea of the pen’s....would never have thought to do that, clever. Great way to get a standard thickness 

 

top notch👍

 

Simon

[Kingsman]

Yes, I bought a bunch of fibre-tip artists' pens in varying widths and colours (black, greys, sepia etc) in my local Hobbycraft because I thought they might be useful for lining, hand lettering, windscreen rubbers etc.  Widths vary by brand, but a range from 0.1 to 1.0mm is typical.  Look for lightfastness and permanence.

 

Certainly came in useful here, and I imagine I'll use them on the Schneider too.  With the Faber-Castells (others may differ) you can colour in small areas without getting nib marks.

 

I'm a bit worried about using an enamel wash over them, despite a blast of varnish, so I'll be testing on the underside again.  I know that most "permanent" pens can be cleaned off with alcohols.

[Kris B]

Looks very nice.

[Kingsman]

So, what to do now with my little French friend?? 

 

Finished apart from dusting or mudding, I think.  But, mud or dust??  I'm not the world's greatest fan of model mud, which has the capacity to turn into a complete disaster - especially at my hands!  I'm thinking dusty some time in the Last 100 Days after the Spring Offensive and Amiens, when warfare became more mobile again.  Maybe on a cobbled street base.  Thoughts, anyone?

 

 

[Kingsman]

Rightly or badly I went with mud.  I'm calling the FT finished, moved it over to the Ready For Inspection forum.

 

Quick taster.

 

[Kingsman]

Having finished the FT, time to concentrate on the CA Char d'Assaut.  Got the basic colours on.  There is virtually no detail painting on the basic vehicle.  Lots of stowage to paint, though.  Tricky.  Especially with my skills: lacking.

 

Schemes and colours varied wildly.  This one is based on a black & white photo and what I believe is another modeller's rendition of it.  I used that vehicle's serial and added a simple hand-painted tactical number.  Lettering is Archer dry transfer, applied onto clear decal sheet for the serial.  Their British numbers sheet 35085 has exactly the right font for French WW1 serials.  As you can see, the cheat artists' pens had an extensive outing for the black patterns.

 

As for colours, the base is the same French Milky Coffee as the FT - AK4051.  Likewise the red-brown, Revell 36137.  The Weald Foundation's FT restorations convinced me of the accuracy of these.  I didn't like either of the AK French Greens in their WW1 set: one was too blue and the other too grassy.  Their French Artillery Grey was also distinctly blue.  After popping some lids I settled on Revell 36362 Greyish Green and Gunship Grey from Homa.  I found the AK colours far too thin to brush anyway.

 

The model I used as a muse had been sprayed in soft-edge camo.  A surprising number of models of French and German WW1 tanks are painted in soft-edged schemes.  Which is completely and utterly wrong.  Spray painting of manufactured goods did not exist during WW1, although cold-water hand-pumped spraying of whitewash on structures had been used in the US since the 1880's.  More like the device you use today in your garden for painting your fence or spraying garden chemicals.  Spray painting was not used in manufacturing until the mid-1920s following the introduction of nitrocellulose lacquer paint in the automotive industry, led by Ford of course.  So every piece of WW1 military equipment would have been hand-painted - with very heavy paints based largely on linseed oil and lead with relatively coarse earth pigments.  They had to be used quickly after mixing and sometimes took days or even weeks to fully cure.  Oven baking had also not been invented.

 

[Redcoat2966]

Tell you what.......an effective camo’......tough to make the shape out......nice clean job DA, really effective paint jobs.......watching these come along is tempting to buy a WW1 AFV.....but I can’t, I have to finish what I have in stock......love them both, really nice subjects and finish 👍

 

Simon

[Kingsman]

Yes, the French had the edge in camo designs after we Brits dropped the Solomon schemes on MkIs.  Many of their earlier ones were very fussy and intricate, and essentially useless at any distance as the colours just merged into a dark blob.  The larger bolder areas of colour like this were much more effective and essentially set the trend for the future.  Take away the sand colour and you've pretty much got NATO-flage.  Take away the grey and you've got WW2 German.  Reduce the sand and you've got MERDC. 

 

I know that the black hatching was used to disguise the location of vision slits, but it does also seem to have been widely used on areas well away from the slits.  Some had even more hatching than this.

 

Next on the painting conveyor is a Beute MkIV Female.  Multi-colour controversy - or at least uncertainty - again.

[Redcoat2966]

I have to say DA.....always learn something from your reply’s 🤓👌👍

 

regards

 

Simon

[Kingsman]

No point keeping what you discover to yourself.  Knowledge isn't power here.  Why you do something is in many ways more important that what you do.  We're all here to share what we know and discover something new.  At least, we should be.........  Yes, OK: we all like to show off sometimes!

 

I have to say, though, that WW1 colours are even more controversial than WW2 German!  No colour photos, no colour chips, no codified colour standards, very few known original paint samples.  Which is why the Weald Foundation's research on their FT's paint is important.  I don't know if Saumur took the same approach on their CA1.  Their choice of colours is probably equally unexpected.

 

If you are considering WW1 you might want to join the Landships forum.  http://landships.activeboard.com/

[Bullbasket]

Lovely cammo job on the CA. If I were you, I'd just go with dusty on this as I think that you've covered up a nice cammo scheme on the FT with all that mud. Just my two centimes worth.

 

John.

[Redcoat2966]

5 hours ago, Das Abteilung said:

No point keeping what you discover to yourself.  Knowledge isn't power here.  Why you do something is in many ways more important that what you do.  We're all here to share what we know and discover something new.  At least, we should be.........  Yes, OK: we all like to show off sometimes!

 

I have to say, though, that WW1 colours are even more controversial than WW2 German!  No colour photos, no colour chips, no codified colour standards, very few known original paint samples.  Which is why the Weald Foundation's research on their FT's paint is important.  I don't know if Saumur took the same approach on their CA1.  Their choice of colours is probably equally unexpected.

 

If you are considering WW1 you might want to join the Landships forum.  http://landships.activeboard.com/

Thanks DA. I'll take a look at that board.......and I agree with John, some nice dusting on the CA...........keep it simple.

 

Simon.

[Kingsman]

The primer is a bit messed up around the right sprocket and the end of the suspension.  Went on too heavily: too late by the time I noticed.  So I might need some dried mud around here to cover up the undulating effect.  Dust here might just accentuate it.  Photos often show them lightly weathered.  Because the nose bogged-in so easily leaving them beached I don't imagine they spent as much time mud-plugging as their British counterparts.

 

I'm making a working assumption that the bearings on the CA leaked oil in the same way as the FT.  But as the CA running gear was closely based on a US Holt commercial design (proved inadequate on the original Little Willie and one of the CA's, St Chamond's and A7V's main failings), that may not be a sound assumption.  I have absolutely no idea what the state of the art in oil seals was at the time, but Renault was no engineering slouch and if he didn't have any perhaps no-one else did either.  But I recall US TV restoration programmes about old cars where leather oil seals were used.

[Kingsman]

Stowage painting done,  but needs shading and highlighting.  Tedious.  Remind me that I hate detail painting in general and stowage blocks in particular ...........  Don't have the dexterity, eyesight or patience.  The boundaries between some of the objects weren't especially well defined, particularly in the deeper recesses.  I used several different colours for the various bundles for variety.  The personal equipment colours for the marching packs are well known.  The white object appears to be cups inside a plate or dish, so I thought white enamelware.  I might try adding blue rims.  And wine stains.........  I managed to track down my Archer waterslide wine bottle label decals, which I couldn't find for the FT.  There are the obligatory 2 wine bottles cast on the stowage. 

 

The wood planks are stained with brown washes.  Wooden planks were sometimes laid across the top of the trench tail: I might do that, but it would hide the fuel cans stowed on the tail.  The U-shaped object is a towing shackle of sorts that fits the hook at the base of the nose wire-cutter.

 

Now for washing and weathering etc.  And a couple more touch-ups I've just spotted.  Perhaps another blast of flat varnish on the stowage too. 

 

I'm presuming that the front fuel tanks weren't used after the rear tanks were added, although the front filler caps were still there.  Indeed, I'm not certain they were even still installed.  One of the reasons the CA became known as a mobile crematorium was because of the front fuel tanks: internal, next to the hot engine and easily ruptured.  Let's not dwell on running the exhaust pipe up the outside of one of the rear tanks..........!  So I assume no-one would have wanted to use the front tanks - assuming they were installed - on the later vehicles fitted with the rear tanks.  So no front fuel spill stains.

 

[Kingsman]

I think I'm calling the CA1 "done" and moving it over to "Ready For Inspection".

 

It's had a brown wash streaked off with clean thinners, some oil and grease splatters, a bit of drybrushing and a dusting with dust pigment.  Some of the stowage was washed over with Warhammer shading washes before a bit of drybrushing with oils.  I might have to try another flat coat as I haven't managed to eradicate the sheen on some of the stowage.

 

[RHWinter]

LIKE!!

[RHWinter]

LIKE!!

[Redcoat2966]

Try the W&N Galleria matte varnish DA. For me the best to date I’ve used, and should take care of that sheen😉, easy to use when thinned with iso.

 

Cracking AFV all round as well mate, nice job on both.....👌

 

Simon