Mk1 gun carrier scratchbuild

[Model Mate]

1 minute ago, ColonelKrypton said:

Your wheels are starting to look quite good.

 

I have played around with your technique of laminating several strips of plastic into a round wheel shape and it does work well. I also had the thought that paper ( i.e. card stock or similar ) would also work well - millions of paper card model builders do very well with this material. Paper card has an advantage over plastic in that it can be glued together with simple PVA; even CA would work well - soak the piece in CA after initial shaping and it would become one homogenous solid piece that can be easily worked with knife, sandpaper, and files. Another thought was to make one rough piece and then cast a few to work to finish shape and finish - so many ( sometime too many ) options. 

 

cheers, Graham

 

thanks Graham, yes, if I have more than a couple of bits like this, I tend to have a crack at moulding resin copies - not always successfully though! I am trying to do the spokes this way, but I'm not perfectly confident about this yet. I may have to come up with an alternative...

[ColonelKrypton]

My first thought might be to try wood - small basswood dowels - even cotton buds with bamboo shafts may be large enough or bamboo skewers perhaps.  The local Dollar Store is one of my favourite hobby stores - lots of interesting bits and pieces in the craft section that could be repurposed.

 

Of late I have fussing over the idea of making something like a US Civil war cannon.  There are kits but I would think scratch building would be far more a pleasurable endeavor.

 

A US based company sells these kits which are primarily all cast metal ( Britannia ) but they also sell a wood wheel replacement. The details of it's construction can be found here: 

 

https://modelexpo-online.com/Guns-of-History-CANNON-WOODEN-WHEEL-SET-116-SCALE_p_668.html#tab-6

 

Which has provided some good food for thought on how to construct this sort of wheel.  Using wood has it's appeal but you could use any one or several different construction materials depending on your preferences.

 

Also, there are numerous paper card modeling forums and searching through these always find some interesting ideas on both subject and techniques.

 

cheers, Graham

 

 

Edited May 6, 2022 by ColonelKrypton

[Model Mate]

1 minute ago, ColonelKrypton said:

My first thought might be to try wood - small basswood dowels - even cotton buds with bamboo shafts may be large enough or bamboo skewers perhaps. 

 

Of late I have fussing over the idea of making something like a US Civil war cannon.  There are kits but I would think scratch building would be far more a pleasurable endeavor.

 

A US based company sells these kits which are primarily all cast metal ( Britannia ) but they also sell a wood wheel replacement. The details of it's construction can be found here: 

 

https://modelexpo-online.com/Guns-of-History-CANNON-WOODEN-WHEEL-SET-116-SCALE_p_668.html#tab-6

 

Which has provided some good food for thought on how to construct this sort of wheel.  Using wood has it's appeal but you could use any one or several different construction materials depending on your preferences.

 

Also, there are numerous paper card modeling forums and searching through these always find some interesting ideas on both subject and techniques.

 

cheers, Graham

 

 

Yes, I've thought about wood, and tried using cocktail sticks in the past - they're already tapered which can work out well. I tried this for my Pierce Arrow truck, but resorted to simple plastic tube when I realised I'd got the scale wrong. They worked out ok, if a bit basic and slightly wonky, but I got away with it because the wheels were relatively small and simple in design.

The spokes I need for this thing flare out at each end into a square section rather than taper making them a rather complicated shape overall. Also the central sections of the spokes aren't circular, but oval in section I think - a real sod of a shape to make multiple copies of. I've carved/hacked one that looks reasonable I think, and I just need to find a way to make 28 decent copies.

I really enjoyed making the gun (wheels excepted!). One thing to watch is making sure it's all square - there are some quite complex shapes going on in the arms/legs/whatever they're called and I found mine ended up a bit squiffy, but I've seen the care you take using jigs and so on, so I'm sure you'll conquer that problem.

[Bandsaw Steve]

This really is stacking up to be one great bit of model building. 👍

[ColonelKrypton]

7 minutes ago, Model Mate said:

One thing to watch is making sure it's all square - there are some quite complex shapes going on in the arms/legs/whatever they're called ...

 

Indeed.  square or rectangular transitioning to oval transitioning to round - some done for aesthetics and others for strength and others for ease of manufacture. 

 

It wasn't until I started looking closely at the the designs for old carriage and limber wheels that I came realize that many were no symmetrical and that many favoured having the spokes leaning towards the inner side of the wheels ( closest to the gun ). I would have thought that the spokes would have been square to the axle and symmetrical about the center of the wheel.   I am sure there are many examples of the symmetrical form but it's the non symmetrical forms that are now very obvious when I look at pictures.

 

Being a wheelwright was a very important trade, quite fascinating actually. Making models and their needed research always sends me off on many interesting paths.

 

https://archive.org/details/wheelwrightsshop00stur/mode/2up

 

cheers, Graham

 

 

[APA]

9 hours ago, matti64 said:

I found that an Engineers Protractor  worked very well with  thin materials such as plasticard. You need to set it and periodically check it f with a set square but they are the best solution to the promlem that I've found.

That will do the job nicely 👍

All the mini trysquares I've seen have been too chunky but this style looks Bob on as both are thin sheet. 

 

Cheers matti 

 

Andrew 

[Model Mate]

Hi All,

 

I’m left with a bit of a challenge at the moment – I’m selling my narrow boat and have already bought a new widebeam canal boat, but the two of them are at least three counties apart and to complicate matters, I’m spending at least half of my time at my girlfriend’s flat, somewhere between the two. As a result, my already somewhat itinerant modelmaking is spread even thinner and wider than usual with tools and materials scattered all over the South East of England, and I don’t have much time, or a reliable base to get really stuck in. Consequently, things may go a little quiet on my particular 1/35 Western Front….

 

To enable me to carry on in some productive manner with the scant spare time I’m going to have over the next few weeks/months, I had a good think about what I could more realistically achieve.

 

And the answer is….. the figures!

 

I haven’t really mentioned the crew yet, but many of the photos I have of a Mk1 gun carrier are of “Darlington” traversing the battlefield. Looking at these pictures a little more closely, they seem to follow a natural path, with a whole series being taken in a few minutes. The vehicle trundles across a field, over an embankment and drops onto the road. The various crew members can be seen in a variety of poses as she goes. The most obvious is the officer, sitting on the roof of the rear compartment, with his left hand resting on boxes and tarps. The gun appears to have three chaps sitting, leaning or standing around it, and there are clearly a couple of bods in the driving cabs.

 

The Landships II site states that the gun carrier had a crew of 4 + 8 gunners, and in a few of the pictures, others can be seen observing or jogging alongside.

I’ve decided to interpret this scene my own way, loosely based on the photos, but with a few dashes of artistic licence to make my life a little easier. For instance, I won’t plant anyone in the cabs – just trying to work out how to get the painted seats in place to allow the overall vehicle to be painted is tricky enough. Trying to mask around a pair of seated figures is just too much to take on!

 

So, let’s do a google for 1/35 WW1 guncarrier crew at rest….. Hmm, nothing popping up….. Guess I’ll have to scratchbuild again – doh!

 

I did a bit of figure scratchbuilding a while ago:

 

 

…but that was 1/12 scale – 1/35 could offer some fresh challenges, the first of which is the heads and hands. Now I had fun doing 1/12, and even dared to sculpt the heads, but there’s no way I’d be able to get anything remotely resembling a realistic head at 1/35, so Hornet it is. I bought some helmeted and capped heads and all the hands they make. They are beautiful. They appeared a bit cartoonish looking to me on the website photos, but the reality is fantastically animated and characterful faces that I’m hoping will draw attention away from my own efforts on the bodies.

 

I have a nicely contained kit for sculpting which all packs into a relatively compact hobby box. The top tray has a variety of sculpting tools, corks and metal foil and the base holds pliers, wire and the sculpting materials – milliput, green stuff and Fimo oven-bake clay. This lot is hopefully small enough for me to drag around my various abodes for the meantime.

 

I started off, naturally, by twisting up some armatures from 1.0mm copper wire (stripped from electrical mains cabling). To get the size and proportion, I mapped the arms, legs and so on against a Tamiya German tank crew member in a suitably neutral pose.

 

These two chappies got scratched up with the toothed jaws of the pliers and doused in superglue to offer a key and then some green stuff plopped on their hips and chests.

 

The tape strips are there to describe the extent of their legs/feet.

 

And talking of feet, I did consider getting some 1/35 boots, but the prices (and I suspect the quality) were a bit variable on the 3D print market. I found that boots weren’t too tricky in 1/12, as long as you have a reliable “footprint” to work from, so I traced around good old Jerry’s tootsies and cut some soles from wine-top foil. These might end up being a bit too floppy, but we’ll see. If need be I can make some stiffer versions from thicker foil.

 

Plastic might seem to be the obvious way to do these rather than metal, but remember that these fellas will need some sessions in the oven.

 

Once the feet were superglued on, I started to form the arms and legs using a touch more green stuff, keeping them very skinny – when the “clothes” go on, they won’t be to scale thickness of course, so having skinny limbs helps give a bit of wiggle room. Green stuff works well for the early stages as it’s naturally sticky and adheres pretty well to the wire and has a bit of plastic “give” unlike milliput. There’s not too much worry about it melting in the oven, as it will be entirely covered by Fimo before it goes into the furnace. As I had a small ball of green stuff left over, I bulked out their torsos a bit too.

 

And that’s where I’ve got to so far. They look a bit daft at the moment, but the proportions seem reasonably natural, so that’s a good start. I’ll make two more chaps to fill up the carrier and aim to pose it on the raised bank as per the photos above.

 

Cheers for now!

 

[Model Mate]

Once the green stuff had dried, I started slapping on the Fimo. This stuff is really nice to work with. It smooths and blends really easily using a simple set of sculpting tools; some bought and some home-made (pieces of copper wire bent and polished and mounted on handles.

 

I started with the feet on the sitting figure. A dab of superglue was applied to the flat metal “feet” and little sausages of Fimo were stuck on. Once the glue had set, I started smearing the sausages into boot shapes. They ended up a bit “flat”, but I’ll stick soles and heels on after I’ve snipped the fella off his extended leg wires.

 

I worked up the trousers to torso and arms. At first, I simply got the bulk of the material on, and set about adding the folds and creases afterwards. Pockets, belt and epaulettes were rolled out pretty thin and stuck on.

 

After a session in the oven (half an hour at 110 degrees/gas mark ¼) I snipped his hand wires off. In retrospect, it’s probably better to cut these short before sculpting. I had left the shins bare and added strips of carpet tape to represent his puttees. I’d rather use masking tape, but don’t have any to hand at the moment. I was concerned that the exposed green stuff would melt, but I think the temperature is thankfully too low to be a problem. I trimmed and tidied up some of the Fimo parts using a scalpel – I thinned down the belt for instance.

 

I cut a Hornet head and pair of hands off their sprues, trimmed the neck and wrists to length and superglued them on. They really do elevate the overall figure to a maybe-acceptable level.

 

And so on to figure two – a standing gunner sporting a leather jerkin. Same process as for the sitting figure really with a really jolly head and a pair of rather limp-wristed hands. The right arm sleeve looks a bit short, so I’ll mould a green stuff sleeve extension later. I accidentally knocked his left thumb off – grrr. Maybe putting some tools in his hands will help hide this…..

 

The jury’s out on these two – The leather jerkin is too thick, the pockets are too puffy and although the overall proportions seem to be ok, these aren’t the finest figures possible to say the least. I may end up biting the bullet and shelling out for the very nice Stalingrad tank crew set, or at least a couple of the figures from it, but it’s been a good exercise in practicing and improving my sculpting skills. I’m pleased to have discovered that 1/35 isn’t really that much more difficult than larger scales after all.

 

 

 

[ColonelKrypton]

In spite of your criticism of your figures, I think that they are quite nicely done. Far better than any of my attempts at something similar. 

 

I still struggle with painting figures let alone sculpting my own - I need much more practice, practice, and even more practice...

 

cheers, Graham

 

 

 

[Model Mate]

On 18/05/2022 at 12:30, ColonelKrypton said:

In spite of your criticism of your figures, I think that they are quite nicely done. Far better than any of my attempts at something similar. 

 

I still struggle with painting figures let alone sculpting my own - I need much more practice, practice, and even more practice...

 

cheers, Graham

 

 

 

Thanks for the vote of confidence Graham. I'm far from a figure sculpting and painting expert myself, but the vehicle is going great, and I fear these two will let the side down. Still, plenty of time to go and re-evaluate. The practice is certainly worth doing though even of they do end up in the bin this time!

[Milan Mynar]

The building of your model is an example of a higher level of model building.

[APA]

Your rather good at all this aren't you MM 😏

 

Andrew 

[Model Mate]

Thanks for all the positive feedback chaps; it really helps keep the mojo working...

 

Apologies for the glacial progress pace at the moment. I’ve just sold my narrowboat and started working on a few bits of 1:1 scale improvement on my new widebeam replacement. As a result, I’ve not had much time for model-making, and my tools are spread all over the place, with no settled base for me to work.

However, I do have most of the things I need to continue riveting – hurrah! Much of this is in the form of thin strips of rivets to adorn the upper hull structure. These are really rather tedious to make; I had originally planned to cast multiple copies in resin, but the initial trial wasn’t very good, with bubbles in almost all of the rivet heads, so I’ve had to resort to manually drilling and cutting each one – so……many……rivets!

 

To speed it up a little, I drilled a single row in a piece of 0.5mm card and used this as a drilling template to create copies.

 

In the sprit of “waste not, want not” and a desire to make best use of every scrap of plastic, the considerable quantity of swarf all this drilling creates was saved to one side and scraped into a small jar for use as ad-hoc, point of use sprue-goo. A few rivet holes on the rear of the hull were filled with this swarf melted into place with Tamiya extra-thin, and new ones drilled nearer to the edge.

 

Here’s a “before and after”….

 

Seems to work pretty well!

 

I also added a bunch of 0.4mm rivets around the vents and along with a few plates, panels etc. the upper hull is starting to look suitably “loaded”. It’s also getting quite heavy with all the plastic it’s made from….

 

Here’s the overall upper box so far.

 

[echen]

Some meticulous modelling going on here! Very impressive! This is developing into a real masterpiece. 

Edited June 7, 2022 by echen

[Model Mate]

The rear door openings present a bit of a challenge. I’d noticed earlier on (thankfully) that the door and panel outlines shown on the template paper/card images represent the outline of the various doors and panels themselves, rather than the openings they sit on. As such, they’re exactly the same size as the doors, rather than slightly smaller, which is what they need to be to allow the doors to be fixed over them. I spotted this when I was knocking up the first of the cabs, and so I subsequently cut the openings slightly smaller than the templates indicate. All good, but for the rear doors, these undersized openings were a little rough to say the least and left a bit of a dodgy edge to attempt to drill rivet holes into. The rear door frame seems to be constructed using a rolled angle around the perimeter of the door opening, which is riveted into place. To tidy up the openings, drill for rivets without risking damage to the main hull rear plate and give an edge for the angle flange to fix to, I cut out a pair of opening frames from 0.2mm card and drilled them for rivets.

 

These were glued into place and thin strips of 0.2mm card were curved around them. All that remains is to tidy up the opening a little and drill the rivet holes a bit deeper into the underlying 0.75mm card to accept the rivets.

 

Generally, I prefer to leave fixing the rivets in place till last, immediately before a coat of primer as they have a tendency to ping off, and the primer helps to hold them in place. On the roof though, the reinforcement is in the form of tee sections, and the flanges of these need fixing between the closely spaced rows of rivets. To get these straight, I’ll add them after the rivets. I’m hoping they’ll sit nice and straight between the rivet heads.  

[ColonelKrypton]

Rivets - oh so many rivets ...

 

Moving along nicely and looking the part.

 

cheers, Graham

 

[Model Mate]

Oh yes Graham; soooooo many rivets.... I confess that I've stopped counting them now - the door frames were just divided up by eye really - I think I've a few less than the real thing.

[ColonelKrypton]

1 hour ago, Model Mate said:

I think I've a few less than the real thing.

 

Sometimes having the right number just seems far too many.  Most cartoon characters have four fingers rather than five for that reason. 

 

cheers, Graham

 

[Bertie McBoatface]

You seem to be getting better and better every time I call in to look. Figures now! Marvellous!

[Model Mate]

3 hours ago, Bertie Psmith said:

You seem to be getting better and better every time I call in to look. Figures now! Marvellous!

Well thanks Bertie, but having been separated from my little boys for a while, I’ve decided they’re just not good enough. Sculpting is really intense and I find myself getting carried away and taking it too far in a single session. I should really have stopped before I put the officers pockets and the squaddie’s coat on to reflect, rest and gather my powers of concentration (such as they are). 
I’ll have another crack at the lads and try not to attempt finishing them in one sitting; hopefully they’ll improve. Failing that, it’ll mean getting some resin or plastic stand-ins, but I really hope I can get better at sculpting. The hornet heads and hands really help and give me hope!

[APA]

Go on count the rivets. You know you want to 🤪

 

Andrew 

[Model Mate]

Haha! Yes, that way madness lies, but it has occurred to me that I can get a quick total by counting the little circles I drew in the original CAD plans - a simple automated process that’ll give me a reasonable assessment, although I’m sure I’ve ended up doing quite a few more than the plans contain. It’ll be in the hundreds….

[Model Mate]

Work on the upper hull continues with a trip inside. I don’t have much in the way of references for the interior – just the paper model instructions and a single section drawing. They contradict each other, so I’ll defer to the paper instructions for the most part, along with a bit of guess work.

 

I cut out some shapes for the ventilation fans from 0.75mm plastic card and glued them together, painting the insides with a dash of Humbrol dark grey enamel to ensure it’s suitably dark inside. The back faces of the grilles got the same treatment. I couldn’t face another round of riveting on the fans, so I made do with some simple holes punched into the plastic using a pin. These will pick up a wash later and should suffice to represent screws/small rivets.

 

I made up a few assorted boxes (radiators and fuel tanks) and attached these, along with the fans into the hull.

 

On the outside, I added the steering attachment plates – the original plan for this vehicle was for it to use the trailer-wheels also originally intended for the mark 1 tank, but as with the tank, they weren’t used in practice. The plates were left on though. The roof of the box also had some bolt heads and assorted fittings added. These are fuel caps and an engine air inlet (I think) that I’ll add internal piping to. A few wire handles were also fixed in place, but there’s a few more of these to go yet.

 

At the front, a pair of eyelets were added using 0.8mm silver wire.

 

 

 

[vytautas]

Very impressive. Your patience and attention to detail are simply astounding!

 

Vytautas

 

 

[Model Mate]

This upper hull just keeps eating up time – I look at it and think “it’s only a simple box” but in reality it’s absolutely covered in rivets, brackets and various greebles and just keeps taking session after session. Still, nearly there (I hope!).

 

I was really struggling without two of my simplest, but most useful tools –

 

1.       A pin in a pin vice, which I use for marking out hole positions, making indents for little rivets, scribing panel lines, cutting/scribing circles using a circle template and so on

2.       Another pin to apply superglue

 

Not the most expensive or specialist tools I know, and I decided to go mad and splash out (£2.65) on a pair of new pin-vice handles from ebay and some needles from poundland, so I now have a lovely matching set of – glue applicator, scriber and drill – nice!

 

These were employed to drill 0.5mm holes for the grab handles and fix them in place with superglue.

I fitted some cleats to the top-front edge of the box too.

 

Then it was on with a mammoth riveting session to get the roof strips done so the flanges could be added on. I’d really wanted to do these flanges with 0.5mm card, but the gaps between the rivet heads would only allow 0.2mm to fit. I was worried they might be a bit fragile maybe, but they seem to be sturdy enough. This allowed me to make up an exhaust for the back and a lifting beam for the front. The lifting eye was shaped by holding a bent piece of plastic rod in a pair of tweezers to form a teardrop shape and immersing it in boiling water to fix the shape.

 

The interior got a bit of additional detail in the form of fuel pipes (solder and aluminium tape) and some straps on the tanks. I’m going to refrain from riveting the inside – partially because I’m running low on nail caviar, partly because it won’t be seen, and partially because…..well, you can imagine, I’m sure…… I’m sick to death of rivets.

 

And so next? …..more rivets of course! I’m also running a little low on TET, so gave thin superglue a go. Whilst they stick in really well, it does leave more residue around each rivet than the Tamiya. I’ll have to see how it looks under primer, but I’m hopeful it’ll be ok. I got the remainder of the roof, the front plate and most of the back done (including the door frames which also got some basic hinges added ready for the doors themselves). I formed another, smaller pair of lifting rings on the sides. That just leaves the side riveting and I can finally prime this part and move onto another bit.