This year being the 100th Anniversary, its the appropriate time to have a go at some WW1 subjects. I've got the Eduard DH2 plane to have a go at soon, but I thought I'd ease myself in gently to the WW1 theme by doing some armour. I saw on another forum someone having a go at the new Meng FT-17 French tank, and discovered that there is a cheaper version of the kit out there that protrays it with a rivetted turret. This is what I'll be using in my build:
 

 
That is Aber PE barbed wire, the Ft-17 kits itself and the Tamiya WW1 British soldiers. I'm going to use a little bit of artistic licence here and portray this tank supporting some British troops, even though this tank was used predominantly by the French and Americans, but since there are no easy to get hold of French WW1 figures, this will do the trick!
 
I didn't take a sprue shot until well after construction had started. I made a start on this kit while waiting for things to dry in my D-Day bridge diorama build (I'll post more about that another time) and following on from that this will be a diorama again, but basically because the kit comes WITH a diorama base!
 

 
This is it constructed with a load of filler required to smooth the joins. More on this later...
Next the instructions take you into the interior, to the driver's compartment:
 

 
The colour call outs show that eh interior of the vehicle was painted white, so I've followed this instruction but made the white VERY dirty with washes etc. Here is the driver compartment after the sides have been attached:
 

 
and some more detail from the back
 

 
and another from the side:
 

 
There isn't an engine included in this version of the kit so that would account for why its so much cheaper. Shame there aren't any figures either. I may try to adapt one to be the driver... I'll have to investigate that later.
 
Here is a side shot of the main body built up so far. To be honest fitting the panels wasn't easy - there is a distinct lack of positive alignment guides so as you can see I've had to resort to a little Mr Surfacer to filling some small gappyness in some places.
 
So back to the diorama base. Once painted up this looks quite decent:
 

 

 
The sandbags and wooden panels are nicely moulded and interlock quite pleasingly - in fact most of the wooden panels are not glues on but clip into the slots in the base so positively that it feels like you can get away with out glue!
 
More on this in due course! On y va!

Off to a good start Andrew. I have both kits so I'll be following along.

Cheers

Al

Thanks Al, this is a lovely kit, exquisite detail, so much so that it makes sanding the joints really difficult lol

Spent yesterday assembling tow of the Tamiya figures, wow they are really well engineered - the making surfaces of the various limbs are contoured so that they only fit at one particular angle so that the pose is always captured perfectly. Very impressed, although it does make customising the poses tricky. I'll get some paint on them tonight...

This week ending's update...

First off had a go at placing the figures in the diorama setting to set a sense of proportions.



From this I decided to stick with just the two figures on the right. The one at the back is the Officer, while the kneeling Tommy is aiming a Lee Enfield.

Work on the tank itself continued with the suspension - boy is this a tricky bit to build...



I managed to get it wrong, also managed to loose both suspension springs and one of the metal bars used to secure the return roller piece. I was able to scratch up the springs using some steel wire wrapped around a drill bit. I also managed to get the side plates mixed up with two outer ones on one side and two inner ones on the other and only noticed when one side was almost impossible to fit..

Whatyou see above is the side with two inner plates - this is noticeable by the lack of moulding on the side and also the notch 1/4 of the way from the right which allows the metal strut previously added to the main hull to slot in. This is of course missing on the outside, which meant I had to chop the plastic up a bit to get it to fit



This is the side with two outer plates and you should be able to make out the maker's plate moulding on the side...

You can also see my first attempt with the tracks. The track link in the Meng kit are all-in-one and simply clip together, which gives a bot of a variable fit. Here they are draped over the rollers with the join at the top about 4 links back for the left. I've not joined them yet of course.



This shows the track again. Tonight the tracks have been given some primer and I'll start painting them

Hi Andrew,

Coming along well.

Al

Latest report is a bit fragmentary:
 
The main body had a coat of primer but I managed to totally mess it by overspraying the "nose" and then dropping the bloody thing so that the wet primer picked up all sorts of garbage from the floor So I had to strip back the primer without damaging the interior, which was a bit tricky. The nose had to get dipped in IPA to loosen the primer and some of it got into the interior... thankfully it didn't damage the paintwork but needed to be left for a couple of days to dry out. This happened on Monday...
 
In the meantime work has been continuing on the figures:
 

 

 
The officer figure was still drying from the oil paints when I photographed him, so he was all a bit shiny so I'll post his photos later.
 

Lots more progress:
 

 

 

 
I've very pleased with how the tracks came out - these were done by priming first, then praying with X-10 Gunmetal, then another layer over that of XF-84 Dark Iron. Once all that was dry I started with the washes: multiple applications of MiG Earth wash, with some careful application of MiG European Dust. Finally the raised lip of the most visible tracks was rubbed with an HB pencil to give it a metallic sheen.
 
I used a colour scheme I'd found on a page on the 'net. I didn't go with either of the schemes supplied with the kit as these were for American or Chinese units and I wanted a French one.
 
This is almost complete - need to add the tools on and find some white number decals for the serial number - I won't be using any of the kit decals.

Now complete.

The Tamiya figures are superb with lots of beautiful detail. I only used 2 of the 5 figures in the box but they all have interesting and unusual poses so should look interesting whenever they are used.
 
For the final touches to the diorama, I added some discarded detritus in the trench, used some of the Eduard PE barbed wire and added a serial number to the tank using some decals that matched the font I'd seen in some pictures on the net as closely as possible. it doesn't appear that the French put much in the way of markings on their tanks, so that made life easier
 
So here are the photos
 

 

 

 

 

 
Thanks for looking!

hello
great job on the FT and the soldiers
steph

Very nice. Must pick that FT version up myself too.