Renault FT-75 BS

[Andy Moore]

 

 

This is a bit of an impromptu build, after I saw the kit for a very cheap price on ebay, ordered it on a whim, and started it the day it arrived. I wasn't originally planning on doing a wip, but I've been taking a few photos along the way, so I thought I may as well post them. I'm already up to the early weathering stages, after starting the build a few days ago, so it does go together pretty fast.

 

The kit is Flyhawk's latest version of their tiny FT, this time with the 75mm gun and the fixed casemate in place of the original turret. As you can see from the box, this release, like the previous versions, is a '1+1 Double Ones' or, in plain English, you get two. For 12 quid including postage from China, I call that pretty good value.

 

I'll post some sprue shots for anyone that's interested in the contents, then get onto the initial build.

 

There's one main sprue that holds the running gear and hull details. Quite a few of the parts here are for the earlier versions of the FT, and aren't required for this build, so you do end up with quite a few spares. Being a double pack, you, of course, get two of these sprues.

 

 

You get two smaller sprues, one of which is specific to the 75 BS. That one holds the new parts for the 75mm gun and casemate. The smaller sprue holds the early style wooden idlers. Again, two of each are included.

 

 

The remaining parts are individual mouldings. Two hulls, two tails, two casemates, and two sets of tracks.

 

 

Rounding out the contents are the instructions, which are simply a folded A4 sheet (although perfectly adequate for what is a very simple build), the decals, and two identical photo etch frets.

 

 

And, so you can get an idea of just how tiny the model is, here's the hull next to a regular, industry standard, match (which I had to spend about an hour searching the house for)

 

 

Okay, on to the build. The first step is to add all the additional panels to the main hull. The main hatches come with moulded tabs for the handles (not that big a deal in this scale), but you do have the option of slicing them off and replacing them with photo etched alternatives. The PE ones looked too 2D to me, plus they would be likely to snap off at a moments notice, so I drilled the hatches and used some 0.4mm copper wire instead.

 

 

You do need to make one slight modification to the hull for this version, to allow the casemate to be fitted. The bottom of the turret ring is moulded as part of the hull, and the edges of that need to be trimmed away.

 

 

It's not as difficult as it first seems, and the area that needs trimming is shown in the instructions. The plastic's quite soft, so you need to be careful not to accidentally remove too much, but otherwise it's fairly straight forward.

 

 

It doesn't matter too much about any rough edges, since the casemate drops down over the trimmed area and hides any overzealous hacking.

 

 

The casemate itself needs a few extra parts added, including a full set of separate hatches, meaning you could add a figure if you wanted (and if you could find a suitable one). I thought the tiny PE grills would be a nightmare to add, but they dropped into place perfectly with no fuss whatsoever. They do make a really nice detail on the finished  build too.

 

 

The 75mm gun is a very simple three-part construction, but looks great when build as well as remaining poseable

 

 

I'll leave part one of the build there. As I mentioned above, I'm up to the early weathering stages now, but I'll post the updates in increments, rather than stick everything in one huge post.

 

More later.

 

Andy

 

 

 

 

[Andrés S.]

It is a really small model, but very well molded !!!

It will be interesting to see you work the weathering.

 

Regards.

[Andy Moore]

Thanks Andrés,

Yes, it's a tiny thing. It's got some great detailing though.

 

 

Moving on to the tracks now. These come as inner and outer frames, with the inner frame  having the inside faces of the track links moulded around the edge. There's a bit of photo etch for the transmission which gets sandwiched between the frame halves along with the drive sprocket and idler, then the whole assembly slides into the single-piece tracks run.

 

 

The kit gives you the option of the early or later style idlers. I used the later style, which seemed more appropriate for the 75 BS. The PE transmission needs to be folded together so you can get detail on both sides, although it's virtually invisible on the finished model.

 

 

The two finished track units, complete with tiny PE maker's plates. These aren't mentioned in the instructions, but they're included on the PE fret, and they really add an extra level of detail to the build.

 

 

You get an option of plastic or photo etch for the tool box brackets on the hull side. I went with the plastic parts because I felt, despite them being a little chunky, they looked more realistic than the rather flat PE alternatives. There are also two slots on the hull where the plastic brackets attach which the PE versions wouldn't cover, and would therefore require a lot of fiddly filling and sanding.

 

 

The tail skid would perhaps have been better in photo etch, but the plastic part isn't too bad, and is certainly less fiddly than dealing with PE. FT's often had a tarp folded over the tail, so I've added one here from lead foil.

 

 

And that's pretty much all there is to the assembly. I've pieced it all together here, but the tracks, casemate, and tail are only loose fitted at this stage. They'll be removed to make painting a little easier.

 

 

And the one tool without which I'd never be able to make this thing...

 

 

The painting stages will be up next.

 

Andy

[M_Sinclair]

Oh! Ha! I just assumed these glasses were for scale. I didn't realize they are also for seeing things up close! This kit is amazing!

 

-matt

[Andy Moore]

2 hours ago, M_Sinclair said:

I just assumed these glasses were for scale. I didn't realize they are also for seeing things up close!

Yes, I hear these newfangled seeing glasses are all the rage these day 🧐 😀

Actually, I'd love to say I only use these, but I generally use headband magnifiers as well for the close up stuff

 

Okay, straight on to the painting. I started off with a greeny-brown base coat, mixed from Mr Color lacquers. No particular rime or reason behind the colour, apart from the fact that the final colours will be sand and green, so this seemed like a reasonable base tone.

 

 

The paint guide shows the common FT camo scheme of sand, green, and brown, but the box top shows a different sand and green scheme. Possibly one or other is more accurate - possibly neither, but I like the look of the box top camo, so that's the one I'm doing.

I laid down the sand first, using Aqueous Radome. I didn't bother to attempt any kind of shading here - it's just a fairly solid coat over the upper hull and lower turret.

 

 

As I said above, there was no attempt at shading with the base coats, as the model's just too small for that. All the panel shading is being done as a post effect using acrylics thinned with glaze medium, and some Citadel washes (used more as glazes).

 

 

I'm using these to help differentiate the panels and highlight the rivets, and also to warm up and deepen the sand colour.

 

 

My plan is to do all the shading, toning, and weathering with acrylics, rather than oils and enamels, something the glaze medium really helps with.

 

 

The masking and the green camo will be up next.

 

More later

 

Andy

 

 

 

 

[ScanmanDan]

Always great to see one of your WIP's.  Neat subject and wonderful to see that you will take on anything that catches your fancy.  It looks like this kid have very good surface details for being so very small in scale and subject.  I'm looking forewords to seeing what you make of this fine kit.

[Foxbat]

Lovely little kit and great paint work. I do mine the same way but your finish is a lot more nuanced and subtle than I'm managing so I'll tag along and see what I can learn.

 

Andy

[Nikolay Polyakov]

This little kit looks very exciting! Outstanding painting job, Andy!  

[Andy Moore]

Thanks everyone,

 

So, on to the green camo. The previous sand paint was masked off with silly putty, which was flattened against the surface to get a hard edged demarcation.

 

 

For the green, I used a mix of Mr Color Grass Green and Russian Green. I followed that up with some subtle highlighting with straight Russian Green.

 

 

There are a few rough areas where I'd sprayed at an angle to the mask, causing a slight shadow effect. Overall, I'm not bothered though, as the real things were hand painted anyway, so the finish was never perfect.

 

 

Next up will be the shading on the green areas, the decals, and the detail painting.

 

More later

 

Andy

[M_Sinclair]

I may have to try that glaze technique on a 1/144 C-47 I'm about to start. Such a cool looking little tenk!

 

-matt

[flashlight]

Amazing paintwork! Never heard of this glaze medium, I think I will try this too for my 1/72 builds.

 

Have a nice day

Nick

[Andy Moore]

Thanks guys. Yes, the glazes work really well for subtle weathering, especially on smaller scales.

 

Before weathering the green areas, I attached the casemate and tail, the later with tiny drops of epoxy adhesive for more strength. After that, I worked up the shading on the green camo in the same way as was done over the sand, but with darker brown tones. The decals had also been added at this stage, although the only one on the hull is the code number on the front.

 

 

Most of the detail painting has also been done, although I missed the sledge hammer on top of the hull, so that still needs doing.

 

 

The track frames have been painted and weathered in the same way as the hull. These still need the road wheels and other details picking out.

(excuse the giant 1/1 scale cat hair, they get everywhere)

 

 

 

So, this is how it's looking at the moment, loosely clipped together. The tracks still need painting and weathering, and I've got a length of tiny 1.5mm brass chain which I'm going to attempt to hang over tail, attached via some even more tiny photo etched shackles... hmm, we'll see how that goes.

 

 

More later

 

Andy

[flashlight]

Andy, this looks brilliant! You wouldn't think that this is in the tiny braille scale, your work is absolutely stunning!

 

Have a nice day

Nick

[Andrés S.]

Hi Andy, it's an amazing job especially with such a tiny size.

In another post you told me about the Glaze Medium and I definitely have to try it. The vision of your work forces me to do this if I want to evolve as a modeler.

 

Regards.

[Andy Moore]

Thanks guys,

 

Okay, I think we're on the home stretch now. The track runs were painted in a dark rust tone, then had a few other rust shades sponged over them to add a little texture. To finish them off, the raised areas were burnished with graphite powder. The frame assemblies clip into place without the need for any glue, which makes final assembly very simple.

 

 

The hull's had a little light chipping applied with a pencil. I kept this fairly restrained, on areas like the hatches and engine covers.

 

 

The bit I was least looking forward to was fitting the chain at the back. This doesn't come with the kit, although you do get the shackles on the PE fret. I've used a 1.5mm brass chain, which seems to be about the right size for this scale. Ideally, I'd have blackened the chain with a burnishing liquid, but I didn't have any, so it's just been sprayed with a dark rust tone. The PE shackles were sprayed while they were still on the fret.

The end of the chain was hooked onto the shackle, which was then secured to the bracket with epoxy adhesive and left to set.

 

 

Once the first shackle was fixed, the chain was draped over the tail and the end hooked onto the second shackle. That end was then glued in place in the same way. Both the chain and the shackles needed some minor paint touch-ups, but otherwise the whole process turned out to be less fiddly than I was expecting.

 

 

The final work on the hull, before attaching the tracks, was some light mud splatters around the lower edges. This, like the rest of the weathering, was done with acrylics.

 

 

The track assemblies were attached, and given a wash with the same light mud mix I used on the hull.

So that, I think, is where I'll call it done. I don't want to spoil it by overdoing the weathering.

 

 

I'm quite surprised at just how quick the build has been. A lot of that is down to Flyhawk, and the very clever engineering they've put into the kit. I didn't use any filler throughout the build, and the fact that the kit can be left in sub-assemblies makes painting much quicker and simpler.

I'm not sure yet when I'll get a chance to build the other one that came in the box, but hopefully it won't be long.

Thanks to everyone for following along with the (very short) build. I'll get some finished shots up in RFI later on.

 

Andy

 

 

 

 

[Andrés S.]

 

Simple ... fast ... and masterly.
Absolutely masterly !!!

Regards.

[Foxbat]

That's a beautiful piece of work. When you can do that in that scale, why bother with anything bigger?  

 

Andy

Small but imperfectly formed.

[Bullbasket]

I couldn't achieve that level in 1/35th scale, let alone 1/72nd. Cracking job Andy.

 

John.

[robgizlu]

Super stuff - I always pick something new up from your builds Andy!

Love it

Rob

[M_Sinclair]

Absolutely magnificent little tank!

 

-matt

[Terry1954]

Absolutely stunning build here Andy. That really is a bargain price for a pair of gems. I'm certainly learning the art of small scale weathering here.

 

Terry

[Laserschwert]

On 25/06/2019 at 21:57, AndyRM101 said:

The final work on the hull, before attaching the tracks, was some light mud splatters around the lower edges. This, like the rest of the weathering, was done with acrylics.

 

May I ask how exactly you did the mud splatters? These don't look dabbed on with a sponge, since there's some actual splat patterns...

[Andy Moore]

4 hours ago, Laserschwert said:

May I ask how exactly you did the mud splatters? These don't look dabbed on with a sponge, since there's some actual splat patterns...

They were, literally, splattered on. The bristles of a brush were flicked against a tooth pick. The paint had some pigment mixed into it, to make it a little more 'muddy'.

 

Andy