Hi Roy

I have just read your latest updates on this build and I am sitting here with my jaw on the floor! The Roll Cage and Ring Mount are Excellent, Fantastic work! There are not many out there that would attempt a conversion like this but you my friend are a warrior!

Wheels are gona be interesting , are you gona go with black or green rims?

Keep it goin bud this is gona be great!!

Al.

ps; tell herself she made me feel so guilty the last time I was down with you that I went back to the gym last week Lol..

Hey Roy... great progress and lookin' awesome.

Of course Pics for WarWheels is a MUST when you're finished...

Looks incrediable Roy...I don't know where you get your patience from, but you must have it in abundance!

Very nice build Roy: it takes some major cohones to chop up a three-figure-resin-kit like that. Love the detail work and the dashboard cover. You must've explained it before, but why on earth did the Irish pick the F350? Of all the off-road vehicles on the market...

Cheers

Hakan: Thanks for the nice words!

Seb: cheers man! Yeap I took an hour out just to sit down with a few cotton bud sticks and a lighter, needed a few beers after!

Al: Ta mate, always there with the encouragement!
I believe there are 3 colors for the wheels, green, black and an off-white color!
Dont know which one yet, Think I'll just go with black for the Chad vehicles. Lets see how the wheels come out first that gym must be eating some serious plastic time on ya bud

Pat: Great to see you here bud!! Would be honored to get this model on warwheels, cheers man! BTW hope your working hard on Telford, looking forward to those beers!!

Sean: Fair Play to ya mate! The patience isn't to bad, its just getting the free time to sit down with this model for any length, thats the hard bit

Benjamin: Honestly dude I only bought the kit for this project, spending that dosh on one kit was the hardest part!

Check out Page 3 of the build log, about half way down and you'll get the answer to why the F-350.
..However this vehicle was also aimed at the British Arms market too. From what I believe it is very heavy platform but it performed quite well in Chad under horendous conditions. Its got more room than the land rover and it has a pretty powerful and reliable engine. It goes loke the rabbit from the gun too!

Ricardo fit both the SF Landrover and the Ford F-350, the latter being more up to date but the least likely to be seen due to it being a rarity.
I guess somebody had to be the first customer but its unlikely you'll see many more of these vehicles, what with the emphasis being focused on vehicles that can withstand IED's etc is now the main focus off most western Armys, even the SF community (I assume anyway)!

Today I actually got a whole section completed, I was pretty chuffed!

Remember the front bumper section and the Bull Bar?



Well I went back to correct the dodgy looking small horizontal bars that are just in front of the main headlights!
I used some Griffon Models Copper Rods, they did the trick nicely!
I also finished detailing this section by adding the two hooks at the front and, a small mechanical device blonging to the winch on the RHS of the bull bar Frame. Finally adding the smoke dispensers to complete this section!





Next I decided to start work on the crew seats. These are Ricardo seats on the Irish variant.



I had to do some scratch converting and in doing so I decided to enlarge the seat because as i mentioned earlier the Vajra seats are just a little small looking for 1/35 scale. (although the original kit does seat 3 in the front compartment).



I began by cutting one of the seats vertically in half and into two sections, back support section and seat section.



Next I added some thick plastic sheet as a spacer.


I glued both halves back together with the plastic card spacer between both halves.


they would now need some shapping


I cleaned up the plastic card and sanded all the surfaces down evenly. You can see the seats are a little wider already.


With a bit more sanding and using some filler you can see the Ricardo Seat taking shape

I couldnt do anymore here as I had to let the Filler dry. but here are the comparisons between both seats already



The idea is to make a mold of this seat and reproduce two new ones in resin, more on this later..

The last thing I decided to do today was finish detailing the ring mount section too. I added the crew handles and the base for the weapons mount (I'll be srctching this later in the week..

That ring mount looks stellar. I kept wondering how you were going to do it- your step-by-step will be useful to anyone else scratching one of these! The front bars and seats are shaping up well too. I'm looking forward to seeing how you do the resin moulds. Are you using the Sylmasta kit or another brand?

Hi Roy ,
Wow what a great job on the ring mount. I have mention what a great job you have done on getting the ring nice and symmetrical and the detail is really coming on nicely. Love the little bolt heads.!

All best wishes,

Jerry

At last I'm back!

I've Just been so busy lately, yada yada.. moral of the story is I didnt get much time to update the build blog!

Anyway I got back into things the other day starting back with the seat conversion.
I want to cast a copy of this seat so I can dublicate it easily and ensure both seats are the exact same!
So I sanded down the seat and dipped it into Future about 6 seperate times between drying to give the seats a smooth finish.

To begin the casting I built a little lego box around the seat allowing plenty of room surrounding the seat. The seat is sitting stable on some blue-tac in the center of the lego square.



next i got the Silicone rubber mix out


you have to mix two seperate liquid chemicals 100:10 ratio. So the little weighing scales came in handy!


I added both liquids together, stirring until I was sure both ingrediants were mixed thoroughly.






Satisfied with the mix I carefully poured it in on top of my converted seat. Trying to limit the amount of airbubbles that would be forming as I was pouring I poured from a generous height and very slowely!


I made sure to add a little extra liquid above the surface as these things always tend to leak a little, dropping the level of silicone liquid.




The next day the silicone mix had set and I removed the block from the lego.


I removed the seat and was left with the silicone cast


I'll leave the cast for another day before i add the resin. More on this later..

Whilst all this was going on I decided to get some work done on the cab interior. I went ahead and built the Sincgars/coms mount.


For this I used the Pro-Arts communtications set. I decided to go with a full Sincgars instead of the illustrated baby sincgars. No real reason, I just thought the big set looked better and I would have less work to do adding the bigger set.
to be honest having trained on both sets I can actually tell you I like the older and bigger one better

I scratch built the mount and added the pro arts resin sincgar set. The photo doesnt do it any justice, pro arts did a fine job with detailing the small set!
To finish I just added some copper wiring.

Looking good...

Just wondering how you got the seat out of the mould, since you do not seem to have cut it open... Is the mould flexible enough to allow for the original piece to be ripped out without the mould itself losing its shape/detail?



Harm

Hi Harm

The rubber is quite thick & strong, it can take alot of mauling.

You can't see in the photo but I did run a scalpel across the upper section where I removed the seat. The slice was very shallow and not deep, just enough to allow me to crack open the surface & assist in the removing of the seat inside.

The rubber as I mentioned is quite strong & durable so it always closes clean again after opening! The rubber silicone is so dense that hairline incisions from scalpels would rarely show up on the resin pieces after casting!

Never a dull moment in your shop Roy.

Mad scientist time obviously!

Looking forward to seeing how the seat turns out.

Hi Roy.

Glad to see the build is back in full swing, have to say - Craftmanship pure Craftmanship.. great job making cast of the seats, good work on the Singar Radio mount ( wonder where you got that copper wiring lol) its gona be a fine build, just a suggestion and I know no matter what you do with this build its gona be an impressive finish, but I would definitely do a diorama to compliment it, maybe topic for discussion at the next Independants meet?..

What are you gona use for radio antenna's?

Keep it going forward bud

Al.

Matt, Karl, thanks guys! Glad your both still tuned in, we are nearly there

Al, cheers bud, yep your copper wire came in handy, ta very much!
Dio sounds good but I dont think I have it in me to go put one together before the IMSS show.
I have this to finish, plus two figures to build and paint never mind a simple base to put her on, all this before mid May will be tight by itself
..must hook up soon and catch up my friend!

Got off early today from work so made some good progress with the build!

Last night I had poured resin liquid into the seat cast to let it set overnight


Today I removed the seat, you can see it here next to the cast. I'm happy with the result!


I didnt bother casting a second seat because the original seat I used for the mold will do perfect!


I still have some detailing to do with these seats, more on this later..

Next I added some tools to the bonnet (front hud).


I was working on the passanger side weapons mount and letting a few bits dry when I decided I'd attach the wing mirrors, only to discover they are incorrect to the Irish F-350!
So working with what I had I scratched new mirrors from the old ones. I'll have to make new arms tomorrow..






Next I finished the passanger side weapons mount with swinging arm.
But before i go straight to the photos though I'll expalin what happened next.
Whilst the weapons mount was drying I started building the storage bins where the doors usually are.
I was having some major problems gluing some brass bars to PE plate so I decided to prime them first.
After spraying the parts and having the primer out anyway I decided to crack on with giving the entire model its first coat of primer! I got into at all the nooks and cranny's and left it to dry. The benfit of this is now I can see more clearly where I have to clean up (some places obviously more than others!).


I went on to finish the door side storage bins and aligning frame steel.






here is almost everything so far


Lastly today I scratched the rear panel behind the driver/passanger seats. This has an Amp/fuse box for regulating power to the com sets etc and above that is a speaker (I got the speaker from the Pro Arts set mentioned earlier).







..now I'm off for a few pints! (glug glug )

incredibly detailed progress

Really amazing,your details are incredible!

hello Roy brilliant project im enjoying every bit of this thank you for sharing
terry

Its looking good under the primer thats for sure. The cast seat looks great too as does the metal for the storage boxes.

Very nice work Roy, I never thought of using Lego blocks to make molds great idea.

KoSprueOne, Sven, Terry, Karl and Scott, Thanks for the support guys

..just a quick update, I had a hectic week so didn't get much done!
However I managed to squeeze in time and get the new mirrors attached



..wheels are in progress too, more on this later..

WOW! your attention to detail is amazing!

And in 1/35 scale !!!!! How the hell you guys do it amazes me.

Nige

Thanks guys! I Really appreciate the kind words!!

..I got some more work done the other day, just didn't get time to update the blog.
Only a few little bits of detailing to do now before I give the model another lick of primer and start the paint process!

..wheels are still in production, more on this later