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Revell VW T1 Panel Van


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I know quite a few of you have seen the build, but before I start here it is in all its 'glory'. As with all my RFI threads, all comments and constructive criticism are welcome. After all, I've spent almost 6 months looking at this in close-up so I'm fully aware it's not perfect!

 

 

This is the first car I've built which didn't come with a complete body; with this one you have to assemble the panels to get the boxy VW van shape. This one, like the majority of my builds, is done straight out of the box so is naturally simpler than some of the masterpieces others put on this site. Before I started I wasn't confident that I would get a good result from it, particularly since it has opening doors all round. Fortunately Revell have done a good job of both the design and production of this and it went together pretty well. The main issues encountered were with the rear access door which was a little warped and needed micro-magnets to hold it in place... and then I went and snapped it anyway so had to do a repair. That repair wasn't as successful as the front bumper repair, but fortunately still isn't too noticeable.

 

As for the kit itself, if you're into VW vans (I'm not, but still a nice looking model) then this one is well worth building, just probably not if it's your first car model. This one was the Jaegermeister livery as detailed in the box, but there are also instructions for a plain version too. Paints are Halfords primers, then Tamiya British Green and Orange topped off with Humbrol Clear. I was quite scathing about the Humbrol Clear in the thread, but to be fair it isn't a bad clear provided you take into account its limitations - namely it does not like humidity so you really want to be clear-coating in summer on a dry day otherwise it clouds up. Fortunately you can get rid of the clouding by giving it another coat of clear on a dryer day. The big plus of the Humbrol Clear is that it is very gentle on decals, certainly much better than Tamiya or Mr. Hobby. The interior is clear-coated Halfords Grey primer.

 

Onto the build, and once again I've probably got a few too many pics here. But at least it should give a pretty good indication of what it looks like now its finished. As you can see from some of the photos, my new photography toy is a sheet of dusty black perspex...

 

I'll start off with a walk around the van. The driver's door does try to close in too far but can be positioned with care. But here's the doors-closed look:

 

Front left 3/4 view

 

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Driver's Side

 

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Rear left 3/4 view

 

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Rear View

 

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Rear right 3/4 view

 

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Passenger Side

 

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Front right 3/4 view

 

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Front view

 

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As I mentioned earlier, the doors also open, although it is being displayed all shut up. But here's some pics with the doors open anyway:

 

Side views first:

 

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And then from the back

 

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And finally a couple of 3/4 views from the loading doors side

 

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I'll finish off with some close-ups of the insides, those bits you never really notice. First of all the engine bay, not a patch on those which have been detailed up but it's a dark hole on this colour van anyway so not particularly visible.

 

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The load bay is quite simple to do, but seems to have more character to it in the photos than you see in the real life model. The second photo, taken through the side doors, also feels large to my eyes.

 

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And onto the last compartment, the cabin. At least with the opening doors you do get a chance for a slightly better view in here, but still not the easiest place to get a good shot of.

 

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And that's it. Thanks to everyone who followed and I hope you like it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Tidy build and great photos especially the close ups of the interior. I especially like the cabin one.

 

Nice contrast between the grey of the interior and the slightly more colourful exterior!

 

Nick

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Beautifully built and detailed especially the interior.  Having spent a considerable time rattling around the UK and the Continent in one of these with a folk band back in the late '60s I am almost too familiar with the inside of it and you've really got the "feel" of being in one again.  Top notch photography, too!

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Thanks everyone for your comments, always nice to receive.

 

There do seem to be a couple of points which have kept coming up, namely paint and photography.

 

Paint colours are nothing whatsoever to do with me, they are entirely down to whoever chose those colours at Jaegermeister so the credit for that is all theirs. All I did was spray it on (which took ages, and leaves me wondering if I will get through winter without running out of painted parts due to how long it took), then polish it with various compounds. Mostly I'm happy with it, but as usual there are a few bits which could be improved.

 

As for the photography, that is another hobby, although I'm very much in the amateur ranks there. The best advice I can give for anyone is to either have a tripod or lots of light as it can be difficult to get a photo without shake sometimes. That's made worse by the face that when you want to photograph models you ideally want a tight aperture (higher f-number) to give some depth of field which lengthens the exposure time. You can go with a lower f-number in those circumstances where you want to blur the background or want to highlight a specific part of the model and blur the rest. As always, there's limits to what can be done - for example with those pictures of the interior I had the front of the camera lens touching the van to enable me to get as close as possible. That not only limits the light available (I had to pull back on the engine bay for example because the camera blocked all the light), but to do this you will also need a camera which can cope with being so close.

 

 

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Thats a great build. Is it the Revell kit? I built the camper version for TMW mag a few months ago. Had a lot of fit problems.

 

I'm also a photographer! Landscapes is my thing.    @chriscooperphotographic  if you're on Instagram

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14 hours ago, Ryedale Wolf said:

Thats a great build. Is it the Revell kit? I built the camper version for TMW mag a few months ago. Had a lot of fit problems.

 

I'm also a photographer! Landscapes is my thing.    @chriscooperphotographic  if you're on Instagram

Thanks both of you, much appreciated as I know the standards you both achieve.

 

This is the Revell kit, being just the van I suspect it's probably quite  a simpler than the camper as you don't need to fit any furniture, nor all the windows (although they were all supplied for some reason). I guess I also had the advantage that I could take my time over it while I'd imagine if you were building for the magazine there would be more of a deadline.

 

As for photography, I'll try anything although I'm not very good at pictures of people. But I do like a good landscape shot, particularly if there's water in there which often helps make up for my lack of skills. I'm not on Instragram, but had a look down your list as far as it would let me - very odd to find that one of them is from near enough the same spot (Kirkham) as a picture I took earlier in the year. Yours has much better lighting though, not to mention they've obviously repaired the damage from where the bridge was hit (yet again!) over winter.

 

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On 21/10/2022 at 23:18, Stickframe said:

Beautiful build!  great finishes and photography!  actually, a remarkable finish!

 

Cheers

Nick 

 

Thanks, I always try to get a nice shiny finish as it something has been regularly waxed, in part because a shiny finish usually hides a multitude of sins:D

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The trick is to line the gaps up on the light-coloured (orange) bits and leave the bad gaps for the dark bits which don't show up on camera! ;)

 

More seriously, I thought the fitment of the various doors were probably the weakest point of this model, the loadbay side doors in particular are all just slightly out. I may have been lucky too in that everything seemed to fit quite well straight off the bat, the only exception being that real load door which had a warp on meaning I had to use some small magnets to hold that straight.

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