A15 Crusader Mk.1 (early)

[diablo rsv]

Before I start on a new project, I thought I would finish off a couple of projects that have been gathering dust.

I have always liked the look of the Crusader tank and likewise the Caunter scheme so I thought this would be the perfect combination.

 

The build was progressing nicely until I reached the painting stage and did a little research. It appears that only a few of the very first Crusaders to arrive in Africa did so in time to receive the Caunter scheme and the only images that I could find of these vehicles showed that a number of changes would have to be made to the Italeri kit.

 

 

 

The first thing I did was to remove the rear stowage boxes from the track guards. It seems that these vehicles used a different type of air filter and they seem to be an oil bath type. I scratched something from plastic card and adapted some kit parts to replicate them. It also meant that the track guards in that area would have to be replaced as there was now some missing detail.

 

 

The sand shields are from Eduard and didn't take too kindly to being removed and refitted.

The auxiliary fuel tank was also removed and replaced with a rack that I pinched from a Bronco A13 kit. 

 

 

There is a rack on the front track guard that I presume was for spare track and this needed a few bits of rod adding.

 

 

Talking of tracks, I had planned to replace the kit vinyl tracks with Bronco's A13 separate track links. They had been quite successful on my A13 build  but on this build they just disintegrated, probably due to the enamel washes that I used. Lesson learnt but I couldn't face doing another set of those links and I really didn't want to splash out on some Friuls. So I have gone with the vinyl tracks, hopefully they won't look too bad once painted but if the model turns out well enough I may invest in some better ones.

All of the lights in the kit are just solid plastic, so I bored them out with dental burrs. I added bulbs from stretched clear sprue and painted the reflectors chrome. For the glass I used some UV adhesive. Unfortunately I don't think I waited long enough for the chrome to dry as I have lost some of the reflectiveness. Another lesson learnt.

 

 

All of the gun barrels have been replaced with metal ones from RB Model.

 

 

The rear turret tool box wasn't carried on these tanks so I removed it from the kit and replaced the missing bolt heads. On the kit the bolt heads are depicted as round but I think in reality they would be hexagonal but I didn't fancy replacing all of those. It will be interesting to see how Border Models have done theirs. There is also some sort of air vent? on the back of the turret so this was made from scrap plastic. Looking at the photo I appear to have a bit of cleaning up to do. Mr Surfacer to the rescue I hope.

 

 

On the left side of the turret there is some kind of mounting and I made this from cooper sheet that was shaped and soldered together.

 

 

It has taken me around 3 years to get to this point but I think I can finally think about getting some primer and paint put on.

 

 

Hopefully I can get painting tomorrow.

 

Wayne

 

 

[vytautas]

Looks really impressive! Hard work pays off 👍

 

Vytautas

[Hamden]

 

Always liked the Crusader so will follow along if you don't mind?

 

  Stay safe            Roger

[robgizlu]

Very impressive detailing

Rob

[diablo rsv]

2 hours ago, Hamden said:

 

Always liked the Crusader so will follow along if you don't mind?

 

  Stay safe            Roger

Of course Roger, thanks for your interest.

[Bullbasket]

Great work Wayne, especially the pot on the left side of the turret. Even though it's now in it's dotage and has been superseded by more modern offerings, it's still a damned good kit. It's a detailers heaven. I think that I've built three and have another two to go. Even the tracks aren't bad, especially if they are hidden behind sand shields.

 

John. 

[diablo rsv]

5 minutes ago, Bullbasket said:

Great work Wayne, especially the pot on the left side of the turret. Even though it's now in it's dotage and has been superseded by more modern offerings, it's still a damned good kit. It's a detailers heaven. I think that I've built three and have another two to go. Even the tracks aren't bad, especially if they are hidden behind sand shields.

 

John. 

 

Thanks John.

I don't know if anyone does a Mk.1now, when I bought this it was the only one available. As you say it's not that bad for it's age. I have the Border Models Mk.III on order, I hope it lives up to the hype. Maybe if it sells well they will add a few more variants.

I knew that once the Border Models one arrived that this would never get finished hence the final push.

 

Wayne

[diablo rsv]

After masking up I have now applied a liberal coat of Mr.Surfacer 1000. Once dry I could attend to any blemishes, cracks and other faults that I could find, then using a sanding sponge I went all over the surface to flatten off the primer.

 

Once I was as happy as I could be with the result I sprayed on a coat of Mr.Finishing Surfacer 1500 Black. This is my favourite primer, it gives a lovely smooth finish, is tough and sands very well. The idea of using black is to help give some depth to the finish and accentuate shadows. I know that tanks aren't meant to be super smooth but before I start applying the top coat I will go over the model with a sanding sponge again as there are still a couple of areas that need flattening off. The high sheen of the primer makes it look worse than it is but I think that is a good thing.

 

 

 

Tomorrow I can start the fun part of applying the Caunter paint scheme. I just love a bit of masking.🙄

 

Wayne.

 

 

[Hamden]

 

Looking good in primer, can't wait to see it in colour now!

 

  Stay safe            Roger

[diablo rsv]

Sometimes the modelling gods just don't want you to finish a project.😥

A while back I bought the AK Real Colors set of paints for British desert schemes including a set for Caunter, however I was a little disappointed with the colour accuracy of them. They don't even seem to match the swatches in their own excellent Real Colors of WWII book. I trust the book as @Mike Starmer had a large input as far as I can tell. I would be  interested on Mikes opinions of their paint mixes. Any way I found the MRP range of paints to be much superior in quality and colour representation. Unfortunately their Portland Stone is a little opaque and really needs a base colour or you will use up a whole bottle on one kit to get the coverage and they are a little expensive. So I thought I would use up the Real Color paints as a base.

 

 

That is Real Colors Light Stone. It went down nicely, thinned with Mr. Levelling thinners as I have done many times before. Unfortunately as it dried it began to craze in a couple of random areas and I don't really know why as yet. I had to quickly up the pressure on the airbrush and blast it off with neat thinners. As you can imagine that made a bit of a mess. 

 

I now need to wait until it has fully dried before I can asses the damage. I could strip it completely but the thought of that upsets me. It may well end up back on the shelf of doom as after all the work I have put into it I can't face binning it just yet.

 

35 minutes ago, Hamden said:

 

Looking good in primer, can't wait to see it in colour now!

 

  Stay safe            Roger

 

You may have a bit of a wait Roger.

 

Wayne 

 

 

[Hamden]

 

Stand back take a break and come back to it in a day or two.

Sounds like the thinner has reacted with the paint on either the base colour or undercoat. I'm sure you will overcome and end up with a superb result!

 

  Stay safe          Roger

[diablo rsv]

8 hours ago, Hamden said:

 

Stand back take a break and come back to it in a day or two.

Sounds like the thinner has reacted with the paint on either the base colour or undercoat. I'm sure you will overcome and end up with a superb result!

 

  Stay safe          Roger

 

Thanks Roger.

I did sand off what I could and applied another coat of primer, unfortunately it will require stripping to get a satisfactory result as a lot of the detail is getting lost. I will shelve this one for now and start something new to get my mojo back.

 

Wayne

[Nenad Ilijic]

Same thing happened to me twice with RC. Still have no idea what was the problem. The only thing that I noticed is that this happens when I am in hurry, but what is exactly the problem (it may be not waiting enough between layers, or not paying attention how far am I from the model, or something else), I have no clue... Anyway, even though in most of the cases RC gives nice results, me being unable to avoid this from happening makes me stay away from RC whenever possible.

 

Best,

Nenad

[diablo rsv]

That's interesting @Nenad Ilijic. I hadn't heard of this issue with RC before. I'm not sure what happened either but I did go over the paint with a misting of neat Mr. Levelling thinners as I often do when I feel the paint hasn't gone down as smoothly as I like. I wondered if that was the issue. I guess I will never know unless I experiment with it. For now though I will stick with my preferred MRP and avoid using the RC on larger areas.

Wayne

[THEscaleSHOW]

Hello Wayne

 

It's a real pity and annoying what happened 😲

 

From my experience with this type of paint problem, the reason was almost always that the individual jobs had not dried long enough.
Some primers have or need a high and aggressive thinner content and this can cause problems.

To be on the safe side, I now let them dry for 2-3 days.

 

Nevertheless, all the best 👍

MD

[Nenad Ilijic]

@diablo rsv I am also usually misting MLT over RC paint, as it tends to get gritty sometimes. I am not sure if crazing is connected to misting MLT, but I think it is connected to the cases when RC finish is too gritty/rough. Which may be connected to the situations when I am not patient enough to wait between layers. I was planning to do some testing with RC and different scenarios (to experiment with time between layers etc.).

 

I am usually sticking to MRP and Gunze, but RC color accuracy is better for some paints such as Light Stone, so it is pity it's hard to make it work reliably. At least I don't know how to do that. Also, it would be great if AK starts offering a semi-gloss option. Flat finish of their RC paints requires coat of semi-gloss to make it look realistic, at least in my opinion.

 

Cheers,

Nenad

[diablo rsv]

Crusader Mk.I is dead long live the Crusader Mk.I.

I thought whilst my hobby room is receiving some nice new work surfaces and most of my modelling gear is packed away for a day or two that I would take some time to strip the Mk.I Crusader. It will also be a great opportunity to build it along side the Border Models Mk.III that I am currently working on HERE and see how they compare.

The slight problem I had was that I had used a combination of water based acrylic (Stynylrez) , solvent based acrylic, lacquer paints and good old Halfords primer, yes, I started this build that long ago. 

So I started with a bath of VMS Clean Slate which did an excellent job of a lot of the paint but is not made for lacquers and did seem to struggle with them. Next came a nice fragrant bath of Dettol which to my surprise made a great job of the lacquers but left a grey sludge of what I presume was the Halfords primer. So out came the airbrush with the pressure ramped up to around 55psi and I pressure washed it with lacquer thinners. I used the rapid thinners because I wanted it to evaporate quickly to reduce any chance of damaging the plastic. DO NOT use ordinary lacquer / cellulose thinners or you WILL melt the plastic. The model was then rinsed off with some soapy water.

 

 

I was relieved to see that there was very little damage to the model, just a couple of small parts to reattach. 

 

 

 

I may need to get some new tracks and there are a few improvements to make on some of the older work but I'm pretty pleased to get this underway again.

 

Wayne

 

[Hamden]

 

Looking forward to seeing what you do with this one and how it compares with the Border Models version

 

  Stay safe         Roger

[Bullbasket]

Again, I will be watching this one and taking notes . I've got two of these in the stash and I just checked them both out, and you're right; they don't appear to have the step in the front track guard, although it does show it on the box art and in the painting instructions. For me, it doesn't matter anyway, as I'll probably replace them with card.

 

John.

[Modeler8522]

On 26/01/2021 at 18:21, diablo rsv said:

Before I start on a new project, I thought I would finish off a couple of projects that have been gathering dust.

I have always liked the look of the Crusader tank and likewise the Caunter scheme so I thought this would be the perfect combination.

 

The build was progressing nicely until I reached the painting stage and did a little research. It appears that only a few of the very first Crusaders to arrive in Africa did so in time to receive the Caunter scheme and the only images that I could find of these vehicles showed that a number of changes would have to be made to the Italeri kit.

 

 

 

The first thing I did was to remove the rear stowage boxes from the track guards. It seems that these vehicles used a different type of air filter and they seem to be an oil bath type. I scratched something from plastic card and adapted some kit parts to replicate them. It also meant that the track guards in that area would have to be replaced as there was now some missing detail.

 

 

The sand shields are from Eduard and didn't take too kindly to being removed and refitted.

The auxiliary fuel tank was also removed and replaced with a rack that I pinched from a Bronco A13 kit. 

 

 

There is a rack on the front track guard that I presume was for spare track and this needed a few bits of rod adding.

 

 

Talking of tracks, I had planned to replace the kit vinyl tracks with Bronco's A13 separate track links. They had been quite successful on my A13 build  but on this build they just disintegrated, probably due to the enamel washes that I used. Lesson learnt but I couldn't face doing another set of those links and I really didn't want to splash out on some Friuls. So I have gone with the vinyl tracks, hopefully they won't look too bad once painted but if the model turns out well enough I may invest in some better ones.

All of the lights in the kit are just solid plastic, so I bored them out with dental burrs. I added bulbs from stretched clear sprue and painted the reflectors chrome. For the glass I used some UV adhesive. Unfortunately I don't think I waited long enough for the chrome to dry as I have lost some of the reflectiveness. Another lesson learnt.

 

 

All of the gun barrels have been replaced with metal ones from RB Model.

 

 

The rear turret tool box wasn't carried on these tanks so I removed it from the kit and replaced the missing bolt heads. On the kit the bolt heads are depicted as round but I think in reality they would be hexagonal but I didn't fancy replacing all of those. It will be interesting to see how Border Models have done theirs. There is also some sort of air vent? on the back of the turret so this was made from scrap plastic. Looking at the photo I appear to have a bit of cleaning up to do. Mr Surfacer to the rescue I hope.

 

 

On the left side of the turret there is some kind of mounting and I made this from cooper sheet that was shaped and soldered together.

 

 

It has taken me around 3 years to get to this point but I think I can finally think about getting some primer and paint put on.

 

 

Hopefully I can get painting tomorrow.

 

Wayne

 

 

Same thing happened with Bordor model's crusader tracks with enamels n washes the track pins just disintegrated! Lesson learnt for the mk2 I just bought today with the luchs! Finally lol apart from that fantastic kit!

[Milan Mynar]

Looks great.

[Ned]

All credit to you for not giving up on this. I hope it works out in the end.

I have fond memories of the Italeri Crusader. I know that I liked it because I can remember finishing it, which didn't happen very often (and still doesn't).

[Keeff]

It's a great looking build and with all the extra details and work you've done, it'd be a shame to leave it.  I hope you figure out what happened with the paint and it progresses to a full scheme.  

 

Keith  😁

[FrancisGL]

Hi Wayne,

Despite everything, he is still almost ready for a new assault... I would really like to see how it finally turns out. I have one made a long time ago, although almost OOB.

Cheers and TC

Francis.👍

[diablo rsv]

On 29/01/2023 at 17:19, FrancisGL said:

Hi Wayne,

Despite everything, he is still almost ready for a new assault... I would really like to see how it finally turns out. I have one made a long time ago, although almost OOB.

Cheers and TC

Francis.👍

 

On 29/01/2023 at 15:00, Keeff said:

It's a great looking build and with all the extra details and work you've done, it'd be a shame to leave it.  I hope you figure out what happened with the paint and it progresses to a full scheme.  

 

Keith  😁

 

On 29/01/2023 at 14:25, Ned said:

All credit to you for not giving up on this. I hope it works out in the end.

I have fond memories of the Italeri Crusader. I know that I liked it because I can remember finishing it, which didn't happen very often (and still doesn't).

 

 

Thanks Guys,

I did actually get this out again the other day, the only issue I have is that I really need to replace the Eduard fenders set and unfortunately it is discontinued. 

 

Wayne