And we're back. More etch this go around. I was going to add the nice replacement fenders until I realized that using them might be more trouble than it's worth, particularly at this stage of the build. The problem is twofold: IBG molded a partial fender to the hull which means a butt join for both the kit piece or the etch fender. Part's solution seems to be adding a thin strip to hide the seam and give more gluing surface. I'm not entirely sure as the instructions aren't very helpful at all as to what you're supposed to do. The strip also includes a front plate for the nose cap. This can be snapped off so not really an issue apart from the instructions being as vague as a notion that just graduated magna cum vague from the University of Vague. Getting back to the engineering, Part's hand was forced because of the way IBG molded the kit. The only option would have been to provide extended fenders and remove the molded on fender stubs. In any case, the instructions need some work. If you choose to do up the fenders, they are quite nice. A pity since they won't be used here. Fold the lips first, if you can use a bending tool, do so. Mine is too small for the piece to fit in properly so I bent with tweezers and then burnished against a steel ruler.






The kit fenders are ok as is, but you can improve the look by trimming off the lip from the underside and adding 10 x 40 strip.



I tackled the sand channels next. If you don't have a bending tool, use a strip of fairly thick plastic the same width (or less) as the inner bend to help or tape and a ruler, just don't try bending with tweezers or pliers, you need to get as much surface bent in one go as possible to keep the pieces relatively straight and kink free.








And with a test fit of the bracket and strap. It appears the strap buckle is on the wrong face, not really an issue unless you leave the channels off, so pay attention when bending.



And that's it for now, a whole bunch of other stuff has been going on, just no pictures yet. I plan on going into the wee hours of the night to be able to base coat tomorrow so stay tuned, updates will be coming throughout the day and night.

Kimmo

Another bit of fun with etch. Filled and sanded the fenders, not as simple as it sounds. Butt joins should be outlawed. Added the hull hooks and rear door stops. The hooks are fiddly due to their small size. You get plenty extra so don't worry about losing a few. I grabbed the base with tweezers and bent the hook around a sewing needle that's chucked in my pin vice. Make sure you get the hooks oriented the right way on the hull, says the guy who managed to screw that up 3 times on the same side! Tiny locating nubs are to be found to help with positioning, if you haven't sanded them off. Part provides a set of fender braces, which is a nice catch on their part. I found one decent shot of them so I fudged the fit as best as I could. They might be a touch long, however, without a good shot I can't say one way or another.









I've also added some small bits here and there, the weapons have been cleaned (very nice looking BTW) and as you can see the tools are cleaned. Deciding on whether to remove the molded stuff and replace with the Part kit. A quick bite to eat and back at it.

Kimmo

Final update tonight/this morning. Tools done and a little scratching for the turret. Removing the molded on clasps and whatnot went easily enough, a new scalpel blade made sure of that. The etch is fiddly, but well worth the effort. I found it quite easy to get the brackets lined up by laying the tool on the mat and then tacking the pieces to the tool with liquid cement, then a few drops of super glue on the back. The straps were sort of fun, if you had super magnification and tiny tweezers, you could actually put the hook through the strap eyes. Now I can paint these separately and then glue them on to the vehicle when it has been painted.





I added 3 lifting hooks, a little speculative on my part, and then a pe and second cover plate for the turret as per the refs.





I glued the handles on the rear doors and noticed one of the doors was rather warped. Not sure if that was from me rummaging through the sprues or what. I got it sort of mostly straightened out. Speaking of sprues and rummaging, the sprues are basically empty. A couple of minor pieces and that's it. Everything is accounted for, I think. One over looked item I did find was a glove compartment! Fortunately it's not nearly as nice as mine. I think the etch is pretty much done as well, just the hood and armoured grills to sort out. Looks like I may get a base coat on tomorrow as hoped, I have a gig tomorrow nite and wanted the paint on so it could dry properly. That wraps up 14 hours of modeling for today, more when I haul my butt out of bed.

Kimmo

The grills are now attached. This has got to be the fiddliest thing I've ever attempted. The hinge/brackets went together easily enough. I was surprised and delighted that I threaded sprue through them with minimum fuss. I tried the first side by gluing the door in place first, then adding the bits. It took a long time. The other side I attached the hinge/bracket first, then the door. Much easier. The only trick is you need to be pretty accurate with your measurements and angles. I cut the angled wires first to the same length after a few dry runs and Mark I eyeballing.






I also managed to get some paint on, needs another couple of coats. I mixed up Vallejo Dark Yellow and Light Grey primer roughly 2:3. Going by what I could find on the net, it's not a bad match. It looks a touch yellow right now but will grey out a bit as the layers build.






That's it until tomorrow, I'm off to entertain people musically.

Kimmo

The base coat is now on, I'll let that dry for an hour or two then give it a flat coat to smooth out the paint and give it a protective coat. The coverage in some areas is a bit uneven but this may work to my advantage, we're not painting a show room hot rod after all. I ran out of my mix and still need some small bits to do, these will get painted up after I get the camo on tomorrow. Still a lot of detail parts to get painted as well, all in all, it's coming along nicely and I may even get this weathered by Wednesday.




Kimmo

Whoa... this is really looking good now, Kimmo!

I'm pleasantly surprised at the amount of detail that the kit has squeezed into it, and I think one of these has got to go on my "to do" list.

I'm really enjoying following along with you here. Thanks for taking the time to document the build in such detail.

Thanks Mike, you're right about the detail, there is plenty of it that only really shows up once you get some paint on. I thought the Bronco Pz I had plenty of detail, but this is certainly it's equal. The Part etch brings it up a notch, and there are a lot of little things that can be done to go that extra mile should you wish. It's not the easiest of kits to build, but it will reward a patient modeler. I feel kind of lucky to be able to do this and the other builds I've done for Armoroma so it's only fair I pass on as much info and tips as I can in the process.

Kimmo

While waiting for paint to dry, which is decidedly yellow looking grrrrrr, I decided to have some fun with the weapons. They are really nice as is, some excellent fine detail on all of them. One problem with the soft plastic means barrels will get bent, so be careful. One other problem is that the Boys and Bren have nothing to mount into the turret with and there's not a whole lot of room to fiddle while dry fitting. Leaving the commander's seat off until everything else is painted and in place would help a fair bit.

Starting with the Bren, the only improvements I made were to redo the front and rear sights, drill out the muzzle and add a simple post mount. I trimmed down the front sight a little, added a sprue for the sight and sides from 5 thou. The rear sight is a slice of wire sheathing. If you peer down the sights, they actually line up and you can imagine yourself squeezing off half a mag! The post mount is stretched sprue with the end flattened and shaped, a notch was cut into the mount on the Bren.

The Boys needed a bit more work. The sights were replaced, the rear needs drilling, and the front was wire sheathing again. The half round thing immediately to the rear of the magazine was removed and a thinner version put in place. A bolt was made from stretched sprue. The muzzle had the small nipple trimmed off and a small piece of drilled out rod was dropped in. The mount is a plausible variation on what standard mounting brackets look like. Happily the front grip was at a perfect angle. The mount is rod with a hole drilled through, sprue inserted and then glued into a drilled hole in the front grip. Two small strips and bolts finish it off.

The Vickers got a new front sight similar to the Bren, a couple of doohickeys that were either missed on the kit or undersized and the elongated thingy on the left hand side got the edges rounded off a bit. A hose mount was added to the cooling jacket from sprue inserted into a drilled hole and then drilled out. In retrospect it should probably be a little lower and angled down more. The squeamish may want to turn away right about now. I sliced the barrel guard off, drilled a hole up to the cooling slots and then pushed, prodded and scratched the openings a little to get them all looking deeper. They are ok as is, except for the slots which aren't perpendicular to the mold, they have slanted fills, if that makes sense. The hole I drilled wasn't really large enough for a clean breakthrough as I had originally hoped, but helped to make the impressions deeper. I also drilled the muzzle. The mount had a hole drilled in part way as IBG has one of their butt joins here, and was glued in position.

A lot of the in progress shots were a little fuzzy, so we'll make due with these and a couple of shots with the weapons primed.











I also spent some time getting mixes right for the camo. I may need to do a base coat mix too as the colour is looking way too yellow for Portland Stone and nowhere near orange enough for Light Stone. Sigh. Anyways, that's it for tonight.

Kimmo

Kimmo,
Very nice detail work! Thank you for sharing the blow-by-blow progress report. Following in Awe!

--mike

Thanks Mike, glad you're enjoying it.

Kimmo

I think I got the base colour sorted out. It's not as easy a shade to mix as it appears, there's a touch of green that really messes things up if you add too much. If you're playing along at home: 7 parts yellow ochre, 7 parts buff, 4 parts US tanker highlight, 3 parts USMC tank crew and 1 part white. More or less. To get a closer mix with primers, 3 Light grey, 1 dark yellow and maybe just a hint of any green. After weathering, nobody's going to be able to tell how close it was or wasn't. I'll mix the slate and silver gray when I have daylight. Don't try mixing colours without good natural lighting unless you're working from chips at hand under the same lighting conditions. Case in point, the pic below is a touch green from the lighting.



While that was drying and waiting for the sun to come up, I painted the weapons. I actually had a lot of fun with these. The Vickers needed quite a bit of brass, which was done with a buff base, then silver/buff in various strengths and mixes, a touch of brass (I do mean a touch as it's very red) then British tanker highlight/silver heavily thinned. I'm really pleased with the result. For some reason, brass is a hard colour to get right out of the bottle, it's usually a sparkly gold or coppery tone. All the gun metal parts got various shades of black, black grey, silver, black brown mixes in various ratios and strengths to add depth and to make sure they all look different. This is why I absolutely love acrylics, layering is easy and very effective.






That's it for today, camo goes on next. Knock on wood.


Kimmo

Hi Kimmo,

Excellent progress, things are looking good.

Cheers

Al

Thanks Al, coming up on the home stretch. Today's session will determine if I can get her weathered tomorrow or not, hopefully so.

Kimmo

The camo is now on, some touch ups and a flat coat still needed before the decals go on. The silver grey and slate were easier mixes: silver grey 1:1 British tank crew/USMC tank crew and the slate was 1:1 black grey and reflective green. I started off by masking the outer edges of the silver grey and painted into the slate areas, then masked for slate. I tried post it notes at first but they didn't want to stick down well enough so went with Revell tape. No paint lifted as far as I can tell, and no ridges either. I burnished the tape down gently with a cotton bud and removed the tape as soon as the paint was dry, 5 minutes or so. Only had a little bleeding in a few tricky spots. The pattern was from the instructions, which appears to be based on a composite of known shots of different vehicles. The pics I've seen show that the official pattern was not strictly adhered to so don't worry about getting everything precisely the same.









I don't think I'll get this done by tomorrow, if I pushed I could but I don't want to screw up anything at this late stage so we'll see where we are tomorrow and then wrap it up when I get some more bench time. Now to tidy up the bench.

Kimmo

A major minor disaster, or minor major disaster, depending on your view point. Everything is humming along smoothly, got some wear started, headlights and windshield mounted, the entire thing flat coated and glossed for decals. The decals are extremely thin. And I do mean extremely thin. I'm not sure if this a bad batch or if all of IBG's decals are like this so until we hear different, if you are doing an IBG kit, test a marking option you won't be using to see how it reacts (never a bad idea). I have never seen a decal this thin, it started to fold on itself when I moved it on the backing sheet and went rapidly downhill from there. I've had folds before due to decals not being allowed to separate properly, or being very large, but have always manged to sort it out. No such luck here.



It's almost as if a layer is missing or something. I'll see if I can get some replacements sent as I have no confidence in the other option working any better. As far as I'm concerned, what I have is unusable, I really don't see how you can get the decal in position on the kit. I'll also rummage through my spares to see what I have, but I fear nothing useful will be found.

Here's where we're at for the moment with the latest pieces in place.



Sooo, it's off to sleep and bash on with what I can tomorrow.

Kimmo

Heart breaking man... I feel for you...

Bad luck with the decals Kimmo, but you have done amazing work, kudos sir!

Thanks for the commiserations Colin and Clay, all may not be lost just yet. I dug into my old school memory bank and brushed a coat of gloss varnish on the unused decals and let them dry overnight.



So, the 2nd marking option is now doable. Not the one I wanted to do, so I'll wait and see if I can get a replacement set in or not. Not sure when or how much bench time I'll be getting in the next week so I can afford to wait a bit on this decision. I'll revise my previous opinion from the decals being useless to usable, however, you shouldn't have to resort to this. I'm more convinced that the final varnish/carrier film layer is missing.


A few more little bits taken care of today. The deflector plate was added to the axle, the instructions were yet again a little vague. I ended up mounting it on the transfer case, the holes coincide with a couple of bolts. The plate was angled to roughly match the width of the case and axle stubs and glued flush to the top.





The tools have been started, I'll paint the straps and clasps when they're on the vehicle. The wood looks a touch grey in this pic, but it is more brown.



And shiny! Game Color silver is a lovely silver, very fine metallic flakes.



So that's that until the next time, stay tuned.

Kimmo

Kimmo, it looks great. All your hard work has really turned out well and the extra effort shows.

Thanks Russ. Looks like I'll get some time in tomorrow, hopefully I'll get the rest of the bits and bobs painted and attached.

Kimmo

A light at the end of the tunnel, Kimmo.

I'm sure you can make a save after the decal problem, though.

I'm looking forward to seeing the final results.

Thanks Mike. I'm leaning with option 2 for the markings unless something happens in the next week, no point in waiting longer than that for something to crop up. I'll give the decals a gloss coat tomorrow so they'll be good to go for the session after.

Kimmo

Really enjoyable to watch (well, except for the decal issues). You're eyesight and dexerity are to be commended in working with all that small etch - I'm sure that I could not have gotten to where you are (if I were building this, there would be much mangled and lost brass and the kit might have ended in the rubbish bin). Chapeau!

Thanks Dave. An optivisor really really helps in dealing with small parts. My eyesight isn't what it used be, which was never all that great to begin with. Dexterity is something that can be practiced, as I mentioned up thread, get a cheap 72nd scale kit and some bargain etch sets to fiddle with. The key is to have good tweezers and to think through how you want to attach and bend stuff, and use tape as an aid. Twirling pens and brushes with your fingers helps to keep your hand in. Couldn't resist the pun. It really just comes down to practice and patience, as with most things modeling.

Kimmo

That much closer to completion. I've received word that replacement decals are on the way, fingers crossed! Got most of the remaining bits attached today. All the lights are painted and in place. The searchlight and taillight are molded in clear (sort of brittle), as are the lenses for the headlights. The lenses are a very snug fit with paint on the lights, so take care. I nearly had a heart attack when one of them popped off and couldn't find it at first. They sit a little proud as well, I ran some gloss into the seams to hold it in place and added gloss to all the lenses. The handle for the headlight glues into an indentation on the light, meaning you can either glue first, in which case you will see a grey blob, or first paint the light silver and hope that the glue of your choice holds. I'm not sure if the taillight should be left clear or painted red?





As you can see, the weapons were also mounted. There is barely enough room in the turret to get them in place. The Bren gun will slip through the opening with the legs on, you will need to do a fair amount of wriggling. Gluing the mounts was more fun then it should have been. The rear doors got some white, they could conceivably be the vehicle's base colour, but I don't know for sure, the white certainly adds interest. The air filter was glued in place too, you can't really see it in any of the pics but it's in there.







The hood prop will be done after I get decals in place, it's a fairly simple little piece. The only thing left to do is continue with some wear and wait for the decals to arrive. There's not much point in starting the weathering before everything is in place, I want to hit it all in one go. Next update will be in the not too distant future. I hope.

Kimmo