Ever since doing the Bar-armoured Scimitar back in 2012, (seen in this thread: http://armorama.com/forums/196731&page=1) I've been planning to have a go at doing one of the new Scimitar 2s. On the face of it this should be relatively easy, after all its "only" a Scimitar turret on top of a Spartan hull isn't it? Bar armour? pah no problem! (hahahaha!)

This is what I mean:


(Image sourced from http://plain-military.proboards.com/thread/4962/qrl-sqn-cvr-mk-2 with thanks)

So let us begin by working out what we will need to build it. So:

Scimitar Turret - not a problem, got several AFV Club Scimitar kits in the stash.
Spartan Hull - okay bit trickier, but Accurate Armour do a Spartan resin kit. Problem here is its an old-style hull which will need updating.
Bar armour - well I scratch built the bar armour 2 years ago, I could do it again. However Accurate Srmour also have a PE bar armour set of the Warrior, so it might be worth seeing what can be done with it.

Tracks? No problem got several sets of early and late Fruilmodel tracks in the stash which are great fun to put together (ahem!)

Right to this is the stuff to begin with:



Now the reason you see a Spartan AND Samson Accurate Armour kits is that I also intend at some point to build one of the new build bar-armoured Samson recovery vehicles. Now with these, the commander's cupola has migrated from the middle on the old hulls to the left side as on the Spartan, so I'm performing some drastic surgery on the hulls by cutting them both in half and using the Samson front with the Scimitar rear for the Scimitar 2 and the Scimitar front and Samson back on the Samson 2 at some point in the future. Yes I know how mad that sounds, but it seemed like a good idea at the time! Oh and just because there appears to be a lot of expensive Accurate Armour kits, they've all been acquired over the last 2 years so I'm not made of money

Opening the boxes and we end up with this lot of components:



Left and top, AFV Club Scimitar bits,
Middle top, Accurate ARmour Spartan kit
Right Top, bar armour plan from my own fair hand!
Middle, Scimitar/Scorpion Photoetch leftovers from previous Scorpion and Scimitar builds and some resin pieces from Castoff Armour left over from the LEP Scimitar build, to provide the extra armour panels.
Bottom right, Accurate Armour Warrior PE bar armour set.

In addition, there will be a plethora of plastic card, stowage accessories from Castoff, Accurate Armour and other sources.

Finally in this introductory post is the bar armour schematic I've created, having studied a lot of the photos in the Plain Military board thread linked to above. This has benefited from my previous research efforts while building the bar armoured Scimitar and research into the Samson build.



The first job was to spend an evening sitting watching the TV while assembling the Fruilmodel tracks, then another day waiting for my fingertips to recover!

next job was to look at the hull segments and join them back together properly. So the Samson front hull and Spartan rear hull have been matched up and sanded...





As you can see there is still a lot of sanding to do. The holes in the upper surface for the Samson cupola and Spartan rear hatch have been filled with plastic and filler and left to dry for a couple of days to let it cure before any more sanding takes place.

Its a shame there is so much moulded detail on the hull as most of it is wrong for the Scimitar 2 so so will end up coming off, eg:


(Image sourced from http://plain-military.proboards.com/thread/4925/scimitar-2-complete-walkaround-over used with permission)

I've been in touch with Terry @ Castoff models for some of the pieces of Plasan armour he made for the LEP set I used in the earlier bar-armoured Scimitar and for several turret pieces that will allow me to upgrade the sights and so on. There will be quite a lot of changes made to the turret as well, lots of extra pieces of appliqué armour.

I'm much happier with the updated armour schematic now and will try to have a go at that soon. When Thunderbird 4 (my current build ) is finally finished I'll be 100% on this build

Great idea and good luck with your build! The Scimitar 2 is a sharp looking vehicle.

I am surprised that we haven't seen a kit or conversion yet.

Perhaps the pair of you should collaborate and come up with a complete Resin kit?

Keith.

There is work afoot, trust me.

Keith.

Having seen your finished scimitar at cosford last year (I think it was yours anyhow) I know this is going to bring the house down! I look forward to seeing more

Thanks guys

Yes that was mine at Cosford last year, it got a 3rd place in the comp! I may be taking it again this year to put on the Britmodeller stand (since it was the reason I got banned from BM for 3 months lol).

Keith: I'm sharing data with Terry to help him with his work, so fingers crossed. We helped each other before with the previous Scimitar bar-armour and that turned otu pretty good form him, although I have yet to build one of them from his stuff, but yours looked fabulous!

I take short cuts by using AA stuff where he can't for copyright reasons.

Will be heading to Cosford this weekend so don't expect to get much done for now.

Andrew, yes I am aware of the sharing of info between the pair of you and his source for his starting point..

Your build certainly required purchasing a myriad of items and not cheap ones either... Kit bashing AA stuff is waay beyond my wallet even at two years of collecting..

I will watch your build with interest and keen eyes...

Keith.

Thanks Keith

While recovering from a very tiring but enjoyable Cosford model show, did a bit more work today on the front hull decking. First off had to cut off the lovely but out of date moulded detail and then add the different louvres of the diesel engine version as shown in the photo in my previous post and this one:


(Source: http://plain-military.proboards.com/thread/4925/scimitar-2-complete-walkaround-over used with permission)

So here we are:



The lower left louvre is salvaged from a scrap AFV Club scimitar hull left over from the previous build as you can see here:



The central tall louvre panels have been scratch built from plastic card and currently just resting in place. Its a complex shape and will have a mesh grille over the top so although it looks a bit ragged in the photo it should work out okay. I'll see what it looks like once its all dry. If worst comes to worst, I'll just have to try again tomorrow.

As you can see lots of detail had to be removed, including the winching hooks which were mounted vertically whereas you can see from the above photo that nowadays they are mounded horizontally and used as attachment points for the bar armour supports. These will be recreated later and put back. The various PE sets I've got from previous builds has plenty of engine grilles available, so that won't be an issue later.

The winching 'Hooks' as you call them or lifting eyes, actually 'turn', they are pinned through armour.

The ability to turn is required due to the different types of equipment arrangements that may lift the vehicle...

Keith.

Ahh yes, couldn't remember the proper name as I was typing last night They needed to come off - I can use the ones from the kit to replace them at the correct orientation when needed later.

I've redone the louvre vent on the front hull as I wasn't happy with the previous effort and its turned out much better:



Next, I've been paying attention to the back door. The resin hull uses the Spartan large back door but the Scimitar 2 uses the small door like the rear of the Samson (more on that later).





So the first order of the day was to blank out the big door frame. I've not got a photo of that as I've forgotten - I'll add one next time.

Then it was on to building the new back door. This was measured up and shaped and hinges and other details added with plastic rod, PE pieces and some resin chopped from the doors on the Spartan which won't be used:



It was at this point that I checked what the back of the Samson resin kit looked like and was bowled over to realise it was essentially what I was scratch building!





I'm going to carry on with what I'm doing and save that for when (***WHEN***) I eventually build the Samson version.

In the meantime, also been doing some work on the turret:



This is using the AFV kit turret plus the mantlet from Castoff models from the "Updated CVR(T) Bins" set. This will also need a selection of applique armour plates added along with the updated rangefinders and sights etc, and of course the big box at the back with barracuda netting over it and the "spoiler"! Patience is a virtue dear reader...

More updates: First Upper and lower hulls joined together with some considerable wrestling with ill-fitting resin and lots of gaps and filler required.



Lots of road wheels assembled ready to added later



Next, the back door has been added and the various bits and bobs placed nearby. I still need to wire up the sensors and so on



and finally in this update, the driver makes his first appearance. This is based on a resin figure I had in the spares box - proabbly from Accurate Armour. It originally had one of the older helmets on - not the bone-dome style but the ones that didn't cover the ears, so to convert it into the newer helments like this:



I've used tome green stuff



and will add camo later when its dried out. Since you can only see the head in the hatch, I haven't bothered much about preserving clothing detail. More to come...

Lot more work taken place so far this weekend. First of all the front of the hull has been worked on:



Here you see the resin bins from Castoff, plus kit headlights, scratch built box with "wings" while underneath is the kit tow hooks plus some extra armour panels added using plastic card. Bolts are just blobs of Mr Dissolved Putty.

Next started to work down the left side



More appliqué armour panels plus the track rod from the kit with PE holders and straps. The side bin has been built up from parts of bins that come with the kit, plus a piece of PE mesh from the Samson kit and I've just realised that the hinge is in the wrong place so that will have to be sanded off I drilled a hole for the brass rod to represent the tube thing you can see here:


(image from http://plain-military.proboards.com/thread/4925/scimitar-2-complete-walkaround-over used with permission)

On the right side not so much has been done:



simply because the right side is a lot more complex with the exhaust pipe being shielded with plasan panels eg



which as yet I can't reproduce properly. I'm getting some pieces from Terry at Castoff at some point soon which will hopefully let me handle that. in the meantime, attention switched to the turret. Again there are a few appliqué armour panels to add





Lots os small details to add to those later, including the smoke dischargers etc. The side bins on the turret are the same as those from the kit ie



but they have has plasan added as can be seen in the previous walkaround pic. Castoff do replacement versions of these for the LEP upgrade I used for the Scimitar 2 years ago so I'm getting them from Terry. However one of the main structural additions to the Scimitar 2 turret is what goes on at the rear, namely the big Baraccuda box and the "spoiler"







As that last pic shows, its fortunate that they used the same mating panel to the back of the turret as was used for the older bins, so I can reuse the kit part as the basis for the scratch build... ta da!






I am planning to build the box today. I picked up some baraccuda decal stuff at Cosford last year so will give that a go.

More to follow after the long weekend

It's coming along nicely Andy,
Do you know when a terry plans on releasing his Scimtar 2 when I spoke to him last year he said it was his next project?

I believe its still a work in progress, but he was saying that since I've started on this one its given him some incentive to get moving on his Don't take my word as anything more than hearsay though, I don't want to make any definitive statements on his behalf.

Thanks for the intel Andy, of course I wouldn't hold you to it,

As promised, here is the box:



I used the AFC Club barracuda decal and mixed a custom Desert Sand to match the MiG Modern British Sand colour I got a while ago. I don't like the pain however so I use it to match my Tamiya paints to, like I did with the Airfix Warrior. I think I got the Airfix warrior a bit too yellow, so this time I'm toning it down slightly and put more white in and its come up nicely I reckon. You can see the efforts at colour matching on the top of the aerosol - can you spot where I got it right finally?

So the next stage is fixing it to the "spoiler" and that is done in the real thing like this:



So here goes!







I punched some 2mm disks out of card and used some PE sprue bent appropriately to create the angle brackets. The clasps and handle were from the spare PE from previous Scimitar builds. The paintwork needs a wash to properly bring out the details, but I had to assemble the box and barracuda camo before assembly. I've got some guitar strings on order to use as the corrugated pipework you see on various parts of the hull. I'll probably leave the box and spoiler assembly off the turret until much later in the build.

More armour panels have been added to the hull while watching Jimi Hendrix on BBC 4 last night...





I'm not sure what that box is, you can see it here:



and here



I still need to make those "holey" plasan armour panels, and as yet I'm struggling for ideas on how to do it. I'm consulting with Terry at Castoff as to how he did his panels for the LEP armour upgrade. More on that in the future hopefully!

Finally just to get an idea of how its going...



Next job is to do the indicator lights and ECM pod assemblies that hand off the front



That should be fun

Had a bit of a hiatus on this as I've been distracted with other things the last few days. However I've also been waiting for some things to be delivered and one of those arrived today, namely some guitar strings so that I can use them to do this:





namely add the corrugated pipe that is attached to the rear strut of the ECM "spoiler". I've got plent left over for some other pipework at the front to connect the indicator lights and ECM pods.... speaking of which, its taken three attempts so far to get to this:



and this



They were surprisingly difficult to build as the angles are all wrong (omg its a Hound of Tindalos!) and as you can see they are rather on the small side! There was some "normal" modelling as well to get the cannon fixed up:



I'm still waiting for the pierced armour plate PE I ordered which will allow me to continue with the hull work. You will also notice in the first photos that there is a plan for the bar armour ready to go - I printed this out over the weekend and sprayed it with gloss varnish a few times to give it a nice smooth surface on which I can build the various frames. Still not sure if I'm entirely scratch building it from strip or using some of the Warrior panels as well. I guess we'll just have to build them ans see how it looks! That will be happening sooner rather than later now...

Just a very quick update today, as the pierced plate PE arrived yesterday which allowed me to do this to one of the turret bins:
 

 
which can be compare to this
 

 
although this shows I still need to add some bolts and fastenings
 

 
but its a start...

So having tried out that pierced armour mesh and compared it to the real thing, I think the hole spacing is too small. So I ordered the other Airwaves PE pierced sheet which has 33 holes per inch instead of 55 and here they are side by side:



I think the newer one is much better looking, so I'm going to have to start again on the pierced armour. Thankfully, I've got plenty of spare turret stowage boxes available to practice on! In the meantime been fixing up the commander's periscope:



Kit part on right, modified part on left. There was some PE available for the outer box but it didn't really add that much to the kit part. The main thing was replacing the solid disk with a ring which on mine is just a slice of brass tube. You can see the spare turret boxes in the background.

Exhaust pipe, silencer and guard has been added



I'll do the pierced armour cage soon, along with the plates that go around that box. As a slight aside, continued with more work on the crew:



Driver on right Commander on left. Gunner will be inside on this build as I can't be arsed with a third figure The commander is based on a test shot figure that Terry from Castoff sent me when I was doing the bar armour before. I need to add camo to the helmet to properly represent the guys who were driving this around on Salisbury Plain in 2012:

Hi Andrew
What a neat build,I'm really enjoying what you are doing.
I have a question.

Do you know what the cover on the turret is for?
It reminds me of a couple of cars that were made on Top Gear a few years back where Richard Hammond modified an MG and put a huger Spoiler on it.

Perhaps its the same here they require a lot of down force.


Cheers


Chris

The "spoiler" and the large box on the back of the turret are for the ECM gear that is supposed to protect against remote controlled IEDs. If you look at pictures of vehicles in theatre (as opposed to training aras like Salisbury Plain) the spoiler is festooned with extra aerials like this

The antenna's can be changed very quickly to suit the systems be employed within and or as they are upgraded.

Another point to note (for you judges) the British military paint is an 'EGGSHELL' finish and NOT flat... and the number plates (tags) are 'GLOSS'..

It bugs me to hear the constant 'everything should be flat coated!

A VERY NICE build here and very inspiring. Keep up the good work mate.

Keith.

Thanks Keith - I'll keep the finish in mind when I get to that stage.

This photo shows the upper surface of the "spoiler" that shows the attachment points for various antenna



I got quite a bit more done over the bank holiday weekend... So with the new PE pierced armour, I was able to make the plates that go around the exhaust and the box:



Now because the plates are cut from the PE, you end up with a ragged edge which is not visible on the real thing:



So to counter this I developed a technique where the edges get filled with superglue and/or Mr Surfacer 500 or bracketed with a strip of 0.25mm x 0.5mm plastic strip, which when the joint is dry gets sanded down to the same thickness as the PE. This should give the impression of the edging as seen on the real thing. To be honest its a little out of scale - but then again so is the pierced armour, but the more true to scale version just doesn't look good in my opinion.



This view lets you see the way its formed around the exhaust pipes and shows the extra plate the protects the joint to the hull.

Attention then shifted to the turret. You can see above where the smoke dispensers have been added. Next up,, notice this thingamujig on the upper left of the photo:



This had to be scratch built:



I'm so glad I invested in the punch and die set from Hungary a couple months ago - its been a godsend in this build! You'll also see the box thing at the rear of the commander's hatch which can be see here:



which has a connector to the ECM box. There are a couple of the periscopes aroudn the commander hatch that have been removed fromt he standard configuration - the rear facing one has had a blanking plate put over it while the next one anti-clockwise is replaced by this box. I still need to scratch build the fitting that looks like it should be supporting the amber flashing light that is used on road trips. Similarly, there is some sort of fitting further back that should be added.

Here we see a lot more detail has been added, including the side boxes with their plasan armour plates along with aerial fittings and boxes



I had to scratch build the cover over the gunners sight







You can see how much use I've made of the pinch and die set to create the bolt heads and various other fittings. The aerial mounts were scratch built around some brass fittings I got from RB Models.

I'm retty happy with the turret now, so as soon as I've got those last two fittings done it will be time to paint. This is where I think I've made a mistake in that painting the pierced armour plates is going to be tricky to avoid blocking up the holes. That and painting the surface UNDERNEATH the armour - I may need to take it off again to paint underneath first! Oh well you live and learn...

Great update, it's really starting to take shape now