Just gotta love it..

Mad, er... I mean 'master' Mike shares with us another brilliant update...

So much detail in such a small space.... Keep the updates coming Sir.


Keith.

Thanks for the feedback, guys...

@ Jerry: Yea, I enjoy getting up with the old timers, myself. It's always interesting how much a soldier's life never changes. I guess there're just some constants in the universe, and that's one of 'em...

BTW: You ever read any Kippling? Timeless!

@ Robert: You're very welcome. I didn't know what scale you might be working in, so, as I mentioned to Jerry earlier, it was better to offer too much than too little. I could easily see someone working in 1/6th scale wanting to get every little detail just so...

Thanks for the info on the tripod. Almost 30 lbs - A stout load for anyone.

@ Tom: I would also normally paint things in much (MUCH!) larger sub-assemblies, but I know there's no way I could get down into the interior spaces of the carrier to do the details justice.

I have the Mirror Models Otter and C15TA on deck. In fact, I was very tempted to save the No. 19 radio in the carrier kit for the C15TA which I intend to build as command truck. I'm looking forward to both. I hope you post up your CMP here on Armorama.

@ Keith: In the words of the Bard, "I am but mad north-north-west..."

A quick up-date follows (but we'll have none of that "sir" stuff..!)

So, the upper front hull and glacis went together pretty easy (step 30). I did find that starting off was a bit like building a house of cards. Each piece is separate, most with beveled edges, and they all rely on the parts next to them for support.

However, after I got the first part on (I started with part E 20) and the glue set some, all the others went on quickly. I did find that using the flat of a small metal ruler to press the bottom edges into alignment with the bottom inside of the rear glacis edge was necessary. There are very small alignment tabs, but they keep the parts from sliding up too far, but not from sliding down too far.

I also found it was necessary to file down the top of the PE emergency brake brace (part Pb 4) in order to get the front lip of the glacis (part E 7) to fit flush with the top of the lower hull front. I also removed the three locating tabs on the bottom front lip of the glacis (E 7). They were too tall for their corresponding slots and not really necessary (IMO) for alignment.

In order to maintain alignment, I taped this sub-assembly in place and allowed it to dry overnight.

While that was setting up, I worked on the Bren gun and its mount in preparation for posing the gunner figure today.

Today I was able to get most of the work on the gunner done. I did have to sculpt a new left arm. I probably could have used the kit arm and hand, but making a new arm and using a Hornet resin hand (Hands 02, Left B) was just simpler and faster. I used a twisted wire armature, attached the hand, and then used Milliput to add the forearm and elbow.

Another thing that I had to do was carve a groove in the gunner's left hip / side and restore the folds in his jacket tails for the Pyrene fire extinguisher (part J 9) that mounts inside of the upper front hull.

I also selected the gunner's head (Hornet, HH19-4) and added an Ultracast Commonwealth Tank Helmet with a Milliput chinstrap. I still have some work to do on this guy - cleaning up his new arm and sleeve, adding new buttons, etc. But he's pretty much done now.

The following photos show the hull front dry-fitted to the carrier with the driver, gunner, and Bren MG also dry-fitted.

(Sorry for the out-of-focus shots.)













With the gunner posed, I can finish assembling the hull front / glacis and paint it's interior.

I can also now move onto the radio operator and finish posing him.

Happy modeling!

Outstanding Mike! The gunner looks so natural in there. Great job!

Mike your ability to pose figures so perfectly into this thing is amazing, the faces on them only add to it. Really natural posing.

-Conor

Mike,

SHAZZAM!, that's nice, as usual.

I know yer Bren Gun isn't glued in so I guess you will figure out a 'natural' angle that it would attain after being jostled by the vehicles movement?

It might also be pushed off to one side to allow the chap a little more elbow room, yes?

This gets better and better, believe it or not!

Keith.

@ Big John: Thanks, as always. BTW: Congrats again on your "Jumbo" Sherman award!

@ Connor: Thank you, too, but I can't claim any credit for the faces. The head sculpting is all Roger Saunders from Hornet, one of the best figure sculptors in the world.

You can see his available figures and head and hand sets here:

Hornet and Wolf Homepage

A lot of model shops and on-line vendors carry these, and you can't go wrong up-grading your figures with them.

In regards to the converting / posing of my figures: The techniques are all pretty straightforward. I got my start in the early '70s after reading Sheperd Paine's "Tips on Building Dioramas" included with a lot of Monogram's kits.

You can still find used copies of his books on line (search Amazon, author "Sheperd Paine") for very good prices. (I see today there's a used copy of "How to Build Tanks and Military Vehicles" listed for only US$8.)

I would highly recommend all three of these books to any modeler:

Paine, Sheperd. Modeling Tanks and Military Vehicles. Kalmbach Books, Kalmbach Publishing Company, Milwaukee, WI. 1882. ISBN: 0-89024-045-0.

----- . How to Build Dioramas. same publisher. 1980. ISBN: 0-89024-551-7.

----- . Building and Painting Scale Figures. Scale Modeling Handbook No. 13. same publisher. 1993. ISBN: 0-89024-069-8.

If you learn and master the techniques that Paine explains and illustrates quite well in each book, you'll be the equal of just about any model builder you know.

In regards to converting plastic figgies, just start with the simple stuff - swapping arms and other parts. Sooner or later you'll want an arm or leg at just a certain angle, so then you'll cut a wedge or angle in the crook of an elbow or the back of a knee, bend and fill. After a few of those, you'll have some experience with filling the gaps and restoring the clothing folds (first using regular putty and then epoxy putty), so making a new arm or leg on a wire armature and using epoxy putty to fill it out will be a natural progression.

As you progress with more and more complicated conversions, your skill at painting will also improve with practice, so searching out nice replacement heads, hands and other accessories will also be a natural progression.

If you don't believe me, ask Jerry who's figure builds you've been following. We've known each other since the '80s and both of us learned our figure work pretty much the same way.

Don't be discouraged and just try to make a little improvement with each build and, in no time, you'll be turning out models that are like night and day when compared to your first ones.

@ Jeff: Muchas gracias, mi amigo! By the way, when are you going to start posting up the build on the Japanese Type 60 APC you reviewed?

Armorama::Review Fine Molds Japanese Type 60 APC

That thing is looking really good, and you're doing a ton of nice work on it. I hope you consider sharing the build in-progress!

@ Keith: Oh yea, the Bren is still un-glued. I'll be adding the rear sight and bi-pods, too, when it's finished. In regards to the final position - The kit gun is fixed in elevation on its mount, but I'm sure that I'll push the butt stock over a bit from the gunner's knees. There are still some details that go in the inside of the hull front, though, that I have to make sure I allow clearance for.

I'd also make the same observation to you as I did to Jeff - When are you going to start sharing your work with us again here on Armorama? I know there are a lot of guys here who'd be VERY interested in your current project.

Thanks for the comments and observations. I hope to have another up-date soon.

'Til then, happy modeling!

"OFF TOPIC"..
Ah Mike, thanks for the small dig but I am content to add a comment or two on your thread/build and also here and there by way of other items/threads etc. that I may add a little something of interest too.

But anything I am building right now certainly won't see light of day on Armorama anytime soon.

Keith.

Apologies, Keith. No dig intended, small or otherwise, just a little encouragement.

Both you and Jeff have a couple of excellent builds going on, and I know that I'm thoroughly enjoying watching them come to fruition so, for purely selfish reasons, seeing more of them here would be nice.

However, I understand. I promise not to bring up the subject of posting here again.

Not a problem Mike and I do appreciate the encouragement..
Perhaps I will share a couple of pictures of the Chieftain Mk.7 ARRV and early Scimitar with floatation screen, Exercise Hardfall 77 (Norway) when they are finished..

Keith...

Mike,

Exceptional building and blogging on this one...WOW! One of my "family members" on MSC posted a detailed in the box of this and it was added to the list straight away!! Thanks to BJ for giving me a dope slap and sending me the link to you build....Amazing!! THe unfortunate thing is I may need to run out and buy it today instead of waiting...LOL!! Kepp up the extraordinary work my friend!!

@ Keith: Good to go! I'm really liking what you have going with the ARRV. The plumbing you did on the crane this weekend was very nice.

@Todd: Thanks for the props. Hope you continue to dial in every now and again. I would highly recommend the Riich Models Carrier kit (figures excepted). There are many options and ways that you could take a build of it -from the simple to some pretty elaborate diorama ideas.

Once you build one, you'll feel like you just restored an original...

Great little kit.

I'll post up an up-date next just so everybody knows that I'm still plugging away.

OK, so I spent a couple of build sessions getting the glacis and upper front hull fitting just right.

I did have to add a couple of very small shims made from .005 sheet to the inside of the upper right corner and inside of the right corner in front of the driver's station.

I'm guessing that these little shims were necessary because of cumulative errors and small mistakes on my part as I assembled the lower and upper rear hulls. I imagine that if the hull is assembled without the intermediate painting steps, pretty much as illustrated in the instructions, the raw plastic joints would all come together just about perfectly. As it was, I wanted to tidy up these two very small gaps before I painted the interior.

I also added all of the interior parts to this section of the hull - just a couple of small PE parts and headlight wiring conduits. (I'll build and finish the instrument cluster and control panel as a separate sub-assembly.)

I've added the base colors to this and done the heavy chipping. Next time I get to the painting bench, I'll do the color modulation and washes.



I also spent a build session doing some final clean-up on the driver and gunner and priming them. (The driver's primer coat just needed a light touch up, and his head, not shown here, was already good.) Although hard to see in this photo, I went back and detached the gunner's helmet, hollowed it out some more and fitted it lower down on his head.



These two guys are ready to be painted.

Most of my work over the last few days has been on the radio operator. I've cleaned up and added his torso and am about half done with his left arm.





This is slow work since I feel it's necessary to let each stage of the re-pose dry or set-up hard before moving on to the next. I've learned in the past that if I try to rush this, even the slightest misalignment will result in a figure that will not fit onto the vehicle the way I want - clean and close.

After adding the torso, I modified the upper let arm to fit over the edge of the armor plate on the engine compartment and then glued the arm to the torso at the shoulder. Once this joint dried hard, I added styrene blocks inside the armpit to strengthen the shoulder joint. This then had to dry hard before I could add the first of the two-part epoxy putty to re-build the arm in the new pose.

The left epaulet was cut off the figure and used on the new shoulder and the seams for the sleeve were scribed in.

After the putty set up, some work with files, sand paper and steel wool was necessary to smooth things out. There's still some more work to be done on the left shoulder, but today I moved on with reposing the left forearm.

In the photos, you can see the new elbow joint and the styrene wedges used to reinforce it. Once this drys overnight, I'll move on to the left hand and either repose it or cut it off and add a new hand (most likely).

Over the next few days, I'll move to the area of the right hip and re-sculpt the uniform in this area allowing for the cage on the radio front to press into his side.

After that's done, I'll pose his right arm and hand with the radio microphone. The actual work at each stage doesn't take too long, but allowing adequate drying / setting time between each stretches the job out over a number of days.

So, while I'm waiting on figure stuff to dry or set, I've also been working on cleaning up exterior parts of the kit.

I've got cups of suspension parts that are ready to be glued up once the radio operator is finally posed.

I've also glued up the final drive (making the correction noted by Terry Ashley in his PMMS build review - See the first post on page one).



Shown here, the final drive is just press-fit onto the lower hull side extensions and can be removed at this point, if necessary.

Also, I've glued up the exhaust pipes and mufflers.



These can be twisted and hooked over the final drive as single units. This is the reason why the final drive is still press-fit on in these photos. I wasn't 100% sure until I tried it if I could get the exhaust pipes and mufflers to fit on with the final drive attached. Best to leave it not glued on than have to disassemble things already glued up.

The piece of white styrene strip is being used as a spacer to keep the bottom exhaust pipes off the hull bottom in anticipation of the PE guards that will be installed later. The reason why the exhaust pipes and mufflers are assembled as separate assemblies is so that I can clean up the joints where the pipe pieces fit together and also paint and weather the exhausts before I attach them to the model.

Finally, I've also been working on the crew weapons. Here's the Bren MG with the missing rear sight added and the front carrying handle cut-off and re-positioned in a more candid location simply for the sake of visual interest.



Note the bottom tip of the pintle mount has been cut off (the cone-shaped projection on the bottom of the gun). This was necessary so that the gun could be mounted and unmounted from the barbette mount in the hull front / glacis.

Happy modeling!

Another fine update Mike!! Nice correction on the drive train!! I am surely keeping my eye open for this kit at ArmorCon this weekend!! Oh yeah, well done on the figure manipulation!! Looking great!!

Bravo, Sir! Bravo!

Insperation at it's best!!!

Hi Mike,

You just gotta love the Universal Carrier and you're doing a cracking job on this one. Excellent work on the additional detail and figure alterations, you'll have a real gem of a build when your done.

Cheers

Al

Spiffing work Mike.
The Bren looks good and the pose on the figure, nice and natural looking.

All you need now is some more paint for them

Don't let Jeff post on this thread, he has a cold

Keith.

I can tell it will be a good day because I am starting it off with a nice update from the "Bren Thread".
I love what happens to a Bren gun when a 18B gets ahold of it!
Here I was about to gently chastise you because of the radio guys' left hand looking wonky but after I got off my butt and read your text I see that you already have that fix in store(of course)
It always blows my mind to see how it is possible for even you to improve with each model. Very inspiring.
J

@ Todd: Terry Ashley and PMMS gets all the credit for the final drive correction. About the only thing that I could add is to emphasize that the brake drums are handed so do't get those mixed up and put them on the wrong sides. (The brake drums will fit on either side but are correct only one way.)

This could be easy to do when switching the axles from side to side.

Enjoy ARMORCON!

@ Jeff: Thanks, my friend. Hope you're feeling better soon!

@ John: Thanks for turning Todd onto this build. I'm looking forward to your next "Shelf Queen" up-date.

@ Alan: I hope it turns out like the plan I have for it.

@ Keith: We'll just make sure that Jeff washes his keyboard before he types anything and sends his cooties over the inter-web!

@ Jerry: Hey, no worries, ol' buddy. I can't even see straight to turn on the computer before my fist pot of coffee, much less make any sense out of anything I'm reading!

But just for you, the next up-date shows the new left hand...

A little up-date for today:

After drying overnight, the exhausts pipes and mufflers could be removed and the gaps where the pipe parts fit together could be puttied up:



I'll give this putty a couple of days to dry before I sand it down.

I then moved on to the radio operator. As discussed in the last couple of posts, I'm reposing / replacing his left hand. I thought about trying to work with the molded plastic hand, but simply replacing the hand was much quicker.

I selected a replacement hand from Hornet's Hand Set 03. I picked the replacement just by holding the available hands up to the top of the armor plate and seeing which one matched my idea for the final pose.

Once selected, I cut off the kit hand and test fit the figure and new hand to gauge the angle the I would have to cut the new wrist at. The Hornet hands are cast with a section of forearm, as shown in the following picture. This makes inserting them into sleeves very easy and which also gives you some "working room" for other kinds of conversions.



Once I had the estimated wrist angle, I trimmed the Hornet hand and drilled corresponding holes in both the hand and the figure's forearm. I anchored a piece of brass wire into the hand with CA and used the tip of my X-acto knife to drill out the hole in the forearm to create some "wiggle room" for the hand.



I then test fit the hand to the forearm and trimmed the wire to length, making sure that the hole in the forearm gave me all the room to move the hand and adjust it as necessary.

I then put the figure back into his position in the carrier and dry-fit the hand to the forearm.



I adjusted the angle of the hand until I was satisfied by the fit of the fingers to the armor plate and the angle of the hand to the forearm.

Once this was good, I applied a small drop of CA to "freeze" the joint. After this glue had set, I removed the figure and reinforced the glue joint with a little more CA.

While that was setting up, I mixed up a small bit of Milliput. I used the Milliput to add a small bit to the figure's sleeve in the rear armpit area (a spot left over from earlier), fill in the gaps in the elbow and wrist, and add a little to either side of the forearm where the arm bones meet the hand and wrist.





As you can see from the photos, the putty work is still a bit rough and the wrist-forearm joint needs a lot of work. But at this stage, I'll let the putty set hard overnight and go to work with files and sandpaper tomorrow.

For anyone who's curious, although I have some nice stainless steel sculpting tools, I've done all the work on all three of these figures with nothing more than a wooden toothpick with one end pointed and the other cut to a chisel shape. I keep this wet with ordinary tap water. I like that the toothpick is very light and easy to use with just finger pressure. If I need a smoother tool, I usually just dip the toothpick into CA and sand it.

After the work on the figure, I spent the rest of my time at the workbench cleaning up suspension parts. It's a bit tedious, but not too bad when the clean up work is spread over several build sessions. When all the suspension parts are cleaned up, the actual construction of the bogies, etc, should go pretty quick. I'll continue to work on these parts in between sessions with the radio operator figure.

Finally, I apologize for the poor photos today, but I just had the camera within arms reach of my workbench and didn't use a tripod.

However, I won't apologize for the appearence of my bench which is in its usual state of chaos. I'm guessing that most of yours look about the same!

Happy modeling!

Hey folks,
I just got a new order in from my wholesaler. And of course, I order myself one of these kits. All I can say is wow! It is sure worth the cash. I think for marking I will be doing it in Aldershot, England. But I might have the markings as the Nova Scotia Highlanders. (My stompin grounds.) I just like the G3 Green colour. I will start this kit once I get finshed my Mirror Model CMP. I used some of your ideas on here and used them on my CMP. Taping and painting idea. And I will use it again for this bad boy.

Cheers,
Tom

I love your 'handiwork' .... pardon the pun

Keith.

Of course,your skill is obvious but this is also another reason to love Hornet products.
J