1/35 Vickers MkII

[Model Mate]

After completing my mammoth scratchbuild, I need a new project. I threw together a lovely 1/72 T-35 kit, but it only took a handful of sessions, and whilst I’m happy with the result and thoroughly enjoyed it, I only have very limited display space, and it failed to entirely enthral me like a true DIY model does.

 

I’ve not yet decided on a new full-scratch project and am not really ready for the commitment just yet anyway, so time to “scratch the scratch itch” in part at least…. Looking through my stash (not something that took long as there’s only a couple of planes, an old car and one tank) I found a nice looking Hobbyboss Vickers medium MkII.

 

It looks to be a very nice kit, with individual link tracks, a little bit of etch and some clever moulding, all very neatly packaged.

 

 

Some of this clever moulding includes a one-piece upper hull which has a number of separate hatches, so to my mind, it’s crying out for an interior.

 

 

It’s also full of injector-pin marks, so the first job was to scrape (using a curved No.10 scalpel) and sand them away.

 

 

I then set-to with the plastic card. I’ve found a couple of images of a resin interior kit online, which together with real interior photos, allowed me to start knocking up a raised floor, bulkhead and driver’s compartment from 0.5mm sheet. These are just blu-tacked in place for now. I’ll detail (and probably paint) them all before slotting them into place.

 

 

It’s a nice, clear and open box basically, so pretty simple to make and easy to see why crews were apparently fond of this machine. I need some checker-plate flooring though, so I think I’ll need to order some textured card.

 

It’s good to be back in the saddle, and while I get to scratch some fun bits, it shouldn’t take a year to complete (hopefully!)

[edjbartos]

That's a super start, I'm looking forward to seeing how you do the interior, It's looking good so far..

 

Ed

[Hamden]

 

Looking forward to seeing what you do with this one

Comfy chair pulled up beer and pop corn ordered

 

      Stay safe          Roger

[FrancisGL]

HI modelmate,

Very good start with the kit, another strange interwar vehicle-

Cheers.

Francis.👍

 

 

[Bullbasket]

Good start. There's a very nice camouflage pattern for one of these in one of the Mike Starmer publications. It's a Middle Eastern one, sort of sand colour with a brown disruptive pattern.

 

John.

[Model Mate]

11 minutes ago, Bullbasket said:

Good start. There's a very nice camouflage pattern for one of these in one of the Mike Starmer publications. It's a Middle Eastern one, sort of sand colour with a brown disruptive pattern.

 

John.

Yes, I've seen a nice desert camo on these, but I think that's for a (later?) version that has a different turret with a bustle, and there's only a single turret choice in the box so it may need to be boring green. I'm keen to find a funkier scheme though, and it was a popular vehicle, so there might be something valid out there....?

[sardaukar]

52 minutes ago, Model Mate said:

Yes, I've seen a nice desert camo on these, but I think that's for a (later?) version that has a different turret with a bustle, and there's only a single turret choice in the box so it may need to be boring green. I'm keen to find a funkier scheme though, and it was a popular vehicle, so there might be something valid out there....?

 

ah the shed on tracks as I like to call it, there is one with a black and silver camo out there, shame the photo is in black and white. there is also one with an asbestos coating which would be very interesting.

[echen]

8 minutes ago, sardaukar said:

there is also one with an asbestos coating which would be very interesting.

So long as  you don't breath near it................................

[THEscaleSHOW]

On 16/03/2023 at 11:08, Model Mate said:

After completing my mammoth scratchbuild, I need a new project. I threw together a lovely 1/72 T-35 kit, but it only took a handful of sessions, and whilst I’m happy with the result and thoroughly enjoyed it, I only have very limited display space, and it failed to entirely enthral me like a true DIY model does.

 

I’ve not yet decided on a new full-scratch project and am not really ready for the commitment just yet anyway, so time to “scratch the scratch itch” in part at least…. Looking through my stash (not something that took long as there’s only a couple of planes, an old car and one tank) I found a nice looking Hobbyboss Vickers medium MkII.

 

It looks to be a very nice kit, with individual link tracks, a little bit of etch and some clever moulding, all very neatly packaged.

 

 

Some of this clever moulding includes a one-piece upper hull which has a number of separate hatches, so to my mind, it’s crying out for an interior.

 

 

It’s also full of injector-pin marks, so the first job was to scrape (using a curved No.10 scalpel) and sand them away.

 

 

I then set-to with the plastic card. I’ve found a couple of images of a resin interior kit online, which together with real interior photos, allowed me to start knocking up a raised floor, bulkhead and driver’s compartment from 0.5mm sheet. These are just blu-tacked in place for now. I’ll detail (and probably paint) them all before slotting them into place.

 

 

It’s a nice, clear and open box basically, so pretty simple to make and easy to see why crews were apparently fond of this machine. I need some checker-plate flooring though, so I think I’ll need to order some textured card.

 

It’s good to be back in the saddle, and while I get to scratch some fun bits, it shouldn’t take a year to complete (hopefully!)

 

This is what comes out when a Whippet and a Rolls-Royce Armoured Car had "fun" together 😁

Give life to the baby!

MD

[Model Mate]

And on to the turret…. As with the hull, a few ejector marks needed filling – not that they’ll be seen, but what the heck. The gun has no interior detail at all, and so I’ll have to scratch the breech and so on. What does come in the kit is a pair of plates (half in the turret and half on the turret ring) and a mantle shape that are there just to allow the thing to be mounted and bear no particular resemblance to reality. I cut down and re-shaped the plates and the mantle to better reflect what I’ve seen on photos.

 

I then cleaned up the barrel and stuck it onto the mantle and added a ring of thin plastic strip to the inside of the turret ring.

 

The ring needs a toothed gear running around the inside, so I glued a series of tiny strip slivers to a wide strip. A bit tedious, but no worse than some kits’ tracks to be honest.

 

Once trimmed, this was glued into the ring, on top of the thin strip I’d already glued in place. I also took delivery of my patterned sheet, so could start to make the little podium that sits in the centre of the fighting compartment. The texture is a bit on the large side, but it's the best I could get. In the good old days of fag packets, the foil from 20 Embassy would have been ideal!

 

Reasonable progress…. I had a further think about the engineering of my interior. Initially I glued little shelves onto the side-walls to allow the floor to drop into place from above, but that will mean that anything fixed to the walls will need to be added after the floor. Alternatively, I could fix stuff to the walls (boxes, seats, bulkheads etc.) and then offer the floor up from below. Whilst this means that the wall mounted stuff can go in before the floor is fitted, painting all of this inside a box is going to be tricky, so my current thinking is to make the floor including all the wall boxes and push the whole lot in from the bottom once painted. That will mean that any gaps will be at the top, out of sight. The challenge will be to ensure it’s all sufficiently square to avoid gaps between the wall-mounted stuff and the actual walls. There’s still be some bits and bobs (plates, wires, rivet strips and so on) that will need to be on the walls, but it should make things easier than any other approach I hope. It’s all these decisions that make scratchbuilding an entertaining challenge!

[echen]

Looking forward to seeing this progress.

[Hamden]

 

Nice progress, like what you've done with the turret ring.

 

    Stay safe             Roger

[Bullbasket]

Wow! That turret ring is something else. And you haven't been carted off to the funny farm yet?? Nice work.

 

John.

[FrancisGL]

Hi Modelmate,

Magnificent work, the turret ring is sublime...thanks for sharing.

Cheers

Francis.👍

[Model Mate]

3 hours ago, Bullbasket said:

Wow! That turret ring is something else. And you haven't been carted off to the funny farm yet?? Nice work.

 

John.

 

1 hour ago, FrancisGL said:

Hi Modelmate,

Magnificent work, the turret ring is sublime...thanks for sharing.

Cheers

Francis.👍

 Thanks both - no, the turret ring really wasn't that demanding or demoralising; it only took about an hour and was quite soothing really. I spaced it all using the Mk1 eyeball which is good enough for me, so didn't need to do a whole load of measuring and marking. At this scale, and given how much (or rather, how little) of it will be visible in the end, I wasn't worried about counting the teeth! 

[Model Mate]

As I mentioned in my last update, I’ve decided to change the process I’m going to use for the interior, so the little ledges I’d glued to the inside on the hull for the floor to sit on needed to be removed. I’m always a little heavy-handed with the extra-thin, so they took a bit of hacking to get off, but cleaned up ok in the end.

 

The little podium that sits in the centre of the fighting compartment is formed of a truncated cone with round plate on top. Truncated cones are easy enough to map out, so I got my dividers and calculator out and made up the necessary curved shape from 0.5mm card. Getting it to stick together is another matter though, so after a bit of head-scratching, I came up with this idea… roll it into shape and jam the bottom into a circle template to hold it, then jam another circle template over the top to hold that in place. I then dribbled plenty of glue into the seam and added a strip to the back of the join, again with plenty of glue. The result isn’t perfect, but by facing the slightly dodgy join towards the front, where it won’t be seen, it’s worked ok I think.

 

Before I hacked off the floor shelves, I positioned all the floors and bulkheads in the hull and glued them together in-situ, but avoided getting any glue between them and the actual hull plastic. Once dry, the whole lot could be popped out the bottom and detailed with the textured card and the new podium, the “seat” of which got a curved length of plastic rod wrapped ‘round.

 

It’s not yet fixed to the kit’s bottom plate – I’ve glued spacers in, under the new floor, but they’ll just provide packing. Hopefully, I’ll not need to glue them together at all, and the base will just push the interior up to hit the ceiling.

 

[Model Mate]

The gun got a bit of detailing in the shape of a breech with a few lumps and bumps – nothing too true to life, but just something to give an impression of the real thing.The gun got a bit of detailing in the shape of a breech with a few lumps and bumps – nothing too true to life, but just something to give an impression of the real thing.

 

Remembering that this is a kit, I put a little effort towards the parts for the running gear. These went together pretty well, but it’s important not to glue the “legs” of each bogie, as the front set need to be at a funky angle and all of them benefit from a bit of articulation at this stage at least.

 

I stuck a few lengths of track together too. These are quite simple, but the mouldings have a bit of flash and the plastic isn’t up to the same high standard as the rest of the kit – it’ just feels a bit nasty, though it glues ok. The links don’t snap nicely together as I’d expected, so I’ve had to do short runs of one or two at a time. I’m sure it’ll end up ok though.

 

I filled the ejector marks on the roof hatches with sprue-goo and sanded them back. There do seem to be quite a few ejector marks on this kit, though they’re all hidden unless you open it up like I’m doing I guess.

 

Now for the fun stuff – back to the scratch work!

I added some interior details to the sidewalls. There’s a bit more to do here yet, but it’s a start.

 

I carried on detailing the rest of interior. Most of this is based on reality, but probably not 100% accurate; particularly the driver’s area, for which I have no photos, but it’ll be pretty hard to see anyway and I knocked up a seat using greenstuff. I’ll paint this separately and fit it later.

 

 

 

Here’ an idea of how much will be visible:

 

 

[Hamden]

42 minutes ago, Model Mate said:

Here’ an idea of how much will be visible:

 

A fair bit will be visible by the looks of things!

Nice attention to detail, it's coming together very nicely

 

           Stay safe             Roger 

[ColonelKrypton]

On 3/21/2023 at 6:52 AM, Model Mate said:

Truncated cones are easy enough to map out, so I got my dividers and calculator out and made up the necessary curved shape from 0.5mm card ...  roll it into shape and jam the bottom into a circle template to hold it, then jam another circle template over the top to hold that in place.

A technique practiced many times many years ago in drafting class and repeated in metal shop out of sheet metal making various bits of ducting - or at least trying too. That is a good idea using the circle template to hold the bits in place. 

 

I had lost track of your build. It is nice to see it well along and all of those added internal bits are looking very nice indeed.

 

cheers, Graham 

 

[PlaStix]

Wow! Seriously impressive modelling going on here!!  

Kind regards,

Stix

[vytautas]

Same here, agree with all the others, a top job.

 

Vytautas

[Model Mate]

Thanks for all the comments folks - much appreciated!

 

Little update today – I’m plugging away at the tracks (tedious), so haven’t got much fun stuff to show…

 

I added some levers and the seat back to the driver’s area. The seat base will go in after painting, but I don’t think the back will get in the way too much, so it can go in now.

 

I’d already made up some ammo box frames and glued them to the interior, but I made them empty, and found that trying to push in pieces of card to represent the actual ammo boxes was a bit of a mess, so I snapped them off, covered their faces with some 0.5mm card and added a frame and details on top to give a neater impression of the filled frames. They need some belt handles adding to each box and some other details, so I may well keep these separate for painting too.

 

[Model Mate]

I’ve had a bit of time off recently, which I know for most is an opportunity to get a whole load of plastic glued together, but for me any spare time requires 1:1 scale work on my boat, so rather ironically, I’ve done less model-making than usual if anything.

 

Still, a bit has been done….

 

The tracks are a bit of a faff, and don’t fit or glue together terribly well, but I got a couple of curved sections made up to match the straight bits already completed. I used the sprockets as jigs to get them aligned. I’ve been intending to treat these as “link and length” and fixing them on after painting and initial weathering, but given the challenge of fixing them together, I think I might resort to gluing them in place and painting/weathering everything all together.

 

I’d been enjoying the scratchbuilt interior, but to be honest, I just want to get it done now, so thorough research and veracity has gone out of the window in favour of loose fantasy using scraps of plastic. This included the main ammo racks. I made up a couple of shells from thick copper cable and brass tube turned in my drill. Again, I really can’t be bothered to make any more, so I’ll make do with these two only.

 

In the same vein, I sprinkled a few other bits and bobs inside….

 

This exercise included making up some basic representations of fire extinguishers. I glued some rod and tube together and then held the bottom ends up to a candle flame to round them off. Unfortunately, the tube melted quicker than the rod, resulting in a rather strange shape, so I had a go at some more; melting the rod ends before fixing them together which was a bit of an improvement. They’re really not great, but they’ll all be buried in the belly of the beast and probably barely visible.

 

Actually, that said, two of them are mounted to the inside of the access doors, which will be open and therefore highly visible – oh well, nevermind.

I added a bit of detail (including the extinguishers) to the aforementioned doors.

 

Sticking with the interior, I fixed some spurious gubbins around the turret ring and inside the turret. The kit has two options for the return rollers – solid and spoked. I chose to use the solid ones entirely on the basis of future spares-box utility, deciding that the spoked ones would be more useful for other builds, and low and behold, they immediately proved their worth as control wheels for the gun. The sighting mechanism thingy to the right of the gun is included in the kit, shown in the instruction diagrams, but not called out which is rather strange and has got me wondering what else is supplied (maybe for a “full interior” version of the kit) but not documented…..?

 

….well, it seems I found another “spare” part. The smaller of the access panels/doors on the right hand side of the vehicle is a ventilation door according to some drawings I have, and the instructions’ drawings show a mesh covering this from the inside, which makes sense. There is what seems to be a matching spare mesh on the (very thick) PE fret, so I glued it in place.

 

I’m really keen to get this somewhat stalled project going, so also got the sponsons finished and glued in place and various external plastic and PE greebles have been sprinkled about, though there are a few more to go yet. The nice thing about this kit is that it seems possible to fix the floor pan (and hence the interior) later on, simplifying the painting and masking process, so that’s what I’ll do. I should be able to start painting interior very soon – hurrah! Here’s how it looks at the moment – with the turret resting in place.

 

 

[SimonL]

Saw this on the shelf in the local hobby shop, so following with interest. Looks great so far!

[Milan Mynar]

Nice scratchbuilding of the interior.