Gorby's Leap into the Dark Unknown - Scratch-Building Extravaganza (no refunds) – NOW WITH ADDED SLEEPERSERVICE!

[Gorby]

12 hours ago, Pete in Lincs said:

And that's what built the Empire! 

There should be more of it nowadays, it's looking decidedly shabby around the ages lately.

Don't forget the part played by the very British qualities of xenophobia and excessive violence.

Oh yes, and the largest navy in the world helped a little. 

[Gorby]

I've done a huge amount in the last week and been much too busy to keep you lot abreast of my progress, so I'll be trying to be playing catch-up.

 

 

The bracket over the main gun was an absolute pain in the rear end. I did have a “How the hell am I going to do that?” moment, but I gave it some thought in the evening and when I woke up at 5:30ish in the morning, it was nagging at me. I did consider making some sort of wooden former, but as that sounded a bit too much hassle, I had a go at doing like this – cutting the top shape first then gluing the front piece to it using pins. Lots of pins:

The blackish thing the pins are stuck into is a block of very dense rubber.

 

After a bit of cleaning up (quite a lot of cleaning up) it looked okay, perfectly acceptable in fact and as I only need one that means that I can move onto……... why did I feel the need to do another one?

Perhaps this build is more about the journey rather than the destination?

Wow, that's like pretty heavy, guru like stuff man. Maybe scratch-building is giving me a greater understanding of the workings of the universe and the roll I play in it; maybe it's given me the motivation to push the boundaries of what I can achieve; maybe it's giving me the wisdom to search deeper inside my own soul; maybe it's the excessive Tamiya extra thin fumes I've been inhaling?  

Yeh, probably the last one.

 

Trying the wooden former method turned out to be a lot easier. It only required two pins to hold the front piece in place, then I glued the top shape on:

 

 

The front one is the one done with the second method and personally I think it looks much better than the other. Blown up to this size the first one doesn't look acceptable at all.

 

As I have a mental age of 12 (on a good day) I thought it would be cooooool to see if I could make the front bangy bit to move. Turned out to be dead easy using a bit hacked from a drop-tank.

 

 

Thanks for the comments and 'likes' or even if you've just wafted by like a fart on the breeze without feeling the need to leaving any trace.

 

 

Tune in next time….. I'm even boring me now. 

[Bullbasket]

Nice job with the pins Mark, but please, don't try that with a doll!!

 

John.

[Gorby]

44 minutes ago, Bullbasket said:

please, don't try that with a doll!!

I wouldn't do anything as unpleasant as that John (but that's only because I don't know what some of my least favourite BM members look like). 

[Gorby]

Why is there a couple of cheese graters on the roof? I could understand it if it was a French tank, but I thought the Germans were more into sausages.

 

I've not been looking forward to making these, not just because of the excessive amount of very accurate cutting required without responsible adult supervision, but also because of all the dreary measuring and marking out. Then a short cut occurred to me – what if I could print the shape to enable me to skip the marking out bit? Better still, buy a 3D printer and print the whole bloody tank. Oh, I forgot, I'm too tight. I was sort of expecting the printer to tell me to go and and take a running jump by producing a London underground map in the style of Jackson Pollock, but after very lightly sanding (for the ink to get a grip) a sheet of 0.25 styrene, it printed quite well:

 

After using some 400 grit to sharpen a scalpel (I can't understand why so many perfectly good blades get thrown away – are you lot made of money (I definitely am turning into my dad (Note to self: stop nesting brackets))) I did some careful cutting out. I didn't want to have to do any more than two, so I did my best impression of something competent and concentrated on what I was doing for a change - with my tongue sticking out the side of mouth and everything.

 

Then it needed a frame to both give it the correct thickness and give it some stiffness.

 

This may have been a mistake. Okay, this almost certainly is a mistake. For some reason I got it into my head that there was a metal grill like thing inside the cheese grater, so I added one.

 

I don't know how I got that idea. Judging from the Meng kit's instructions, there is a second grater inside, but I can't find any reference to a grill now. Too late to take them out now, but at least they will have the effect of hiding the fact that it looks like the bailiffs have cleared the place out.

 

Then a riveted base was added

 

before it was finally fitted to the lid.

 

This got me to this point.

 

There should be a few more rivets on and around the frame of the grater, but you'll just have to imagine them. If this omission offends you, feel free to insert these rivets in whatever orifice is the least comfortable:

 

[Getting Old]

Excellent work Sir and a brilliant idea about using a printer, I'll have to borrow that idea 

[Bonhoff]

Gorby,

The second grille on the roof beneath the ones that you've scratchbuilt were cut out of the actual armour plate as per the photo of my Meng build below - Ignore the added red line...

 

 

Quite why the Germans thought that a roof that was technically open to the elements, shrapnel and gas was a good idea is something that I haven't lost sleep over.

 

You should be able to get away with just painting the roof beneath your beauteous grilles a suitably shadowy shade.

 

IanJ

[Pete in Lincs]

Well, This is coming along very nicely indeed. Hooked on scratchbuilding already eh? It must be catching.

Nice idea with the pins and stupid dense rubber and a great result. Likewise the cheese graters, I'll take four in various sizes.

I don't think that using a printer is cheating at all. 

Good point by @Bonhoff about the grilles being on the roof. What's the German for Doh!?

 

[Gorby]

Update time.

Now, onto the top bit, the thing that looks like a heavy duty, steampunk bird-watch hut.

 

One of the reasons I'm building this quickly is because I want to get it out of my head. It getting quite obsessive to the point that I lie awake at 3 o'clock working out how to do the next step. Admittedly that's more likely to be 3pm but it's haunting my dreams.

This update is mainly going pictures rather than text – I know some of you struggle. 

 

I had to 'rivet' these strips while they were still on the styrene sheet and then cut out. Otherwise it deforms to strip to the point that it's unusable.

 

 

 

 

The top (the top lid, not the whole top hut) took me almost and entire day to do. I'd given a lot of thought the previous evening and knew exactly how to go about it, but the twenty bits where so awkward

 

This got me to this point:

 

To a casual observer (that's you that is) it looks almost done, but there's still quite a lot of details to be added. I'm about 98% through the riveting! Incidentally, on most of this model the rivets are spaced every two millimetres, which is about thirteen to the inch to those who are struggling to keep up with the passing centuries.

 

In an earlier post I mentioned a 3D printer and it occurred to me that in a few years time modellers probably won't be doing stuff like this any more. It's a dying art. 

 

At one point Ella walked into my room, dumped her favourite toy on my lap as if to say “There, that's your pet now, I'm off”. Maybe I need to pay her a bit more attention.

[Getting Old]

brilliant work 

[Pete in Lincs]

 I can't stop watching. It's just riveting. (Ahem)

[Bullbasket]

Great work Mark. I love the 1:1 scale retriever. 

 

John.

[Gorby]

I'd rather be building than writing, but how will we contain the rioting and civil unrest that would follow if this thread were to be abandoned? I'm forced to continue to preserve the peace. How self-centred of you.

 

The lids were glued on using elastic bands. I won't show a photo as you probably know what elastic bands look like. I apologise if elastic is the thing that floats your boat and this was the point in the build you've been looking forward to, but life isn't fair at times.

 

Although it was looking nearly done, there is a vast amount of external details, like very visible hinges (50 off), panels, handles, step, hooks, bolt heads (about 200)…… with all that and a couple of truck loads of rivets, in braille it would probably be classed as a smutty novel.

This is an example of the hinges and bolts:

 

I knew how I was going to do the exhaust pipes, although I need to order some suitable Albion Alloys tube first – I estimated 1.7mm should do the trick. Didn't work, the tube walls are too thin and the tube split or buckled at even the slightest bend, even with wire or plastic rod inside to help support it.

 

I ended up having to use plastic rod, bent with boiling water.

 

Now it's the unbounded joy of cutting and attaching about 100 bolt heads. My Bolt Head Cutter Thingy wasn't as effective as I would have liked – obviously if there had been enough mugs who wanted to buy it, I'd still be saying it was perfect - it's just how you're using it you fool. Let me introduce you to Bolt Head Cutter Thingy Mk. II:

 

That's a bolt head on the blade.

I decided that Mk. I was more complicated than it needed to be and used the lessons learned to make Mk. II as simple as possible. In fact it's better at getting the bolt-heads to a uniform thickness and it's available to you for the special price of £49.99 plus £19.99 for the exclusive organic, vegan, jiffy-bag packaging (excluding postage). Available for limited time only (limited to my lifetime) and it will only be produced in limited numbers (limited to the number a Chinese sweat shop can churn out working 24 hours a day). Much better than the Mk. I, would I lie to you?

 

Inventing amazing bolt head cutters not only results in better bolt heads, they also put off having to cut and fit bolt heads. Part way though cutting these things, it occurred to me I was manufacturing plastic microbeads and apparently I could just have harvested them direct from the sea where they roam free in herds of a trillion strong - apparently. Isn't nature wonderful? best hurry before those selfish shellfish eat them all.

That should put off any actual work until I figure out how to do that.

 

I found that bolt head attaching is even less riveting than riveting.

 

The original plan I was working to showed the towing hook covers as simple triangular boxes, although by this point I knew they weren't. The real shape is a sort of triangular wedge that flattens out at the top. Not only that, half the hook sticks out the bottom. To cut a not very long story even sorter, this is my solution (as always, I do more than I need and then used the best (Read: When I can be bothered, I do more……..)):

In keeping with the obscure currency photos, here shown with a Swiss 20 Rappen coin – hope that helps.

This is before rounding off the 'hook' bit, top left is a completed one. 

 

It seems to be traditional to round off these posts off by thanking the readers. Let's get this straight, I'm the one making the effort here!

 

The nerve!

[hendie]

27 minutes ago, Gorby said:

How self-centred of you.

 

you're welcome.

 

 

27 minutes ago, Gorby said:

The lids were glued on using elastic bands.

 

Personally, I would have used glue.  Never tried elastic bands before

 

 

28 minutes ago, Gorby said:

Didn't work, the tube walls are too thin and the tube split or buckled at even the slightest bend, even with wire or plastic rod inside to help support it.

 

did you try annealing the tubes first?

 

 

29 minutes ago, Gorby said:

having to use plastic rod, bent with boiling water.

 

must... resist.... must... resist

 

 

33 minutes ago, Gorby said:

and used the lessons learned to make Mk. II as simple as possible.

 

there's an even easier method using two pieces of plastic and one hole but I won't go into details or it will just fill you with despair and despondency.

I'll wait until you've done all the bolt heads, washers, hinges and other assorted greeblies.  And then tell you.

 

 

 

coming along nicely though.

 

 

[Getting Old]

Your readers thank you for your efforts and for sharing with us  fine work Sir  (We called them 20 Centime coins, being from the south west 🇨🇭)

[Gorby]

10 minutes ago, hendie said:

did you try annealing the tubes first?

I did consider that, but I was having a 'can't be bothered day' at the time.

 

19 minutes ago, hendie said:

there's an even easier method using two pieces of plastic and one hole but I won't go into details or it will just fill you with despair and despondency.

It is odd that such a simple brain as mine can't produce simple designs.

 

 

13 minutes ago, Getting Old said:

We called them 20 Centime coins, being from the south west

I went with the more mysterious sounding German name. How many languages does one country need?

 

Incidentally, I would have liked to have used emojiwhatsits in this and previous my post, but they are causing BM to freeze - very annoying. 

[Bullbasket]

Very entertaining work Mark, and the modelling's not bad either.

 

John.

[Gorby]

Right, where were we? Although this is starting to feel like community service, I'm back with another update.

 

Just when you think you've seen the last of the 'how the hell am I going to do that' moments, another one appears – the tow cables. Not so much the cables themselves because that was obvious. The Meng kit has the towing cables part as a piece of string, A quick Googlise showed that originally they felt that string probably wasn't up to the job and substituted stainless steel cable – overkill or what! I decided that it would be better to represent metal with metal (I'm cleaver like that) so a quick rummage in my drawers  produced some 0.1mm copper wire. As a pure guess, I cut a four foot length and doubled it over four times and used a cocktail stick to twist it quite a lot (a small hook would have been better). Each four foot length produced 5 inches usable cable (even I think it's odd that I use metric for small measurements and imperial for pretty much anything an inch and over – I must be measuridextrous). I thought it looked a bit thin, but worked it out to be 18mm diameter scaled up, so probably a bit on the weedy side, but good enough.

It was the clamps at each end that were the bit that concerned me. This is what they are supposed to look like:

 

Personally I think the Meng cable is too thick. That would be thicker than the arm of the poor sod who's got to move it.

 

While lying in bed waiting for Mrs Gorby to complete whatever the hell takes her so long in the bathroom, I came up with four possible ways of making them. By the morning I'd thought of a fifth and that is the one I ended up doing. It turned out like this:

 

As usual they look awful blown up to this size – just stand at the other side of the room for a better view, there's a good chap.

 

It was very fiddly, but I'm reasonably pleased with the result. It involved drilling a 1mm hole through the centre of a 2mm rod (I have got 2mm tube, but the hole would have been too big and the walls too thin) cutting down the centre and then cutting a 1mm length off – so that I ended up with two halves of a tiny polo mint (repeat eleven more times).

 

The idea was to then simply glue a 0.5mm thick piece in the middle, but it was anything but simple – the swearing would have made Brian Blessed blush. I would love to explain in detail the particular order of obscenities that seemed to result in success, but for some reason that seems to be frowned upon – it's part of the build process damn it!

 

I was quite pleased with the result…...until I found a photo showing that the cable should really loop around twice:

 

But we can just keep this information between ourselves. No one else needs to know. 

 

But that was it. That's brought me to the end of the buildy bit! 

 

It occurred to me that I should give you some idea of scale by showing Mr. Juan Forty-eighth conducting his invisible orchestra (I wish he wouldn't show me up when he's half-cut). Because of the size of the doors, when I first saw it, I assumed this thing was enormous, but it looks like they had to almost bend double to get through the doors/hatches.

There are some bits that won't be attached until after the painting.

 

I realise that at the end of the last update I was very, very rude. I can't help it, it's a natural gift which I obviously excel at. If anyone was offended, you might need to find your own way out of the thread as I'll be over here, trying to give a monkey's…..

 

Anyway, I don't know if I will do another update before the grand reveal. With me, the painting stage is more luck than judgement and for me, there seems to be very little luck available in this department. I'll see what I feel like.

 

Incidentally, begging is less likely to work than cash. Just saying.

[Getting Old]

Very nice indeed  ( and four languages plus English should be considered a minimum for all countries, how else can you wind up the foreigners ) 

[hendie]

4 hours ago, Gorby said:

But that was it. That's brought me to the end of the buildy bit! 

 

well that's no good - where's our entertainment going to come from now?

[SleeperService]

I have been truly shamed by your rapid build and cunning methods. That looks superb. BTW there's a suitable GB in the offing if you fancy doing another

 @hendie I knew I'd seen (and copied) the bolt head manufactuary technique somewhere. I Thank You for enlightenment.

 

@Gorby This may help explain the bathroom time thing. The Ex-Girlie had a book stashed and used to lather grease over her face and sit on the loo seat reading or catching up on FB or sticking pins in my effigy. Once this had soaked in she felt able to scurry out and plant her frozen feet on my legs. I think I loved her but it could also have been fear of what she'd do if I objected....

[Gorby]

1 hour ago, SleeperService said:

The Ex-Girlie had a book stashed and used to lather grease over her face and sit on the loo seat reading or catching up on FB or sticking pins in my effigy.

The bathroom is about the only time she's not on Facetube.

 

1 hour ago, SleeperService said:

BTW there's a suitable GB in the offing if you fancy doing another

No group-builds for me for a while, in fact no builds for a while, I'll be 'doss-hole' (read: Gorby sanctuary) rejuvenating.

[hendie]

7 hours ago, SleeperService said:

 

 @hendie I knew I'd seen (and copied) the bolt head manufactuary technique somewhere. I Thank You for enlightenment.

 

 

I was thinking of a very simple technique....

1. Figure out what height the bolt heads need to be

2. Find a piece of styrene sheet the same thickness  (or glue several together to achieve the correct "height"

3. Drill a hole slightly larger than the bolt head diameter through aforementioned sheet(s)

4. Stick that onto another sheet.

You now have a little fixture with a hole in it slightly larger than your bolt head diameter, and set at the correct depth (height)

Poke your rod (now now gents) into the hole, then use a sharp blade or razor saw across the face of the fixture to slice off the rod, and now what's left in the hole is a bolt head

wash, rinse, and repeat

 

 

[Gorby]

1 hour ago, hendie said:

I was thinking of a very simple technique....

 

Of course you've just ruined my sales drive for Bolt Head Cutter Mk II. How will I get that luxury yacht now? 

[Gorby]

Back for more punishment. That probably applies to both of us.

 

This will be the last instalment of the tanky bit, cause it's done! 

 

Why did they bother making the effort to camouflage these things? It not as if, paint them green and they disappear. They must have been as loud as Concord with a megaphone and as blatant as a brass band in a graveyard. If they just wanted to hide them when parked, it would have been more effective to paint them to resemble a block of flats or a small town or Luxembourg.

 

Typically, I ended up choosing the most complicated scheme that I could find (how do I hate myself, let me count the ways) a tank called 'Faust'. Admittedly, it's not at all like me to base my model on something historically accurate, but I managed to redeem myself by making my depiction so loose it was likely to hang around on street corners looking for punters. In my defence, I found many colour images of Faust, but no two were the same, so who's to know mine isn't the most accurate of all of them. Prove it isn't!

 

I strained the think muscle and decided to easiest way to do it (bearing in mind that I'm not good as spraying accurate narrow lines (or using the think muscle)) was spray it black and then do the Blu-Tak wormy thing – which took a couple of hours because apparently I'm the most attractive thing Blu-Tak has ever encountered. It was certainly more attracted to my fingers than anything I attempted to stick it to.

 

 

The colours are a complete guess. None of the images I found agreed, my monitor isn't colour calibrated, and to top it off, I'm not that fussed. The nicest Tamiya colours is was then. I'd be interested to see anyone dispute it using black and white photos - I think you'll be needing the time-machine and a tin hat. The black border was probably too wide, but I hope no one's thinking of using that accuracy issue again.

 

Obviously I had to use home-made stencils for the markings (how short-sighted of the decals companies not producing decals for non existent kits) but one of the advantages of this scheme is that it has simple crosses rather than those awkward fancy 1970's flared-trouser crosses. They're a real pain to cut stencils for. The most difficult stencil to cut was the scull and cross bones which ended up with four separate parts. Decals don't like me and the feeling is entirely mutual, so I'd much rather cut stencils.

 

I've never weathered a tank before, which may or may not be something to do with me never building a tank before. Move over Sherlock, you've got competition.

I watched a Facetube video about using rust wash and this bloke was pretty much individually treating each rivet (I'm not going to post a link, I don't want to spread that particular brand of madness). That's not going to happen on my watch – I've got a busy schedule, those naps aren't going to take themselves you know. I do often get very bored watching those things, the production standards on some of them should be rewarded with a damn good flogging. I pretty much ignored all the advice and just had a play (you can tell can't you?).

 

It was finally time to stick the last bits on, sit back and think about how you could have done almost every stage better. I'm a perfectionist. That doesn't mean that I make things that are perfect, it means that's I'm pee'd off when I don't. It won't be appearing in the completed section for a while as I'm currently trying to cobble together some sort of basic base.

 

Juan Forty-Eighth looks like he's been sniffing the Tamiya again. Incidentally, he used to be called Eric Forty-ninth, but when he was kid, he didn't have any friends his own size.

 

I'll now hand the thread over to Sleeperservice – I hope you'll take good care of it, give it a bath when it starts getting a bit whiffy and I'd appreciate it if you didn't let any cats in as they make me sneeze.

 

Counselling lines are now open.

 

The completed build can be found here.