@ Kimmo: LOL! It's like a magic trick, not nearly so impressive once you know how it's done!




Hi Sean,

Thanks for the kind words.

This is my "go to" torch.



I bought this one at Harbor Freight, but Northern Tools and Micro Mark and many other places carry similar butane micro-torches.

Without seeing the parts and assembly you're working on, it's difficult to offer any specific suggestions. It sounds like the size and mass of the clamp are an issue. Try using smaller clamps and a more delicate clamping set-up.

Generally speaking, there are several things to keep in mind:

1) You must use a flux, either paste or liquid. Rosin core solders are no good for scale model work. Tinning fluxes are messy and are not especially useful. Ordinary fluxes are cleaner to use. If you use a paste flux, pre-heat the joint before add the solder chips to get the flux to flow.

2) Use a solid (not rosin core) solder and cut it into small chips. The size of the chips should be matched to the size of the joints and parts - but my rule is the smaller the better.

(The solder chips I used on the latch assembly, above, were about the size of medium grains of salt mashed flat. Difficult to describe, but probably in the .5mm x .5mm x .1 mm thick range.)

3) Clamping the parts together is generally the most difficult part of the job. I use everything from cross-locking tweezers, to spring clamps, to hand-held tweezers and sometimes even my PE bending tool.

I use a piece of tile to do most of my soldering on. It's fire proof and heat resistant. Occasionally, I'll even tape the parts to the tile and solder directly on it.

4) Multiple solder joints near each other can be problematic. If you're not careful, heating one joint can melt the previous joint.

Often, you need to use either heat sinks or solders with different melting points or both.

Any small metal clamping tool can be used as a heat sink either on the already soldered joint of between the two joints. Also, bits of wet paper towel can be used. Gary Boxall (a very good modeler) suggests using surgical lube as a paste-type heat-sink.

Most of the time, though, I simply use a quick touch with the torch. As soon as the solder melts and flows, remove the heat to avoid overheating the assembly.

Here, small solder chips pay off since they melt quicker than larger chunks of solder or trying to melt directly off the solder wire roll.

5) Remember that the melted solder always flows towards the heat source, so think ahead and place the solder chips and apply the heat with this in mind.

6) Large clamps or bracing and blocking the PE assembly on a tile surface or a metal ruler, etc, are sometimes necessary, but these will work as unintended heat sinks. You will have to apply enough heat to overcome the sink which can, in turn, be too much heat for previously soldered joints.

If you have to do this, try to leave the joint to be soldered open and on the edge or overhanging the potential heat sink so that you can heat the joint with the least amount of heat possible.

7) You can contaminate the joint with burned flux, scorched tape, burned lacquer (sometimes used on the PE by the manufacturer to prevent tarnishing), etc. Your burned wood probably did leave some residue.

I use cotton swabs and / or a small nylon brush and lacquer thinner to clean my PE parts after soldering. If I have burned the flux for one joint, I will often clean the parts before trying to solder the next one.

When necessary, 0000 (4x0) steel wool can be used to buff the PE parts to more aggressively clean them.

After cleaning, you do need to re-flux the joint.

8) Occasionally, tinning the two PE parts can help with tricky joints. Flux the joint areas, apply a chips of solder and heat. Clean the parts, clamp the joint, re-flux, and heat.

The main problem with tinning and model building is that the solder on the tinned joint areas can interfere with good parts alignment leaving you with misaligned parts after the final solder joint. If this happens, reheat the joint and pull the parts apart. Realign, re-clamp, and reheat.

9) Finally, the tighter the joints fit together before soldering, the better they will solder. So, any forming and bending that must be done should be done as precisely as possible. Don't rely on forceful clamping to make the joints tight - unless you absolutely have to. Joints that are forced into alignment have a tendency to spring apart when some other joint is soldered.

HTH,

Mike,
thanks so much for the very thorough explanation, I'll give those pointers a try. Next I'll be asking how you get such nice photos !

Sean

My mind cant handle this level construction. The wicket latch is ridiculous,mike. cant wait to see it next time.

LOTS of good info in that last post, Mike! Thanks for posting it.

Agreed. Doing some soldering for a Jagdpanther and it's going as smoothly as falling down a flight of stairs.

Sorry for the slow reply, guys, but I've been out of town and mostly out of internet connectivity for the last couple of weeks.

@ Sean: You're very welcome. Hope there's something in all that that's useful. IRT photography, I don't do anything too special.

I use a Sony DSC-T100 Cyber Shot (8.1 Mp) with the macro turned on and the flash off. I put the camera on a tripod and enable the self-timer to allow vibrations to die down before the shutter releases.

I sometimes use a handheld OTT LED light as a fill-light, but most of the lighting is just what's in my workshop.

I do zoom, crop and adjust the brightness using Photoshop Elements 12 and resize the images to 1200 pixels wide. I then use the "Save for the Web" function to reduce the file size before uploading to PhotoBucket.

It's really all quite basic. The key's are lighting and keeping the camera steady on the tripod.

@ Adam: Thanks. See ya on Saturday for the club swap meet. I'm looking forward to going with the gang to see the movie, "Fury."

@ Bob: As always, you're welcome.

@ Christopher: Don't get discouraged. As with many things, practice and experience will win the day.

You might find some more ideas here:

Armorama::Build Blog::DML #6370 Panther G with AM-Works PE

You may be working with a different PE set, but maybe some of the PE work in that thread will give you some ideas.

Happy modeling!

That is awesome solder work bubba. About the only thing I ever could get right with a butane torch was heating my coffee up in my canteen cup!!
J

Not a fan of WW2 builds, even less so with Allied Armour (I know.....shoot me now!) and of the non-Axis stuff the Churchill is my least fave....havin' said all that I am a HUGE fan of top quality modelling and this is a simply jaw-dropping build Mike, fantastic attention to detail and every aspect brilliantly realised......I am glued to this one....tremendous work sir!

@ Jer: LOL! What an ol' softy!

You know if you were really an 'Ard Boy, you'd'uv just poured that instant coffee powder into your mouth and swished it around with a mouthful of cold canteen water!

;)

@ Dick: Thanks for the very kind words, sir! I'm glad you've found the build interesting.

@ All: I've had to put my model building on the back burner for the last month or so because I've been assisting my parents in settling my uncle's estate, and, unfortunately, I don't see any end in sight for the next few weeks. He was a widower and lived several hours from here, so I "have been traveling quite a bit..."

Of course this means that there's been no progress on the ol' Churchill. Apologies to all of you out there in Armorama Land who've been following along and waiting for new up-dates. Hopefully things will get sorted out soon, and I'll be able to get back to the work bench.

Happy modeling!

When I was in patrol phase at Camp McCall there were more than a few times I did just swallow the coffee packet contents!! Without water!! It would be funnier if it weren't true,heeheehee
Hope you get your familial issues sorted. Bad for morale.
J

BTDT, my brother, BTDT!

IRT the family stuff - It'll sort out soon as all the moving parts settle down, but until then, it's become a big demand on time and travel.

Moral's good, but my modeling Mojo is taking a hit. Once I'm able, it'll probably take me a week just sitting and staring at my work bench to remember what I was last doing!

C'mon down to the store Mike and take a look at those new items we were talking about and bring yer Churchill thangy with you so we can figure out where you are and what you should do next, besides I luv drooling over this item of yourn..

Keith..

Well, it's definitely been a long time since any updates on this project.

For those of you who have been following along, all I can say is that the full size, 1:1 scale world, has consumed all of my time over the last month. It looks like things are finally going to settle down some, so it's back to the ol' work bench...

For this update, there's not too much to show. I spent most of my time cleaning up and organizing and trying to remember where I was on the Churchill project when I had to set it aside.

So, still working on the front hull details.

The vehicle that I'm building is a little different in the front than the AFV Club kit. The right hand headlight on the real tank has a half-moon shaped lens on its lower side. The kit comes with two, hooded blackout drive lights, so I modified one of the kit parts, E21, to represent the half-moon lens. I trimmed the hood off the part and opened up the half-moon lens opening. This was painted silver and filled with Testor's "Clear Part Cement and Window Maker." The outside of the lens area was painted a Service Brown color and the "lens" was given a drop of Future Floor Wax to improve its clarity.

The prototype tank also has the two front marker lights on the glacis and not the tops of the front fenders as shown in the kit's instructions, step 22. These marker lights are supplied as clear parts, H3, so I cleaned these up, painted the backsides white, then used Vallejo's "British Uniform Brown" over the white. A drop of Future floor wax on the lens gave them a nice "glass" look.

The clear areas of all these lights will be masked later before the base colors for the tank are painted.



I also added the final PE bits that mount the fenders to the front hull and the sponson horns. These were the Voyager parts folded and attached per the instructions.

The prototype tank that I'm building had the sheet metal covers over the track tension adjusters on the insides of the sponson horns next to the glacis. The Voyager PE set gives you resin parts to make these covers for the front fenders, and these are also included in the AFV Cub kits as surface details on kit parts A25 and A26 (step 21). I removed these details from the kit parts, and shortened them by 1 mm and then added them to my build.

Here're the front hull details finally completed -











Hopefully I can build up a head of steam and start making some progress again.

Stay tuned and happy modeling!

The incredible skill involved here in your project just confirms my belief that this is one of the most needlessly complicated tanks ever produced.
I can't imagine the man hours needed to build this beast inside of a war-strapped economy.
But hey...obviously something worked or we wouldn't have won!
J

Looking really good Mike. Now I am back from chasing Princesses around the Magic Kingdom (Disney) I hope to log in more often and see your progress on this really amazing build.

Great work Sir.

Keith.

@ Jer: Yep, the Churchill was definitely a product of "old world craftsmanship," and undoubtedly the best WWI tank produced during WWII...

On the other hand, it was very well armored (if under-gunned), and the crews seemed to have loved the tank for its survivability and cross-country capabilities.

As slow as I'm building this one, though, I can't criticize the original builders too much!

@ Keith: Nice to have you back home. I'm sure that Mickey and Mini breather a sigh of relief, too!

Thanks for the kind words. Hope to catch up with you soon.

On to the build (such as it is!)...

Seems like I ran into another slow down over the last few days, but maybe some small progress, nevertheless.

I've been working on the hull side details, which really means the tow cables. Voyager gives some PE replacement parts for the cable mounts and also gives some very nice twisted copper wire and new resin eyelets.

However, the front and rear mounts for the cables are poorly represented on the kit (just plastic pegs that are really too short) and Voyager's no help.

The first order of business was to make these mounts. I used 1mm diameter Albion brass tube and various sizes of brass wire along with some 40-links per inch chain.

There are a number of very clear photos of these front and rear mounting pegs and pins in Ampersand's "The Churchill Tank: Part One." In particular, there's a very clear photo of the rear peg, pin, chain and loops on page 61.

Here are the various bits with the front mounts soldered up and one rear mount finished. Except for the small size, there's not much to say about this.

For the front mounts, the holes for the wire cross bits were drilled in the tube, the cross wire soldered in, then the excess wire was trimmed away, and the tube cut to size.

The rear mounts were made from the same brass tube with the holes drilled before the tube was cut to length. The same size wire used for the front cross bits was formed into the pegs and smaller wire was used for the rings on either end of the chain. These loops and rings were soldered closed for strength, but that's really kind of optional if you're careful not to pull the assemblies apart. I knew that the model will still get a lot of handling before it's finished, so the extra little effort soldering these pins and chains together was worth it.



Here're these rear mounts in place:





The particular prototype vehicle that I'm building had one of its tow cables connected to the front towing eye. For this, I had to cut the kit eye apart (part E4, step 19), thread the tow cable eyelet onto the ends, and glue the towing eye back together. To make this easier to remove for painting, I drilled it out and added a piece of .035 dia styrene rod (to be trimmed to length later). The other end of the tow cable conveniently reached the cable clip at the bottom forward corner of the cooling air inlet. This seemed logical, so that's where I'll attach my kit's tow cable during final assembly.

The other tow cable was stowed per the official diagrams.









The PE cable stowage troughs over the hull side doors needed annealing before they could be formed properly.

The PE cable clips on the forward bottom corners of each air intake were pretty straight forward. I did use hex bolts punched from styrene as better matches for the kit detail that had to be shaved off for the PE clips. I also made the wire pins (shown in the Voyager instructions) long enough to fit into matching holes drilled in the side of the kit for strength. These brass wire pins are what actually support the clips and the wire tow cables and prevent those details from popping loose.

AFV Club suggests in step 30 to make the tow cables 110mm long. What I did was to drill out the resin cable eyelets and cut the supplied copper wire in half. The end of each half was glued into one of the resin eyelets. When the glue dried, I mounted the left side cable eyelet to the rear mounting peg (using the chained pin to hold it in place). I then threaded the cable through the clip and door trough. I put the other eyelet onto the front mounting peg and matched the wire to its ferrule. I then cut the wire to match this ensuring that the cable is the length required to properly stow with the amount of slack and drape seen in photos.

The other cable was matched to this one, and that's the one that fit perfectly from the front towing eye to the air intake cable clip.

Anyways, I still need to add the PE mounts for the spare track on each side of hull rear, and then it's on to the rear hull and the smoke emitters.

Happy modeling!

Fantastically detailed work Mike.

Glad you're getting things sorted out. It's still looking amazing.

Mike ... this is no longer just modelling ..this is ART!
Awesome work sir .

Rick

Your newest work just reinforces my opinion about this vehicle!! LOL This concept seems to have lingered as when I saw the Centurian tank example in a museum in England I was struck by how complicated it was and work intensive to produce.
Your tow cable details are the best example I can think of to illustrate why your models look so good when completed.
Every tiny detail is re-worked and given extreme attention. So when the paint and weathering goes on it just blows my mind.
J

@ Bob; Christopher and Richard: Thank you for the kind words, gentlemen! I appreciate the feedback.

@ Jer: Yea, mass production it wasn't...

In regards to the build, sometimes you just have to search hard for the little details. The research can be as much fun as the build.

Last bits added have been the spare track hangers and the rear mounted smoke emitters.

The track hangers I used are the AFV Club kit PE parts G1 and G5. These are designed with positive fit onto pegs molded on the kit. I did replace the kit supplied spare track links with spares from the AFV Club link to link set.

These did need track pins added. The pins are what hold the track links in the hangers.

The spare track hangers supplied by Voyager, PE parts A2 and E22 are identical in size and shape to the AFV Club PE parts, but the Voyager parts require PE hex nuts. I do suspect that if the Voyager parts were fitted to the molded on kit pegs, they would ultimately look identical to the kit's PE parts. I could see no reason to replace the kit PE parts with the Voyager ones in this case.







The rear hull hot air deflectors, kit PE parts G10 and G6 were also used instead of the Voyager PE parts D2 and D3 for the exact same reason.

(By the way, AFV Club actually gives the builder PE tow cable hangers for the bottom front corners of the air intakes. These are AFV Club PE parts G14. These will fit over the molded on kit hex nuts. However, these parts are not shown anywhere in the kit's instructions.)

The Voyager PE smoke emitters, PE parts E30, E40, E18, E28 and E13 are miniature kits in themselves. With care in the folding, they will have nice, tight joins that are easily soldered. Fitting the smoke generator round tray (E28) into the holes in the box (E30) requires that one of the hinge pins on the tray be bent and then straightened once it's in the second hole.







I'm planning to display my smoke emitter boxes open and being serviced with new smoke generator rounds, but of course, the boxes can easily be built closed.

My current research is suggesting that the smoke generator munitions used were the 4" dia" x 4" high "Generator, Smoke, No.8." I'll have pictures of mine a little later. They're in the glue-up stage right now.

Next up will be the tow hook which needs a little work and the convoy light on the hull bottom rear and then on to the turret.

Happy modeling!

PS: Sorry for the duplicate photos in the last couple of posts. I've been playing around with my camera and various macro and focus settings. Anyways...

One day I may try to make something with lot of PE. It would take me about 10 years to get to this level though.
J

like always outstanding can't wait to see it next mouth mike
dave

@ Jer: Hey, at the rate I'm going on this build, it might take me 10 years to finish it!

@ Dave: I'm looking forward to the next meeting, too. Our club Christmas party's always a hoot!

Just a little up-date, today.

I managed to get the loads for the smoke emitters finished. These are about 3mm tall and painted to replicate the "Generator, Smoke, No.8." They'll get installed much later in the build, but they're done and ready...



Happy modeling!

Mike, your showing off again. But I love it!

John