¹⁄35

Building the Dragon 25pdr w/ Trailer

Step 5 in action

Next is the assembly of the previous sub-assemblies into a gun in firing position. The ground plate and the support arms look to be accurately positioned and attached, but the hooks that support the ground plate when in a stored position are only hinted at by the inclusion of flattened domes instead of hooks. There is a lot of rivet detail missing from the ground plate, and the profile is lacking in some respects, such as the lip around the top inner circumference, which could have been represented with a photo etched ring. The rivet detail that is present is accurate, but the ground plate is fabricated from four quarters and the detailing here is what is missing, so there is plenty of room for the super detailers to go to town. The gun assembly and gun shield go together easily and look OK. The travel lock part A35 also looks good, and the photos I have provided should help correctly locate it on the trail.

Moving onto the rear of the carriage, there are some nice touches, such as one of the hand spikes being correctly positioned when the gun is in action; this hand spike allows the entire gun to be traversed around the gun plate by one man easily, quickly, and with minimal effort. The spade guard is used to prevent the spade from digging when firing, and is well detailed and accurately placed. It should be mentioned that if the gun is rushed into action it can be left in the stored position, with the spade doing the job it does on any other gun, and when in this configuration the ground plate would then be in the stored position. The spade guard is also left off when the gun is providing high angles of fire, as the gun would be pushed onto a slope, with the spade preventing the gun from moving backwards.

The two photo etched pieces in this step are the storage brackets for the hand spikes supplied with each gun; there is a problem here however in that DML have only supplied the hand spikes either as a moulded unit for a gun being towed with the brackets moulded on, or as a single hand spike in the correct place when firing. In this second scenario the second hand spike would be stored, which means some scratch work is required to correctly represent it, and I would suggest scratching two hand spikes for use when the gun is depicted being towed, as they will look a lot more realistic when stored in the etched brackets.