Rolls-Royce Armoured Car 1914 & 1920

[diablo rsv]

Not much progress to report really as I have mostly been doing some research. 

Firstly regarding the 1920 car, I have been looking at stowage options to add some interest. I have noticed on a lot of the cars in this period there seems to be some sort of weighted bags on a long strap hanging from the hooks on the hull. @Kingsman?

 

     

 

I'm not sure if they are all of the same thing but on the car I'm modelling there seems to be some remnants hanging from the hooks.

 

 

On the 1914 car I have been looking into camouflage. 

It would be impossible to determine the exact colours just by looking at old black and white photos so all I can do is make an educated guess and go with what I feel looks right.

It looks like three colours have been used. I'm reasonably happy that the base colour would have been grey and probably a light admiralty grey, and the other two colours were most likely a green and a brown.

Around the period that these cars were in France the artillery had taken to camouflaging their guns with patches of green, brown, grey and cream separated with thin black lines.

The photo below is of one of the R.R Armoured cars towing a gun painted in this style.

 

 

 

I assume that the car would have been painted in similar colours. The problem is I don't know what these colours really are. After a little research I found a contemporary painting by Capt Kenneth Forbes of his "6in Howitzers in Action".

 

 

So it is these colours that I shall try to replicate.

Using a piece of scrap card I tried out a number of combinations.

 

 

Eventually I found something I am reasonably happy with.

 

 

The green is a mixture of Tamiya XF-58 and XF-59 with a drop of X-15. The brown is AK RC031 and RC034. I may tweak them a bit when I see them on the model with filters.

My next problem was deciding which tone is which colour.

 

 

Film of this period often depicted red as a dark tone and as this is likely to be a reddish brown I shall assume the darker tone is the brown.

This should be a fun masking project.

 

Wayne

 

 

[Trevor L]

Excellent detective work!

I reckon you're right about the darker shade being brown.

[Kingsman]

The bags in your photos are almost certainly local animal skin water carriers.  Those look like hot climes.

 

As for colours, this came up the other day in the AFV WW1 forum in relation to 18pdr guns.  I have copied and pasted what I said there.

 

As frequently discussed here and elsewhere at length, WW1 colours are a difficult subject because there was no codification and no colour imagery.

 

It is commonly held that pre-war artillery pieces and associated limbers and wagons were a mid-grey shade.  It is also clear that some artillery pieces, like the early tanks, were painted in gaudy Solomon-style schemes.  With the arrival of static warfare and aerial observation camouflage quickly became important. Grey was quickly seen to be the wrong colour.

 

The colour mixes for all British military paint colours are contained in the Handbook for Artificers, the 1912 and 1915 editions being germane to WW1.  Facsimile reprints are available: try Abe Books.  But these are mixes using dry pigments in linseed oil and rely on white lead, which gave a yellowy tinted white unlike today's brighter titanium white.  So they don't give much impression of the actual colour.

 

Service Colour became pretty much universal during WW1 from 1915 and I imagine that most wartime production of 18pdrs would have been this colour.  This colour is often meaninglessly and uselessly called Khaki.  It was certainly a brown, and probably at the greenish end of brown.  From the ochre main pigmentation it must have been similar to the WW2 SCC2 Brown, probably a touch more greenish.

 

No-one knows what the Solomon colours were, or even whether they were "standard" colours from the Handbook [for Artificers] .  As a working assumption for field use it would be logical that they were.  There are mixes in there for a dark Brunswick green and a sandy colour as well as grey and Service Colour, a reddish colour, black and white.  So a working hypothesis might be Service Colour, Brunswick Green, sandy yellow and grey.

 

Which seems to fit with the painting.

[Bullbasket]

That should look really good when it's done. Good luck with that Wayne.

 

John.

[Bertie McBoatface]

That looks so good. I'm rather glad I didn't get to compete with it. 

 

Great paint. Great chippery. 

[diablo rsv]

On 07/01/2023 at 15:24, Kingsman said:

Which seems to fit with the painting.

 

Once again thankyou very much for your input Peter. That pretty much confirms what I was thinking.

 

I thought I might start the painting process on the 1918 car with the turret as it seemed to be the easiest option. Using the photos as a guide I masked off the gray areas with some Silly Putty. The easiest way to use it was to put it on as thinly as possible in roughly the correct position and then shape it with a sharpened cocktail stick.

 

 

I then sprayed on my mix for the green areas. I needed to let this dry overnight before masking as I didn't want to scratch the soft paint with the cocktail stick. The down side of using silly putty for the masking is that it does move over time which is why I put it on as thinly as possible. Keeping it cool also helps to slow down it's self levelling properties.

 

 

Once the brown was sprayed on I could remove the masks. The result wasn't bad and required very little in the way of touching up. Once the black outlining is applied any rough edges will be covered up.

 

 

Unfortunately this is quite a time consuming process and has made me realise that I am unlikely to get both cars finished by the deadline. I therefore decided to concentrate on the 1920 car as this was closest to completion.

 

Most of these cars appear to carry a fair bit of stowage, so I thought I should make an attempt at making some for my model.

On my subject model there is a box on each running board covered in rope netting. Despite depicting it on the box art Meng don't supply anything apart from a couple of non descript boxes.

They appear to be more like leather suitcases so I adapted the Meng boxes as best I could.

 

 

 

The netting was a little more difficult as I just couldn't find anything suitable. I tried camo nets, scrim tape, and medical tape but either the holes were too big or too small or the rope was the wrong gauge. I even tried old Subutteo goal nets.

In the end I decided to have a go at making my own from silk beading cord. Basically I made a grid on card wrapped the cord round it and threaded the cross cords with a needle.

 

 

 

The end result is a little scruffy as threads started to come out of the cord with handling but it's good enough at normal viewing distances.

 

 

I made the sausage bag, in the picture above, and a few other bits and pieces, including the now identified water carriers ( thanks @Kingsman ) from Green stuff epoxy putty  and some tarps from Tamiya epoxy putty.

The weathering was done entirely with oil paints. Despite it being a longer process I find it easier to control than pigments when it comes to creating dust effects.

With that I think I may of actually completed a model.  

 

 

Looking at the photos I can see as always there is room for improvement but then that's part of the joy of this hobby. Always learning as we go.

 

 

 

 

 

That's probably more than enough photos for now. 

 

I will keep on working on the 1918 car, you never know I may get it done in time.

 

Wayne

 

[Trevor L]

Excellent all round, and I love the net idea.

[Kingsman]

I don't know how common rear lights were on R-Rs but Meng have apparently omitted them.  Apologies for not noticing sooner.

 

Here they are on an 11th Hussars car in Egypt pre-WW2 and the Bovington car.  The housings appear to be a form of Bakelite so I'm assumimg these must be a late 30's addition.  The recently-restored car at The Curragh doesn't have them, but is supposed to be original 1920 spec.  Period pictures of the rear are annoyingly rare.

  

[Bullbasket]

That is so good Wayne. Brilliant work on the stowage, especially the netting. The paint job and the weathering are first class. A very nice model.

 

John.

[Geo1966]

Fantastic work Wayne, that looks to me like it should be in a magazine or even a museum! Love the suitcases, netting, weathering, well all of it actually!

 

George

[Muchmirth]

Sublime! All of it but particularity for going to the effort of making the netting. All the other stowage looks great too as well as your chipping and use of oils. 👍👍👍

[edjbartos]

That looks amazing Wayne, so many good things to look at here, the luggage looks brilliant, I really like the look of the sausage bag and the netting over the suitcases. I really like the front view showing the tyres, I like the way you have done the dusting on them, showing the detail of the tyre treads. The weathering is just right. All in all a fabulous model....👍

 

Ed

[diablo rsv]

12 hours ago, Kingsman said:

I don't know how common rear lights were on R-Rs but Meng have apparently omitted them.  Apologies for not noticing sooner.

 

Here they are on an 11th Hussars car in Egypt pre-WW2 and the Bovington car.  The housings appear to be a form of Bakelite so I'm assumimg these must be a late 30's addition.  The recently-restored car at The Curragh doesn't have them, but is supposed to be original 1920 spec.  Period pictures of the rear are annoyingly rare.

 

Thanks Peter. 

You're right there, rear views are very hard to find and every one seems to show a different configuration. In another view of the 11th Hussars cars they have the ball mounted Vickers, so I doubt they are my subject car but it would make sense that mine should have a light of some sort. I also thought about adding a step, as seen on a lot of cars, as the rear of the model does seem a little barren. I can't find a decent close up of the light so scratch building one may prove difficult for now so maybe I should just add some brackets.

 

Wayne

[Kingsman]

5 minutes ago, diablo rsv said:

I can't find a decent close up of the light so scratch building one may prove difficult for now so maybe I should just add some brackets.

Give me a day or so and I'll get you some.

[diablo rsv]

11 hours ago, Bullbasket said:

That is so good Wayne. Brilliant work on the stowage, especially the netting. The paint job and the weathering are first class. A very nice model.

 

John.

 

10 hours ago, Geo1966 said:

Fantastic work Wayne, that looks to me like it should be in a magazine or even a museum! Love the suitcases, netting, weathering, well all of it actually!

 

George

 

10 hours ago, Muchmirth said:

Sublime! All of it but particularity for going to the effort of making the netting. All the other stowage looks great too as well as your chipping and use of oils. 👍👍👍

 

9 hours ago, edjbartos said:

That looks amazing Wayne, so many good things to look at here, the luggage looks brilliant, I really like the look of the sausage bag and the netting over the suitcases. I really like the front view showing the tyres, I like the way you have done the dusting on them, showing the detail of the tyre treads. The weathering is just right. All in all a fabulous model....👍

 

Ed

 

Thank you all very much! I really appreciate your wonderful feed back. 

 

Wayne

[srkirad]

Fantastic finish!

I really like weathering on inner side of mudguards, and how dirt/dust covered tires - you can see tires itself subtle under the dust.

 

Car itself is also pretty good looking - robust, but also a bit sportish, like a armoured version of sports car

 

Cheers,

S.

[Kingsman]

Some rear light pictures as promised.  There is a red lens to the rear and clear lenses to each side, all lit from the same bulb.  I wondered about the purpose of the clear lights but perhaps that was an early attempt to provide lighting for the number plate, noting the angled sides of the lights.  In any case they would throw some light onto the rear surface and increase its visibility.  I presume there was no brake light function here as the bulb is single-filament.  Unless the white light was the rear light and the red light was the brake light.  While I thought they were Bakelite they turn out to be rubber: the Rubbolite.  Plus some views of front light wiring and rear step.  There are also grab handles front and back on the rear side boxes but I don't know how original or common those were.

          

[StuartH]

That is an absolutely beautiful model. Stunning 👏

The weathering is just right and the dust effects are superb. I also completely love the netting that you made around the cases....well worth the effort and they look so authentic.

Very well done indeed!

[diablo rsv]

3 hours ago, Kingsman said:

Some rear light pictures as promised.  There is a red lens to the rear and clear lenses to each side, all lit from the same bulb.  I wondered about the purpose of the clear lights but perhaps that was an early attempt to provide lighting for the number plate, noting the angled sides of the lights.  In any case they would throw some light onto the rear surface and increase its visibility.  I presume there was no brake light function here as the bulb is single-filament.  Unless the white light was the rear light and the red light was the brake light.  While I thought they were Bakelite they turn out to be rubber: the Rubbolite.  Plus some views of front light wiring and rear step.  There are also grab handles front and back on the rear side boxes but I don't know how original or common those were.

          

 

Thank you soo much Peter, that is perfect. Now I just need to figure out the best way of replicating them. They are the sort of thing that would be ideal for 3D printing.

 

Wayne

[diablo rsv]

On 27/01/2023 at 11:07, srkirad said:

Fantastic finish!

I really like weathering on inner side of mudguards, and how dirt/dust covered tires - you can see tires itself subtle under the dust.

 

Car itself is also pretty good looking - robust, but also a bit sportish, like a armoured version of sports car

 

Cheers,

S.

 

Thank you very much! 

I know what you mean about the cars looking sporty but I don't think speed was their best asset.

 

 

 

1 hour ago, StuartH said:

That is an absolutely beautiful model. Stunning 👏

The weathering is just right and the dust effects are superb. I also completely love the netting that you made around the cases....well worth the effort and they look so authentic.

Very well done indeed!

 

 

Thanks Stuart! That's lovely feedback.

 

Wayne

[John Masters]

Beautiful build!  One of my favourites really brought to life.

[Kingsman]

3 hours ago, diablo rsv said:

Now I just need to figure out the best way of replicating them. They are the sort of thing that would be ideal for 3D printing.

They are an odd fiddly shape, and tiny in scale.  Good luck.

[Maginot]

Superb work!

[diablo rsv]

On 28/01/2023 at 21:29, John Masters said:

Beautiful build!  One of my favourites really brought to life.

 

10 hours ago, Maginot said:

Superb work!

 

Thank you very much!

 

Back onto the 1918 car I have continued with the camouflage. Using the same method as I did with the turret I masked of the Gray areas and sprayed the green. 

 

 

After leaving to dry overnight the green was masked off ready for the brown.

The exciting bit is removing the masks to reveal the result.

 

 

Once again the end result wasn't bad with just a little touch up to do here and there.

This has been a very time consuming process. I'm not sure whether it is more difficult to match the patterns on the photos or to try to create a matching authentic pattern in the areas that can't be seen in the photos.

What I did learn during the painting process and studying the patterns on the real car is that the light colour is the most likely to have been painted last preceded by what appears in the photos as the dark colour.

This makes me believe that the mid tone is probably the base colour. Looking back through my reference photos I found one of some cars in Arras without the camouflage and they do appear a little darker than the Gray I have used.

 

 

I believe these are painted in either a darker gray or more likely service colour ( Khaki brown ).  This could mean that my subject car would be khaki brown with the darker areas being either dark brown or possibly dark green and the light colour a buff or cream colour.

 

 

 

Looking at the above photo there isn't much green around so it seems there would be little point adding it to the camouflage.

My OCD is going a bit nuts, do I start again or just go with it?  I doubt this one will make the deadline anyway.

If anyone has any thoughts it would be appreciated.

 

Wayne

 

 

[diablo rsv]

After sleeping on it I decided that I probably have got the colours wrong but life's to short to strip it and start again so I shall live with it.

The next job was how to approach the black lines. I thought the pattern and the shape of the car would make it difficult to use a paint brush and that only leaves the marker pen option. I tried a few different types but the only one that really worked was the Sharpie Ultra Fine Point. 

It really needed a mat surface to work on so I applied some pin washes whilst the model still had the satin finish and then a mat varnish was sprayed on for the lining work.

I haven't made the neatest job of the lining but neither is it on the original car although I will tidy it up a few areas.

 

 

The Sharpie dries with a patchy shiny effect and needs a coat of varnish over it.  My preferred lacquer varnish would react with the Sharpie ink and cause bleeding so I decided to try out the VMS water based acrylic Varnish. The process of applying it is a little daunting as it has to be put on in quite a heavy wet coat and I was concerned I might end up with runs or sags but the end result is pretty impressive apart from a couple of areas where it has dried white as can bee seen around a couple of the rivets on the turret in the above photo. I don't think I will change from my normal Mr Hobby clear coats just yet.

I have now added a few more details here and there and finished scratch building the barricade hook mechanism.

 

 

It is proving difficult to find clear photos of the back of the cars so I have made a bit off a guess as to what to add. I will keep looking though.

 

 

 

I may make a few more stowage items but in most pictures these cars aren't carrying much so I think I'm pretty much done with the assembly and painting processes.

 

 

 

The cars were clad with a mineral substance called Uralite which was supposed to diminish the effect of armour piercing bullets. I know nothing of this substance or how it would affect the paints appearance and it's difficult to tell from the photos so I will need to think about how I am going to approach that and the weathering. These cars operated in some pretty filthy conditions and I would like to replicate that but I always find it a little scary applying heavy weathering. 

 

Wayne