Some picture from my new model. I will appreciate your comments.


































Bye
Pierantonio

Very nice photo's. Can you tell us what you are changing and why?

Hi,
Great work so far. I wonder where do the obliterated hatches at the back of the hull come from, I mean why has Tamiya commited the same error as Emhar. Apparently they doesn´t exist in any surviving tank!

They comes from the Mk IV preserved in Bovington Tank Museum.
As reported by another member in an old post, two years ago he met the technical Tamiya team during a visit to the museum. They took some misures and lots of pictures of the tank but nobody told them hatches were not original.
Takom did not the some error because I think they based their model on Bovington drawings which are correct.
Bye
Pierantonio

Good to see another blog on the go, nice progress, looks like I've a bit if work to do on the rear hull plates.

Cheers

Al

You can find here a DXF file for the rear and side plates

http://www.ferreamole.it/images/modelli/mkiv/mkiv.dxf

Open the file (any free cad or vectorial program works fine)
print the file. All dimensions are in millimeters and it works better if you print white lines at 0.5 mm widht.
cut the drawn and glue it on a 0.25 mm plastic sheet withy whiet glue or better office stick glue.
make holes.
cut the shhet along line,
glue parts
remove paper and glue under tap water.

Note the drawn of rear plate is different from my parts because it lacks of small indentation on the bottom.
This is correct, check on line pictures. Tamiya and I made a mistake.

Bye
Pierantonio

First of all some words on the previous pictures.

Idler wheel: inside the box you will find both drive and idler wheel. As drive wheel I will use the metal one but on the front I will put the plastic one. To adapt it enlarge the hole from 3 mm to 4 mm then the metal adapter will work fine.
The upper inside part of rear horn laks of any datails so I rebuilt rivets and mudscraper.
I rebuilt some parts in the rear due the heavy thickness of Tamiya parts.
Some parts are pure invention as side support on gas tank.
Sponson are really well moulded but they lack of any detail on the inside area near the gun. Looking at sponson picture it seems armour makes a small lips so I glued a 0.5x0.5 plastic strip to riproduce it.
The Bovington MkIV has the hatches on the upper hull but no WWI tank have them. Nobody know when and why Bovington tank had them.
Tamiya model has three Lewis guns but I will chenge them with some others from Takom model I think they are better done.
Tamiya has another problem: guns and their ball mount are moulded togheter so the ball lacks of the two small holes on the upper and bottom area. Now I am casting a resin copy ot these parts again from Takom model.



In my opinion one of the worst part in this model is the unditching rail. Really toooooo thick.
It's very hard to rebuilt them due their shape but al least I wuold modify the horizontal strip which is the most seen part.
So I cut the original one and changed with 2 mm styrene strip.
I will join all parts only when the horn will be complete. It will not be an easy task!













I rebuilt also the roof side support





And supports on upper rear horn with some scrapped PE parts.



Drive wheel with its final drive gear. I pain the interior areas with Vallejo Cavalry Brown which I belive it's a good match for the old red primer.



The cab needs some filling on the rear. Erase rails support (they will be redone) and fill holes.



My Landship will have a crew in the drive cab and - may be - in the rear upper port.

On the front there will be two figures rappresenting Tank Commander (2/Lt J.O. Evans, KIA in Fontaine Notre Dame, 11/23/1917) and Driver (Pte A. Bates, KIA in Fontaine Notre Dame, 11/23/1917) so I redo the internal cab frame (not so sure it is correct but I think it works). The rear plastic sheet will be painted black to hide the empty hull.





I casted in resin side vison block and now, after some cleanig, they are ready to be glued inside the cab







New Lewis ball mount from Takom kit



and pistol port for my next project: converting a Takom Male landship to a Supply Tank with the top towing arrangment and - I hope - her supply sledge.



More to come...

Pierantonio

Forgot the resin ball

Nice work Pierantonio, you're making a grand job of this one.

Cheers

Al

First of all a good news: the resin copies of the front flap fit well the Takom model with only minor sanding



I glued the Takom Maxim ball on the front and it works well with only minor trimming.



New vision box inside the drive compartment



Find here the DXF file for the rail top side support you see in the previous message. I don't check it on the model so try correct fit BEFORE gluing them in place.
All dimensions are in millimeters so print 1 CAD unit to 1 millimeter.

http://www.ferreamole.it/images/modelli/mkiv/rail_support.dxf

I glued side horns with sprocket and idler wheel. In third picture you can see how sprocket and last transmission wheels work toghther. You can see better also the side camo suppport on the outside made with scrapped PE parts.







Again some work on rails. The problem was how to join them in a correct profile.
1) I scan the tank profile from Tamiya color sheet and import the image on my CAD. Then I draw a line from transmission and sprocket axles center.
2) I resize the image to the correct line lenght taking it on the model.
3) I draw the rail shape now in scale 1:1 with the model and print it.
This is how the all that appears on CAD



The cut the front and rear outside profile (this to avolid paper and plastic may glue togheter) and proceed as I wrote on the past message.



Now you have a one-piece reworked rail.



I check only a dry fitting on the model but it appears to work.

As usual the DXF file with right and left profile.

http://www.ferreamole.it/images/modelli/mkiv/rails.dxf

Some work on top hatch (more rivets and pistol port opening lever), muffler to make a better rounded profile and exhaust conduct with thinner supports.















More to come...

Pierantonio

Hi Pierantonio,

I just wondered about those front view ports? Did you cast them from the Tamiya ones? What was wrong with the takom ones? How is the Takom kit?

Paul

Front vision ports were made of two parts: the main body and a small flap covering the vision slot.
If you take a look to WWI pictures you will note usually crew open both or keep the bigger closed and the smaller open (closig both made the tank virtually blind due the poor quality of vision blocks).
Tamiya correctly casted both of them but Takom not. So I casted Tamiya parts to have a more realistic Takom model.

In my opinion Tamiya made a better work. First their plastic is fantastic. I've never seen a plastic more easy to cut and sand. Their thin glue work like a super glue.
One click tracks are a real dream and general fit is near perfect.
I saw only another model with this super quality: Tamiya B1 Bis French Tank
On the other side they made some parts a little simplified and too tick but nothing difficult to improve for a medium skill modeller.
If a PE set will be soon on the market in my opinion this will be THE MkIV model.
Takom made a lot of parts but most of them are in my opinion useless and tracks looks me like a nightmare.
One guy spent 2 hours to built 42 links (you need 92 for each track), I built one Tamiya track in 15 minutes.
PMMS upload a full review and they noted some wrong part most on the upper floor.
I bought both Male and Female and I am happy to do so but I think Tamiya is the best and I hope they will make also a Female, Mk I and Mk V.
Every landship model is welcomed.

Bye
Pierantonio

Excellent, thanks for that information. I had not seen that review of the Takom one, now I don't know which one to get! All things being equal I don't have much of a problem with the work that'll need to be done to the roof section of the takom offering, maybe I'll go for that and just wait on their better tracks? I just don't know. I'll have a look down at Euromillitaire at the end of the month and make my decision then.

Paul

Excellent work Pierantonio.

Al

Due the dimensional problem of the rear lookout hatch reported by Terry Ashley at PMMS ( http://www.perthmilitarymodelling.com/reviews/vehicles/takom/takom2008-9.html ) I start making a resin copy from Tamiya and then try to adapt it to Takom model. After a first look they have the same dimension but I am not sure it will work. It will be a solid part but it's better then a wrong one.
Today I did only the first stage but I hope to finish during this week end.

First of all I fixed the hatch with some Patafix (a synthetic rubber like Blu-tac) and sealed it with white glue (easy removable with tap water)



then I made the mould box again sealed with WG.



Bye
Pierantonio

great craftsmanship!

First of all note this is only a dry fitting with no glue or putty so you can see some small gaps most of them disappear simply pressing all parts toghether when gluing.

The sylicon mould



Put resin and cover with a flat base. This is an old 35mm film can with a flat cover filled of sand but you can use every piece of plastic sheet you have. To prevent cover glues with resin, brush it with some oil and make a hole in the middle to allow for resin expansion. Remember to wash everything to remove oil from parts.



The new observation hatch still attached to plastic cover and then removed from it







The flat underside



Takom parts need virtually no adjustment, only some litte trim on the fron area. The resin part needs some sanding to adapt it to Takom. Note that Takom part is intact so you can put the original parts if you are not satisfied of the newer. It need also two small 0.5x2 mm sheet to make a flat plane for the resin part.



and here we go! The old Lady has a new hat.





More to come...
Bye
Pierantonio

Tamiya forgot some rows on the lower hull, side cab (flatted heads) and lower sponson (many thanks to Thorsten from Landship Forum for his notes on Takom kit which I applied to Tamiya)







I started sponson building. First problem I had was the correct fitting of the gun shield. It didn't fit well leaving a visible gap mainly on the upper area but worst of all this cause the sponson top not seating correctly (I noted this problem also on prebuiding model by Tamiya)





First I cut the retainer pin and sanded the base to realign the gun but this was not enough.



Then I sanded the sponson roof gun retainer. Again not enough



Finally I glued the shield with sponson and now the roof sits well.
aLSO I add the Takon Lewis ball support copy (on the other side there will be also the Lewis barrel)



Remember to fill the shield interior



Two days ago Lion Marc put on the market a rifled metal 6Pdr barrel and Lewis front portion ( http://www.perthmilitarymodelling.com/newkitnews/lionmarc.html ) so I decided to make a sort of rifling on the gun.
I used a conical cutter to engrave kit part having soomething looking as a rifled gun.
Not perfect as a metal part but it is so small to be almost invisble so I think it may work.





More to come...
Bye
Pierantonio

Interesting stuff. Coming along well!

I started the crew. They will be:
- 2/Lt J.O. Evans, Tank Commander
- P.te A. Bates,Driver
- 1/Lt W.J.G Birnie, Section Commander

On the front cab there will be the TC (right on the first picture) and driver.





They are joined togheter at the distance between centre of front vision ports.

2/Lt J.O. Evans, Tank Commander: the body comes from Tamiya Officer figure with only a slightly modified right arm to make the figure more compact. Head will be from Hornet and helmet again from Tamiya.
P.te A. Bates,Driver: the body comes from an ICM private figure and he will be out of the box.

1/Lt W.J.G Birnie, Section Commander: I wuold like do give some motion to the model so the SC will be rappresented while signalling from the rear hatch with discs (http://landships.activeboard.com/t35163854/signalling-discs-used-by-tanks/). Really I'm not sure this is historically correct but I think this wuold be an interesting addiction to the model whioch may be too flat in her brown color.
So I started from ICM Officer figure with modifing arms, hands and fingers. Head is again from Hornet and helmet from Tamiya.
See in the following pictures how he will appare. I think I will add a 1 mm sheet under his feet to rise him a little but at the present I am not sure I will do this.











Now it's also time to choose the final color of this old Lady.
I tried some mixes starting from Tamiya suggested paint adding some other colors but finally I choose the "Service Brown" suggested by Micheal Starmer. To achive it with Tamiya colors mix 5 parts of XF68, 4 parts of XF3 and 1 part of XF1 (I mixed XF69 Nato Black instead of pure black).



Last weekend I finished my first Landship. Now she is waiting painting work.
First of all I put TC and Driver on the front cab. Really they are not a painting masterpiece and the flash light doesn't help so much but few of themm will be seen with hatches so I think it works.



I will put only one Lewis MG on sponsons because usually they were an emergency weapon. Some times ago a modeller measured on Lodstar III the lenght between ball mount and muzzle. It is 594 mm long.



I reworked the unditching beam making new chains attachment following Takom instruction sheet and with some scrapped PE part.







Now the main problem of this model was glueing rails keeping right position on top of the tank.
Some LEGO brik help me on making a flat surface for the hull.



Left side





Some pictures of finished rails and their supports











She is finished!
















Bye
Pierantonio

Following along with interest Pierantonio, things are looking very good, nice work.

Cheers

Al