Anyone that knows me knows that my number one modelling love is the Churchill Infantry Tank

I've built goodness knows how many of them, and mastered two interiors and lots of Churchill accessories for my company

However, I do love a real challenge, so this time I thought I would stretch myself to the limit with a fully scratchbuilt vehicle, so I'm going to build a 1/16 Churchill MkII with full fighting compartment and turret interior


I have a great number of books on the churchill, including the Arms and Armour Press, Armour in Action, Osprey, Wydnawictwo and many other books (including a german report on the effectiveness of various guns tested against the ones captured at Dieppe)

However, there are three primary references which supply the vast majority of the info I need in a build like this.

They are:
David Fletcher's Mr Churchill's Tank (great on written info, not so hot on the real nitty gritty of visual detail)


The Gunpower Book, which has some reasonable plans and some interesting and rare photos:


And most important of all, the reprint of the original vehcicle manual



I will also be building this as a Dieppe Churchill, probably Backer or Canny, so this will also be useful:

to achieve this I will be using the following tools:


Left to Right:
Hole Punch
Lots of CA
Razor Saw
Second favourite scalpel (for when I inevitably misplace my favourite)
Set of five scribing tools (represented here by one)
The 'good' scalpel
lots of sets of tweezers (again represented by one)
Steel Rule
Vacuum pen (designed for picking up microchips, but great for positioning little bits - especially in tight spaces)
Needle files
sanding sticks
Digital callipers
Pin vice
electric drill (not pictured)
Compass cutters
OLFA cutter (not pictured)
And of course: poly cement ( I like Humbrol liquid Poly)


And of course, copious supplies of the white stuff :

Some MkII Churchills (pics for discussion purposes etc)









More later

Hi Chris,

A bold venture, I'll look forward to developments. I just got the Dieppe book the other day, in case I get the urge for some more Canadian Churchills.

Cheers

Al

I'll definitely be following this one!

Looking forward to the next post.

Great to have you guys

On with the build!

Having never taken on something this big before I needed to start with something that would give me some interest while not being to difficult to start with!

I chose the glacis, and after a few hours this is where I was up to:


The benefit of working in this scale is that I can make these plates scale thickness. The thinner part of the mantlet is 5.33mm, which scales to around 85mm.

I was going to make this hollow, to save on plastic and weight, but I've decided to leave open the option of casting this as a kit after all. If you are casting you have to make it solid, otherwise when its put in a pressure pot to make the mould it implodes! So I made it solid, which was not easy to cut the MG and driver's visor out of, trust me

If you might be interested in a kit of this, please email me via my website. As a kit this would be very expensive, so I'd be interested to see if there is interest first before I commit to spending hundreds getting the moulds made!


And here is the obligatory scale shot:

Next I had a go at the driver's vision hatch

Here's the real one on a MkIV at Saumur:



This could be fully opened for the Driver to look through out of action. The centre section could also swivel out on its own to give the driver vision through an armoured glass vision block as on the MkII at Bovington:



Or it was fully closed (as above at Saumur) and the driver drove looking through a swivelling periscope above the vision block on the hull roof.

In practice the armoured block does not seem to have been popular. Possibly because it only offers a limited field of vision and it probably got dirty very easily, restricting the view. In all pictures I can recall seeing it is always either fully open or fully closed

In any event, vision was very restricted to the right, and partially restricted to the left by the idlers and their 'horns' so often the driver drove to direction given by the commander with his elevated and all round view

In modelling it I have chosen to model the doors as one part, with the line of the inner door scribed on

Here's what I have so far:



The inside had to be layered up from 1mm card. Doing this was quite easy. I just laid the glacis on the card and drew around the inside of the vision port itself, then turned the glacis over and drew around the inside of the front of the vision port.

This gave me the two sizes at opposite ends of the scale. I cut parts to fill in the rest in increasing sizes, then used the old CA and talc filler to smooth out the steps between layers





I will drill out the hinge and use a piece of wire. This will allow the door to operate.

Dry fit of closed:





and opened



Still a good bit to do on all this. If you look at the picture from Saumur above I still need to add the bracket to the door, and latch to the glacis for the mechanism that holds the door in the open position. I'm also waiting on the larger hex rod to come to do the big bolts on the MG glacis

Once the outside is done I need to add the triplex block and headpad to the inside of the door as seen here:



Then I can detail the inside of the glacis

Chris

OOoooooooooooooo !!!!!!!!!! FULL TANK SCRATCH BUILD !!!!!!!

Will be following this one for sure to see where you go with this !!!!!! Having seen a 1/35 scale Churchill kit being built by one of the club members I will be keen to see how you tackle all those complicated sets of track wheel assemblies !!!!!!! Am I right in saying you will have 22 of them to make up ????

This I have to see to the end for sure.

Nige

WOW

That's REALLY interenting. I'll follow your build for sure

cheers

Hi Chris,

Off to a great start,

Here's a link to some footage of the Dieppe Raid from Pathe News. I think it gives a broader picture to the overall scale of the raid. WARNING contains images some may find upsetting.

http://www.britishpathe.com/record.php?id=50709

Al