Waltzing Matilda, Australian armour in the Pacific

[bull-nut]

 

 

Late to the field, but with a nice compact build that should be fairly quick. I'll be building an A12 Matilda II CS of the Australian 2/4 armoured. Based on this picture found with a quick web search;

 

Box shot

 

And sprue shot

 

Not shown here, because it's still on the way from Parabellum, is the Gasoline Matilda Frog conversion kit that I will be raiding the turret collar, tracks and brush guards etc from. I also think I have RB models Besa barrels in the stash, if so I will be using one in this build as well.

 

Work has commenced, more pics tomorrow.

[bull-nut]

Ok, so maybe not tomorrow. Life got in the way again, as it has a habit of doing. Having said that, I am still surprised at how quickly these Tamiya 1/48 armour kits go together.

 

A few hours work got me to this stage:

 

Then on Monday morning, a little parcel arrived from the team at Parabelum. First time ordering from them, but I'm sure it wont be the last.

 

Anyway, on went the first few bits of resin

 

and I was so pleased with how well it was coming along, that I kept going, and knocked up the exhaust silencers. I still need to drill the ends of the pipes, I'll get to it this week hopefully. This bit will be staying off until the base coats are on, since getting paint in behind it is going to be difficult.

 

That done, I cracked on, and with the hull griblies and turret built, it looks like this

 

If you look carefully, you can see that I drilled the towing eyes. I'll have to raid the wire stash for some power cables sometime this week

Next jobs, aside form the above, are to get some stowage onto the turret, and maybe some PSP on the hull sides. then it will be ready for primer and an initial coat of G3 on the inside surfaces.

"Soft" stowage will wait until the end, as normal.

 

Quick question, does anyone know if SCC7/"Jungle Green" is the correct colour for the hull?

 

 

Edited December 6, 2018 by bull-nut

[trickyrich]

welcome along and great to see an AFV in the build and a Matilda as well!

 

I haven't seen one of these built, it looks to be a nice model and I see you've added some AM resin as well, very nice!! 

 

Good luck with the build, it's great to see an AFV in the build and look forward to seeing her in the gallery.

[modelling minion]

Really interesting subject, and very fast and good work too.

Looks like you will be finished in plenty of time.

[bull-nut]

Thanks for the support all.

 

Further research has revealed to me that 2/4 Armoured used steel mesh over the engine deck, to fend off magnetic mine/pole charge attacks,rather than PSP. A close look at period photos (I'll link them tomorrow) suggests that they used approximately 2" steel mesh, which works out at slightly bigger than 1mm mesh in this scale, so I'll be off to the store tomorrow to see what I can find.

 

Also need to plan the  support frame. No idea what it looked like, so if anyone has any pics of it they could point me to, I'd appreciate it enormously.

[Yorkshire man]

This is 1/76 but may help :-

 

 

or this (bottom left)

http://www.firestormmodels.com/store/product.php?productid=13884

 

 

Edited December 26, 2018 by Yorkshire man
additional info