Day Sixteen

Time for a bit of a stop and think.

And here are all the other bits.






































So what's the hold up? It comes down to three major construction problems in ascending order of difficulty: I have to get the remaining brass brackets and such on. The jack mounts are incredibly difficult. Brass to brass for a start, and butt-joins meaning no surface area for the glue. This joint will not be holding a ton like in the old Superglue ads. It will be as fragile as spun sugar. I am not competent to solder these parts. Put two dots of flux, then two tiny streaks of solder. Somehow hold the brackets in place and then just a touch - the touch of a master solderer, which I am not. The glue of choice is superglue or Araldite. Superglue is just going to be a disaster like the first time I tried. The part sticking not quite straight, me trying to adjust it with a fine point, over-correcting, too late - it's messed up. Debond, start again, with a probability of success around 7.5%. No thanks. Therefore I must use Araldite. If I do this right, the small amounts of glue on the feet will form a little pool around, that will strongly suggest welding. I'll be able to tailor that too, with my knife.
















Originally I thought to glue them to the track guard but leave them open to receive the jack once they had been painted with the whole. Then I could slip the already painted jack in, tack it in place, and close the brackets with tweezers. But that makes the two brackets so, so hard to place, individually, in the right place, aligned correctly. The better idea is surely to paint the jack its basic gunmetal, paint the brackets with the base colour. Now I assemble the jack in good relation with its brackets. Then placing that whole assembly will be easy, rather than hard. Okay, that's that sorted.

What else is upsetting me? 

I have actually solved the nightmare of that plate with the four pegs, that is for holding antennae in transport. I put ONE peg on it, because I have a cunning plan. Once I put those two bits of tube on the vertice of the hull there, and the etched brass latch thing, I can make those aerials - including their little collars and wingnuts, hell why not - and then I can just pop them in. Just a tiny dot of glue to hold the mount ends of them against that plate and hey presto! - those four pegs might as well never have existed. Why did I fail, with this part? It was because I cut corners at every point. The four pegs, they were not perfect little cylinders, all the same length (and that would in theory mean 35 times neater than in reality. I should have mounted the bits of rod in my pinvice and filed the ends square, to show that they are cylinders of steel rod and not, I don't know, cocktail weiners. Then, after cleaning up that brass plate thoroughly, what if I had mounted each peg separately, one at a time, caring that each one attain perpendicularity quite without regard to its neighbours. Now I am not placing each peg in reference to its predecessor, and that means I am not incurring quite gross datum error, by the three cumulative errors I make in trying to get all four happening at once. I put all four on at once knowing they were not precise, and that I'd have to massage them to get the effect I wanted. To get an EFFECT rather than the attainable reality of four steel pegs that are perpendicularly welded to a plate. So that's for next time. Looking at this effort I do regret not keeping it, as it was right enough first time. Just a tiny bit of filing to do. But, win some, lose some.

All that remains, and it should be so simple, is to put those two tubes on the hull, that hold the ends of the antennae. But as we have seen, these are proving difficult to render. Maybe if I sit here all day I will, with the solder, produce two whose holes are convincing and which are exactly the same length. And the right length. The solution here must be to find different rod or tube which is exactly the right diameter and which can be drilled. The two parts start out a little long. I drill them deep. Then I clean up their ends so they are the same length, then I drill them some more. I need those edges to be thin, and clean. Otherwise they are not tubes, and I want tubes.

But this is what's really bothering me:

From the beginning, before I even bought the model, I viewed these hooks as being likely the greatest challenge of the build. They are tiny, smallest hooks I've ever dealt with. And there are rather a lot of them along the hull, and they have to be in line and spaced properly. They have to be glued in place just right, each one. To make it worse, they aren't the type for which you can just drill two holes, and have to worry only about getting two bends right. These are *applique* and that's a bummer. There is more: photos in my book show two consecutive hooks that are different damn sizes! I cannot use that as any kind of excuse; they still have to be very similar in size and shape, even if in reality they were bent and pinched off by hand, at a quick pace. The brass-etched set actually includes them, but they are quite unrealistic (because flat, as though cut from sheet steel rather than fashioned crudely from steel rod) and a detail like this done right is the icing; these hooks executed well are the difference between B-grade and A-grade. Yes, I have noticed that the larger plastic kit hooks I used are badly cleaned up, malshapen. I can work on those no problem, get them regular. That's for the fussing stage.

How will I make these tiny hooks? I need a jig, something I can press wire to with quite a bit of force. I need a manufacturing process, a means of mass-producing a limited run. If I had a bit of square section brass rod I could solder that to a base. Now I would have the male part of that jig. All I need is something to press the wire into conformity with it. What about a matching part, actually another male? Two jigs just the same and I squish the wire between them to make one side of the hook, then come round the other side and finish it. I'm going to try it. The other way is to solder two bits of rod onto the reciprocating press, at the perfect distance to do the job in one go. I wonder. I guess I'll have to pick up that bit of brass rod (.75mm is my guess) and a bit of plate to join it to.

So we have a bit of a shopping list for our next trip to the hobby shop. A few sections of brass and a bit of plate for the hooks. Some cylindrical stuff from which I can make two little tubes. I think I have no other construction issues.

Really, it's just about time to buy paint.

I opened my paintbox after mmm thirteen years and paints some of which had been in there for as long again were - fine. Amazing. Humbrol tins that had been opened many times and whose seal was a thick crust of paint - fine. Incredible. A few had dried up but I don't need to buy too many to restock. Got to get masking fluid. Better get some of the proper Aztek cleaning fluid before I get serious with Mr New Airbrush, although I'm not going to bother with the paint trap; that will be the cardboard back of the box I convert in five minutes into a *spray booth*. Yeah, I'll stick that dust-buster thing in the back and that will do fine as an extractor :D

I have a plan with the painting. Let us take a trip back in history, thirty years or so to when Francois Verlinden was the king of modelling and his weathering technique was the most copied and the standard. It - and nearly all other techniques - basically began with the base coat, be it Tank Grey or SAS pink. Mandatory were: washes of black, or browns, other colours, the simulation of spattered mud. Put stains here and there, perhaps a few twigs in the suspension, and then rust was the big thing, streaking technique. The other major element was drybrushing. Then I went away again (for quite a long time) and when I came back I saw chips in paint. The salt method. Painting technique that has completely transcended and dated my own old methods. Special solutions for making unbelievably reaslistic rust. Oh and of course acrylics were invented but I'm not ready for them yet. I have used enamels all my life, and enamels is what I know, and enamels is what I should use, this first time in many years.

The bewildering universe of after-market brass, resin and so on, that is really something. All the conversion kits. Accessories like you wouldn't believe. The capacity to draw a label for a can and then laser print it onto a blank decal sheet, oh yes. Now really very impressive construction is within reach of the average modeller. I have tried to build as well as I can but I see that, once more, I have rushed, and made unnecessary mistakes. But so it is. Some parts of the model are looking very good indeed. I am happy with that muffler; it's going to look terrific. This thing has individual track links, that are going to look spectacular no matter what I do to them. I will be happy with the parts that worked out, and try to learn from the - inevitable - mistakes and imperfections. It was a while back I stopped putting up pictures of the things I was making showing only their best sides; we may as well see the warts and all. Or this blog would be dead boring, would it not.

But painting is where it's at. Painting is the art and I confess I feel myself up against it. I want to incorporate all these new ideas - like the chipping methods - but I have my own little plan too. I have always thought that what I should do, once finished construction, is paint the vehicle as though steel. As it was, in the factory, before it rolled along to the painting area. Then, after judicious masking of areas that would receive wear, primer, then the base coats with a second layer of masking that reveals just a tiny bit of the primer. With the idea that by this clever use of varnish and masking, rubbing and scratching away, I can have wear that reveals the bare metal via the primer. I want to work with paint at that scale. I believe any chips or scratches I make this way should look immeasurably more realistic than if in reality they are illusions layered thickly on top of each other, all upside down. And then all the other methods I know and love so well, as outlined in previous paragraph.

But I have a brand new airbrush, and it's a real one, not a toy one like I had before. No, I take that back Badger, and thank you for the airbrush that has worked well, just like the day I bought it for over thirty years. But now it's time to step on up! And I have just the very thing ...

... and here's one I prepared earlier. With just a few little bits of special care, but pretty much from the box. I guess I should try every method I can fit on it.

Day Fifteen

A while back I had plans here:

These tubes which house the ends of antennae in transport have to be modelled somehow. We have already knifed away the kit event that we suspect might somehow be related to the metal tubes in the photograph.

The closest I can come in terms of dimensions and drillability is this solder.

I cut off lengths and true the ends as best I can by putting them in my pinvice and running a file over. I want a starter mark right in the centre to drill and I am at the limit of my vision.

The solder is not regular and this is about as good as I can do.  I probably need another material. I have made many of these with the solder and I'm not happy with them.

Day Fourteen

Day fourteen has thus far been taken up with bending .3mm copper rod, trying to make that latch for that hatch. No luck with the metal rod so I stretch some sprue and try that, and it works first time. So now I have my latch part and all I need is a block to mount it on, ideally from kit plastic so it will be easy to glue.

But a little slip with the tweezers and it's gone, on the carpet like many before it.

I get it together finally.

Trial run for the steel bracket inside the muffler. I cut out the strips and roll them with a selection of tools' handles.

It's promising but there will be more of them; I want three that fit perfectly. The ends of these strips need to be cut at an angle, not square, to account for the tube having been reamed out. Easy enough cutting bits of metal strip. It's all going to be black as night in there, of course.






So far it's a really nice bit of scratchbuilding; should I put that dent in it or not? There is always the risk it will disintegrate.






































And this is good enough. Make that collar and bolt and it's done.

No harm, at this point, in a bit of paint to let me see where I'm at.

A basic sort of gunmetal is as good as anything to start off with such a part, that is going to get special treatment rust-wise. I did my best to get these inside details right and even though they are really quite crude I have a lot of leeway here because of the sort of painting and of course because they are partially in darkness.

Day Thirteen

Yesterday I was musing on this disc thing at bottom right. I don't know what it is but there are three of them on the top deck. I doctored them and was thinking to leave them as they are. 

But I was looking through my tool collection and I found this - it's actually for tagging animals' ears. And it cuts out perfect circles that are exactly the right size to reproduce that disc thingie. Winner!

 

This hatch on the right will be open for the range-finder. All the photos I have say there are no hooks on the outside of this pair of hatches (strange, one would have thought). You can see there's no external hook because of the way the hatch is sitting. But I will enjoy modelling that lozenge-shaped latch there on the inside and maybe I will want to do the hinges.

See, no hook. I don't get it. The hatch next to it has a hook. How was it opened from the outside - pocketknife? Big magnet?

I have a visitor.

Going to build this latch. It's a loop of steel welded to a little block.

Styrene rod .5mm. I am bending this around a steel point and there is also a bit of tweezer action.

1.5mm styrene beam

Pretty certain by now that the styrene glue I'm using either is not working, or I have two or more radically different types of styrene. I use Araldite for this one. When it's dry I'll file it clean up the excess glue very carefully as I suspect styrene is one of the few things that epoxy does not bond so well with.

But the part is a little too big. Silly me. This loop scaled up would be 17.5mm diameter in section. I'll try it with the .3mm copper rod (made by the Lion Roar company). .3 x 35 = 10.5mm.

Day Twelve

To warm up something easy, that I can't mess up. I affix the wire for the night light. I have photos showing the wire coming out of the light but none showing where it goes to. I have photos of the wire running up the big weld line between glacis and side armour - but not telling me where the wire ends. Luckily, the book has this drawing. Great; now I know Point A and Point B. I do not attempt to model this as per the possibly fanciful drawing as the wire casing is a flexible job and they would have made it as short as possible.

Looks about right to me.

Now we have a bit of cleaning up to do. The original guard I made for the gunner's periscope is rubbish, I pull it off and have another go.

Much better, and with little holes in it too. I improve the little pin sticking out on the left. I drill, I mount a bit of styrene rod on something flat and glue that from behind. It looks messy but I'll be cleaning up things like this before I paint. In the photo I espy a round cap thing which on the kit is like a socket; I'd been wondering about that. I need a little disc of plastic or steel.

I hack it off and there we go. Too easy. I might just leave this as it; no one will know. I did drill out the periscope. Photo shows me what a poor job I did. I will scrape that clean with a brand new blade.

Look what I found in my spares box. An MG34 barrel by Armorscale. Makes me feel I might work on the machine gun mounting.

So here are the bits. The kit parts are fairly good. The kit parts at far left have ejector pin marks. But Academy has done very well to minimise these, and seams on this kit - practically non-existent. The precision is awesome 10/10. I was thinking of finding an after-market gun but the beautiful brass barrel and shield will get this over the line. Notice I have NOT used nippers to free these parts from the sprue. Nippers will break delicate parts.

Instead, I use one of these saw attachments on my dremel; this goes through the plastic like a knife through butter. Some parts you can hack out with a knife, some parts you really can't. For delicate parts you need one of these.

Book has PLENTY of detail. It's highly likely the brass barrel I'm going to use is not exactly the right one but meh who cares.



















Hmmmmm. Okay, I will build with what I have. I will glue the gun to the mount with Aquadhere and not fix the whole assembly permanently. That means I can always get an after-market set and replace it sometime in the future. I'll get back to you when I have it all together.






This is the peg for where the butt stock is removed. I won't even both trying to clean this part up, I'll replace it with a bit of styrene rod.

The brass barrel is going to cost me; I'll have to make a sight and work out all those other bits. At least I have good photos. The cooling sheath (is that what it is?) is getting drilled out until it's super-thin.








I manage all this without too much difficulty.












But I do not manage this. I have spent two hours trying to glue these shields on. I had one on perfectly but in trying to fit the other I broke it off. About ten times now I have messed it up and had to use the debonder to clean up. I'll keep at it.

That was one of the worst modelling experiences I've ever had. Four hours I think. The shields are holding on by a thread. They were not bent perfectly and that's probably why they didn't join properly. They will break off at the slightest touch. And I see I forgot to file the rear end of the shield, those two little tags from where I cut them out. Right. I am out of options. I put a few little blobs of Araldite inside to fortify the construction; I have to because I still have a fair bit of work to do on this assembly. By now I just don't care. Into every life a little rain must fall. At least the shields are all squared up and that's the important thing. We'll pull it all together somehow. I'm going to make a ham cheese tomato toastie and watch Family Guy. Enough for one day. Man.

Next time - I've been thinking about this - I will buy two of the kit and two of the brass. It makes sense, it really does: second chance with every part you tackle OR best of two every time.

Hmm. The Araldite has set and the damage isn't too bad, and I'm feeling a little better. There was one thing I wanted to attend to today, a quick job. At the sides and on the top of the gun mantlet are holes which house what I learn from my book are centering bolts -

- which in the kit are only hinted at with these three divets.

So I drill them. To smooth the edges of the holes I twiddle my pointy blade in there very, very gently.

Day Eleven

The wooden block that goes with the jack is, happily for me, an ugly affair.

I find a bit of beech - can't locate the maple. I sand it to size and chisel little rebates for the metal straps. I don't do a very precise job but in this case that is okay because the thing I am trying to model is not precise either. I've got the grain of the wood the wrong way but there's no turning back now. Anyway, you've seen the brass etched part; it was hopeless and the kit part was a joke (sorry Academy, you dropped the ball on that one). This jack block is better than either of them so I'm going to sign off on it.I guess that's the difference between modelling armour and modelling planes; with armour you can make a bit of mess, fudge things here and there, hide your mistakes under accessories or mud. With planes you can't do that; everything has to be spot on. I haven't made a plane since I was a child; maybe I should.

I'm getting dangerously close to painting time. I have only to add some brackets, which I will cunningly leave open (I can't put the tools in them and hope to paint them well in situ) such that I can put the painted tools in and close them when I've got the vehicle base coat on.

I have to put on many, many hooks, the smallest hooks I have ever attempted. Because they are so delicate I'll do those last of all otherwise I'll probably keep breaking them off while I am working. There are a few other little bits and pieces. I can use these and get an acceptable result but really what I need to do is build a jig and bend them out of copper rod. We shall see.



This is what they really look like. I have to get them in the right places, straight, and in line, and I don't fancy my chances.











Let's make the brackets for the jack. In fact, let's make all the remaining tool brackets and get them out of the way.

Here is the photo.

Here are the kit parts. I've looked through my book and I see no evidence at all for a folding handle. If there were, this handle would be too long and too thin. I'm going to shear it away but keep the pin. To make the new handle I'll mount a bit of aluminium tubing on my Dremel and try to put a tiny bit of a barrel effect on it. I'll be able to stick a pin in the end.

For the brackets, here are the brass parts and their instructions. Scary. That H thing is the kit part.












Noice. I'm getting better at this folding business.




























Now let's see about that not-fold-away handle -_-

Chop!

Comes away easily with just two cuts - good old chisel blade.

Clean it up and make a handle from stretched sprue, which I drill so I can mount it easily and cleanly.

Now stretch some more sprue, this time fairly fine.

This is how you make bolts - by holding the end of the sprue up to the candle. Or at least it's how you make A bolt because good luck to you getting two the same. Luckily I only need one of these things -

- to put on the end of the handle. But the handle seems to me now to be a tad long. So I cut it off where it meets the crank and remount it -

- on the wrong side of the crank. Bugger it.

All better. I won't mount the handle just yet, I want the jack in the brackets first so I can rest the handle against the hull as per the photograph.

And then I enter into a nightmare realm, and there I dwell for many hours.  I tried to fit the jack mounts, and the latch for the sledgehammer. The brass instructions are approximate in their indication of exactly where to place these things. There is some variation in the photos I have. I could not make the jack mounts relate to the sledgehammer mounts, and nor could I see where the stay for the skirt was supposed to fit in. I made a distressing superglue mess. So I took the Track guard off completely. I used superglue debonder to dissolve and remove all the errant superglue. I stood the jack mounts in two more little ponds of the stuff and they are still there; hopefully in a moment when I pick them up I will be able to wipe the glue off their feet. Then, I put the track guard back on and fit just that one skirt, whose stay/strut I will need to work around. This will become my reference point because at least I can be fairly sure where it goes. Now I think I have a clearer idea of where to place the other bits. The two little holes in the hull are for the kit crowbar fixtures. This is clearly incompatible with the shovel mount (as provided). In many of the photos I have, there is no shovel and no shovel mount. I will remove the shovel mount. I'll tuck the shovel in somewhere, as I please.

I put the crowbar mounts in place. I see that bit of glue under the top bracket - don't worry, it's gone.

I can't bear to leave things in a state and now I'm back on square one and feeling a little better. And so to bed.