1/35 Vickers MkII

[vaoinas]

To be honest at first the Vickers Mk.II seemed to me as one of those uninteresting pointless 

armored boxes that I would never bother myself with.

 

But watching your build here it really has started to grow on me...

[Model Mate]

Yes; it’s a funny looking thing - it keeps reminding me of a Dalek for some reason… nice kit on the whole, though the tracks are awful. The interior is spacious and easy to get to. With a bit of clean up (removing some strengthening ribs in the mould) you’d end up with a tidy box to go to town on detailing the interior. I’m just doing a rough approximation of the insides to be honest, but with some decent reference material, the inside of this tank would make an ideal “starting at scratching” project.

[Model Mate]

Most of the vehicle was by now all together, so I set about painting the interior. I sprayed the insides with Halfords white plastic primer, which gave a pretty good, consistent colour as you’d expect, and I decided that it would do as the main interior coat.

 

A few Vallejo colours were used to detail various bits and bobs. I painted the (brass) fire extinguishers and the gun recoil tube(?) bright yellow with the intention of using brass pigment on top to get a hopefully convincing brass colour. I then added chipping in dark grey using my “Kevin” paintbrush.

 

Here’s the pigment I intended trying – unfortunately and despite the colour on the cover, I’d forgotten that it’s actually copper coloured rather than gold/brass. I resorted to Vallejo’s brass model colour, which again I’d forgotten is awful – 2 pence pieces in aspic.

 

Finally, I remembered that I’ve got some metallic sharpies, and the “gold” came to the rescue and looks “ok”. I really must chuck out the Vallejo brass and get some decent brass paint.

 

All the interior parts received an overall burnt umber wash and brown and black pin washes followed by a white drybrush.

 

With that done, I finished off the exterior PE and plastic pieces, though I left off the driver’s cupola and delicate headlights. The fenders and their PE support brackets were a bit of a pain to get straight and level. Some of the engineering of this kit is a bit ropey to be honest. I’m sure there would be much cleaner, stronger and smarter ways to engineer it. That said, the engineering of the main hull and its bottom plate is a good approach, and meant that I didn’t need to install the interior just yet. The floor plate clicks pretty nicely into place and can be removed after priming and painting to get the insides fitted. All the doors and hatches were fixed in place using tape and white-tac and then it was primer time.

 

I sprayed it with Halfords body-shop black. This is good stuff, and generally seems to dry without the grainy finish that can be a result of rattle cans. Unfortunately though, in order to get into all the nooks and crannies I ended up using more than I’d like, and some of the wheel and running gear plate detail is a bit soft as a result. This time I’m going to try modulating the top coats a bit in preference to pre-highlighting, so no azimuthal white today.

 

Main paint next….

[Keeff]

Very nice so far.  I like the sharpie pen use ... I'll have to remember that! 

 

Nice work on the interior ... 👏 

 

Keith 😁

[Model Mate]

Thanks Keef - yes, the sharpies are really useful; I wish I’d remembered it sooner too!

[Model Mate]

Having completed all of my major boat repairs/improvements, I’ve now thankfully been able to devote a bit of time to this project.

 

I sprayed the whole thing in a mixture of Tamiya XF-5 and XF-67 (50/50). The instructions would have me paint it all olive drab (XF-62), but having done a bit of research, the interwar bronze green looks much greener than that to my eyes. I added a third drop of XF-55 to lighten it (33/33/33) and highlighted the upper facing panels, with a bit of emphasis on the panel centres. It’s hard to photograph, but I’m really happy with this colour. The turret was stuck down on a piece of card with double sided tape to protect the interior colour by the way. I couldn’t be bothered to mask and spray the gun, so I gave it a couple of brush applied coats instead. The same was done for the interior faces of all the hatches in due course, and for this, I used slightly more of the dark green to get a fresher, unfaded colour.

 

Once dry, I prised off all the hatches and removed the masking. Kevin the paintbrush got dragged out again, and I applied some dark grey scratches before a bit of detail painting – dark grey for the exhaust (which I “dented” earlier) with some sponge-applied light grey splatters, and model-air IJA earth brown for the tracks. This stuff brushes pretty badly but ends up looking ok in the end.

 

Then it all got an overall application of Klear. This was applied in a few coats, diluted 50/50 with water and using a largeish flat brush. I find this is just as good as spraying if not better – it looks a bit alarming as it can tend to foam, with tiny bubbles forming, but they disappear pretty quickly. Once the Klear was dry, I applied some very thin acrylic washes to the exhaust using rusty colours. This will get further attention later with oils and pastels.

 

 

 I stuck the decals on, but this didn’t go particularly smoothly. The decal sheets seemed to have some areas where the water just wouldn’t penetrate, so they took some effort to get off the backing and in place. I then demonstrated incredible “fingers and thumbs” clumsiness by accidentally pulling various of them off as I worked around the model. There are only 6 of them, but I made a real meal of it – grr. What ones were left settled down very nicely using a dab of microsol.

 

Before the internals can go in, I need to get the machine guns sorted. These were stuck together and I finished off the detailing of the door and hatch interior faces, ready for paint. The guns then got painted – Vallejo model colour black mixed with a touch of model air steel for a buffable dark gunmetal, sand acrylic followed by “dry” burnt umber oil for the handles and grey for the back of the ball mount. I made up support frame/leg arrangements from plastic scraps and painted them white and grey. The gold sharpie came out again for the bullet feeds and they got a swipe with a graphite pencil.

 

Time for a wash! I decided with this one to forgo the overall burnt umber slosh wash I normally use; partly because the paint colour is pretty dark already (so it probably won’t show up particularly well) and also because I’m happy with this overall colour, and don’t want it turning brown. I started then, with a black oil pin wash. The lower hull detail is pretty soft now, due to my over-enthusiastic priming, but a technique I used to employ back in my aeroplane days (especially on short run or really old kits) came back to me. This requires a very specialised, accurate and refined tool, but one that we all possess – the Mk1 pinky. Once the black oil wash has dried sufficiently to turn matt, the MK1 pinky can be deployed to remove the excess. I’ve used cotton buds, dry and moist brushes, paper towels and everything else, but this really is the best. For really tight corners, I do resort to a rubber brush, but it’s not quite as good as the finger.

 

[Model Mate]

I’m on a roll here….

 

The guns were installed and the interior inserted from below, allowing me to fix the bottom plate in place.

 

I clicked the hatches into place and applied a very light spray of Tamiya flat earth; from above (mainly to tone down the decals) and along the lower edges to give a bit of dust effect. This was followed by a light and selective matt varnish. I didn’t want to completely lose the nice sheen, but the tracks grilles and gun were far too shiny

 

 

I then went round with the pastel dust – a mix of cream/white, brown, black and rusty tones to make a light earth colour. This was daubed on with a stiff brush and fixed in place with dabs of white spirit on the main mud areas. The same stuff was diluted a bit more and used more like a wash on nooks and crannies on the upper surfaces. These were scrubbed back with a softish brush to blend them out a bit. Finally, I added some dry pastels to blend the dirtiest bits and a few dabs of Klear were added at the bottom edges to try to replicate wetter sections. Not sure this really worked to be honest….

 

To finish it all off, I superglued the hatches and doors in their open positions and quickly photographed it before they all got knocked off again. RFI coming very soon. Thanks for watching!

[Hamden]

 

Stunning result, great workmanship!

 

   Stay safe       Roger