I would have to agree with you about the ease of the tracks, completed mine tonight in very short order by way of completing Step 13.

The instructions call for 61 of the individual links to be snapped together to form each track side. Each link required just a little bit of clean-up on the small nub left behind on each plate face, easily done with a sharp #11 and a little care not to gouge the surface. The links snap together very smoothly and are the rivetted design. Test fits show that they will have to stretch just a bit to be connected up, but after about 20 minutes of clean-up and assembly per track side, two fully workable tracks are ready to roll. My hat's off to the design team that came up with these, probably the easisest set of indy link tracks available in a kit today. Ended up with about 5 spares, so if you are too rough and break some pins there are still a few extras to bail you out.

I clipped the tracks of mine together in batches of 10 and then hit the mould marks with a sanding stick. This smooths them out and adds a bit of wear to the surface too, all in one.

And I avoided the wheels going everywhere excitement by assembling the lower hull in a box-lid.

David

Ooops!
Makes a change from cotton reels I guess :-)

David,

The box lid idea is a good one, I recommend that for anyone in the future...when I assembled mine, I of course adopted the usual modeller's stance for any kind of delicate/tiny/intricate assembly...I leaned back with the whole thing suspended in mid air several feet off the ground so that if anything was dropped, it would have plenty of gravity induced momentum to bounce/roll/disappear. :-) The idea of "roughing up" the track faces is also interesting, I think I'll try it out on a couple of the "spares" to see how that works.

Mark,

Yes, well, the cats are evil, truly evil. I still haven't located the parts one stole from a Leopold build over 2 years ago...it's in the house somewhere I know it...

Very nice - like to see these build pics! But, the price of the kit just seems a little high to me - that's a lot of money not to get all the stuff Dragon puts in their boxes for around the same or slightly less. Am I off to feel this way, or is this kit really worth the price?

Have a great week!

Look at it this way: You buy a $35 kit then add between $50 and $100 of fruil tracks, PE frets, some AM resin, metal parts, decals...

Yes the Char B1 Bis seems quite pricey and I have stay away from it since it was released. But after seeing a few built and reading a few WW2 french magazine I must say I want one and the Tamiya price is no longer a problem

I'm like Richard, the initial price (my LHS had one for $60 USD) delayed my purchase until I was able to get one in an online sale for a more acceptable price. Having said that, it is a very well designed and buildable kit OOB and I've enjoyed it immensely thus far. The choice to replace the barrels was really the only thing I considered doing just because Lion Marc offered a nice set at reasonable prices (combination of the sale price and the Lion Marc items was still below just the straight kit retail price) and I wanted the added detail they provided.

I would definitely be interested in building it if I could happen upon a deal like you got. Very nice..

I have heard that it is an excellent build OOB - just, with so much to choose from, and Dragon packing so much in the box (M1A1 AIM for example), it's just so much easier to make other choices... maybe someday...

Continuing on...

Step 14 calls for the installation of the 4 tow chain hooks on the rear hull along with the 2 tow pintles. The instructions include a close-up drawing showing the correct alignment of the hooks and the holes that the hooks go into are "keyed" in their shape to also aid in this. The hooks are two different sets with A24 going on the right side and A25 going on the left. It's important not to mix these up as the hooks are different sizes and designed to sit at different positions/angles relative to their size. The holes that take them are slightly oversized, at least on my hull, and required a little bit of putty to fill in. This step also directs you to install the two tool racks on the top rear hull deck in holes that were pre-drilled out back in Step 7. Before you can mount them, you need to remove 2 molded on rivets for each rack support that otherwise would interfere with their proper positioning. Each rack support has only a single locating hole so getting them lined up and straight took some fiddling to get both correct, but nothing earth shattering. The tow pintle areas also needed a little bit of putty help to get them to look correct due to the cut out holes being slightly larger than the insert arm, a similar problem as encountered on the front hull.



Step 15 gives you the option to install either the earlier vehicle style spaced mudguard fenders or the flush fenders. For "Marne" since it's a later vehicle the flush fenders are correct. I used an emory board to sand down the front and rear areas to a slightly thinner look vs. the molded bevel look, others might choose to replace these with brass, but the kit supplied items work just as well IMHO unless you want banged up or damaged fenders. A test fit showed that it's not necessary to have the tracks installed at the same time as the fenders since the tracks can be slipped into place and then secured later on, so I've left the tracks off for easier painting/detailing for now.

This step also installs the turret ring and the pot for the radio antenna along with the wire guard. The wire guard, part B21, is molded solid but on the actual vehicle it was an open bottom square arrangement, so I used the pin vise to drill out a starter hole and followed that up with a needle file to hollow out the front and rear. I didn't hollow out the middle portion of the body but I suppose that could be done as well if you're really determined to get that look.



I also modified the upper hull by shaving down the bolted on plate cover just behind the turret where the radio wire is supposed to enter the hull via an insulated cover. I scrounged around in the spares bin and found an old blackout light part that was just the right height and domed, cut off the support arm and used only the "lamp" part since it had the dome shape I was after, and drilled out a hole to accept the radio wire which I'll add in a later step. It's not a perfect match but it's close enough vs. trying to scratch or sculpt one on my own I guess. I will install the wire as a two piece arrangement using fine guage steel wire once the antenna is installed, one piece going from the insulator into the guard and another from the guard to the antenna base.

Back in Step 7 I'd forgotten to open up the holes for the base of the antenna pot, so I shaved off the locator pins and just glued it directly to the hull after mounting the wire guard and getting everything all lined up properly. A drain pipe of some sort is also installed, part B18, that leads from the engine compartment into the left fender to complete the step.

I made a lot of progress today, completing all the major construction almost by accident since I hadn't intended to get quite this far along.

Step 16 presents an option between two different types/styles of exhaust configuration. For "Marne" the correct type are the fish-tail straight exhausts with the longer protective shrouds, so I used parts A26 and A11 to construct mine. The exhausts have a fine seam line that was a little tricky to remove but no other difficulties were encountered.



Step 17 directs you to install the mufflers onto the rear deck, which is easily accomplished since there are locator holes in both fenders to insure a squared-up fit. The protective guard rail, B33 is also installed and this part requires some cleanup since all the posts/rail sections have a mold seam and the joints where the posts meet the top rail also have sink marks that need to be dealt with. Last but not least, the concertina antenna support is constructed from two part halves. This design produces a join seam that has to be trimmed/sanded down without damaging the ridges on the flexible housing, I cleaned mine up using the back edge of a #11 blade for the interior surfaces and a fine grit sanding twig for the ridges themselves. I also installed the antenna wire leading into and out of the protective guard housing. The wire is just that, steel wire, that I bent to shape and glued in place with CA. The tip where it meets up with the antenna base was filed down with a square needle file and the antenna base is dryfit for now and will be removed for separate painting later.

I also didn't realize until writing this up that I neglected to install part B6 over the access door on the rear engine deck, fortunately it's not too late to still do that!



Edit: Correction done for part B6 installed.



Step 18 deals with the pioneer tools and the tow chain. The pioneer tools consist of a crowbar, sledgehammer, pick, and shovel that install together as a package of tools. The crowbar and pick are on the bottom with the sledge and shovel on top. The fit is very complex and I gave up trying to dryfit it, everything looks like it ought to fit properly so I'm not too worried about it and will install them later after painting is done.

I installed the rear hull tow swivels and did as the instructions directed by cutting the hook portion on each to accept the chain later on when that gets installed.



Step 19 begins the work on the turret by way of constructing the 47mm gun and mount along with the commander's cupola. The Lion Marc barrel requres that the one-piece Tamiya gun part A12 be trimmed down to the two mounting pins and a hole drilled out to accept the aluminum barrel. Tamiya provides 2 barrels since it's an A-sprue part, so I wasn't too worried about doing this surgery and not having a "plan B" if needed. It wasn't needed and the gun installed fairly easily, the barrel end did require a little bit of clean-up with a needle file but nothing serious.



The commander's cupola is a two-part affair, which means that the join seam that goes right across the top in the middle needs attention. I used some liquid glue to get as tight a join as possible and then came along behind that and sanded the join down. I also chose to position the armored visor cover in the open position although the darn thing kept wanting to slip down into a semi-closed position until it set up...so I had to keep the handling to a minimum.



Step 20 constructs the turret and also presents the option to have the large rear hatch open or closed. There's zero interior provided so since I wasn't planning on doing the included figure, I chose the closed hatch option. While the instructions seem to indicate that you should install the hatch part C4 before you join the turret top to the bottom, I decided to join the turret halves first and then install the hatch later. The two parts have a good fit but this join also requires some sanding to get it to look even. The Char Francais site indicates that there's a weld seam or a casting line around the base of the turret, however when I checked the photos on "Marne", I didn't see any evidence of this so kept the look smooth. The 47mm and coaxial machine gun mantlets were also installed as separate pieces and took a little bit of fiddling with to get them to sit properly since the gun mount has some play in its installation due to it being elevatable with the polycap mount from the previous step.



The final step is Step 21, it calls for the installation of the turret and the two smoke candles that are to go on either side on the fenders. The candles needed some cleanup due to the fact that their curved end faces are not molded flat, so a large seam/shift line is evident and needs to be taken care of.



That's it for major construction, it's now ready (once I install that part from the step I missed!) for painting.

One suggested change I didn't mention in time was to remove the lug on the trunnion that keys into the base of the 47mm gun. On the real B1bis the main gun and coax could be elevated separately (or locked together) and having them separately posed adds a bit more to the model.

And the 'candles' are the supports used when the tank is off its tracks, as in this photo of Brest

Four candles

David

Good point on the turret MG, didn't know that, however if done the MG mount would have to be fixed into its posed position and wouldn't be able to remain independently movable. The Char Francais site translated into English called them 'candles' which I thought was an odd thing, your explanation makes much more sense. :-)

Had the chance to put in quite a bit of time today with the AB. Efforts started off by putting down a primer coat of Italian Dark Brown. I didn't go with the usual Flat Black primer coat this time around because I 1) don't know what kind of primer color the French used and 2) didn't want the stark shadows that a Flat Black would produce for the two-tone camo. The Italian Dark Brown seemed like a good compromise, it was dark enough to insure none of the light-tan Tamiya plastic got overlooked and would provide some decent shadow/contrast for the camo so I ran with it. Just as I was finishing up, I managed to get a drop of thinner on the rear deck which produced a nice perfect round spot on the engine deck hatch. Thankfully, it was only the one drop and not a flood as it could've been!



One of the chief advantages of a primer coat, besides providing a surface for painting, is the opportunity it provides for checking seams and sanded areas to see if they really are as smooth as they looked before painting. This time around I found two areas that needed more attention. The first was the driver's hood, the putty and sanding that I'd done earlier wasn't quite even, so I stripped off the paint and sanded it back down again. I used a q-tip dampened with thinner to remove the paint vs. scraping it away so I had a nice large area to work with and not have to worry about fouling the sanding stick with paint in the process.



The second area that needed attention was the join on the turret on the right side. An ever so small step had been left behind and the paint showed it up crystal clear, so it too was stripped and sanded down.



Once those areas were taken care of, I laid down the first color of the 2-tone scheme. I chose MM's Khaki since they have it listed as the French armor "green" and applied it with the general purpose nozzle on my Aztek at about 20 psi. I used it to sketch out the pattern instead of an overall coat, using the finishing guide supplied with the Echelon decals as a template. I figured this would give me more freedom with the second coat in terms of visualizing the overall pattern and also conserve some paint in the process.



For the second color, I mixed up some Dunkelgelb with Light Gray in about an 80-20 ratio more or less in a spare mixing bottle. I wanted a lighter shade vs. the standard dunkelgelb and was trying for more of a "stone" color with the combination.



This was applied with the same nozzle and psi as the Khaki and the rest of the pattern was filled in and adjusted. I did have to go back a couple of times with both colors to correct for overspray and fine tune things a bit, but all of it was done freehand and after a couple of hours, the pattern was completed to my liking.



I'll let this set up overnight and work on the tracks and tools to round it out in terms of base finish tomorrow most likely.

Made some progress today on the details in order to get everything squared away for the Future coat and decals.

First up were the rubber mud flaps/skirts on the bottom of the hull sponsons. These were hand painted using Model Master enamel Gunmetal as a base color prior to the final weathering. I like to use it instead of Flat Black for these types of things because it's got more of a bluish-gray look similar to synthetic rubber vs. the straight black color.



Next up was the antenna bellows and mast. I checked the references on "Marne" and it had one fitted, although not all pics of Chars show the mast in place even though the bellows are fitted. According to the Char Francais site, the bellows were leather and unpainted, so I painted it in a 50-50 mix of Leather and Military Brown and allowed some of the underlying tan styrene color to show through to provide some variation and the look of exposed/worn leather. I removed the molded on mast with sprue cutters and drilled out a hole in the top to take some brass rod which I lightly sanded, glued in place with CA gel, then painted with MM Metalizer Gunmetal.



Last but not least for the day's efforts, I dealt with the pioneer tools and painted the metal surfaces with metalizer Gunmetal followed by some lightly drybrushed Steel. The wood handles were painted with my own special mix of "wood" color and then lightly brushed with Burnt Umber pastels after they'd been glued in place to give it the varnished look. I also detailed the exhausts, painting them first with metalizer Gunmetal and following that up with a light wash of Rust and some drybrushing of Burnt Umber.



Tomorrow morning I'll give it the first coat of Future and start in on the numerous decal markings required for this vehicle.

Great progress shots on the Char B1 Bill.

Dont forget to submit your build feature again when you are done eh.

Maybe leave some parts of it to be more exclusive to the build feature?

great progress. very clean built!!

koen

No worries there Jeremy, it'll make it's way into a feature when it's completed. It's a little late at this stage to hold anything back as an "exclusive" element, but I'll see what I can do, still have a good bit of finishing work to be done on it, might hold back the "completed" shots for the article itself, have to think on that a bit.

Koenele,

Thanks for the comments!

Today's efforts began with the final touches needed before applying the Future coat. I painted the inside of the auxiliary headlamp on the front hull with Silver and scrounged around in the spares bin and found a clear lens originally intended for a Pzkpw I that fit perfectly, the lens will be fitted later after all the weathering is completed. I also "pre-weathered" the drive sprockets and mud scrapers by drybrushing some Steel followed by drybrushed Burnt Umber in selected areas and around the drive teeth. Once that was taken care of, the Future was applied and allowed to set up for a couple of hours before starting work with the markings.

The Echelon set contains markings for several vehicles, including some "extras/miscellaneous" markings which are there I assume to allow for other additional vehicles to be modelled, including "Fatasque" although no finishing guide is provided for it. I cut out the markings for "Marne" and was very pleased with the design of the decals. The larger decals did not have solid centers but instead had connecting carrier film only where absolutely necessary. This made some of them a little more delicate than others, but they all came off the sheet cleanly and applied very easily. Each decal was given a light coat of Solvaset, especially those for the turret and the hull sides where they passed over rivets or raised details, and they settled down nice and tight without any problems. They will be allowed to dry overnight and will be given another sealing coat of Future before the weathering process begins in earnest.

I've seen it at €59.99 at my LHS... I was just marvelled because I expected it to cost less. I think I'll get it only when its price decreases!
I think it's more worth to get a Dragon model with all its bonus items! At least it allows you to work with different materials!

I applied the sealing coat of Future to the decals and put it off to the side. While that's curing up, attention turned to the tracks and getting them ready to go.

Yesterday I'd applied a basecoat of MM Non-buffing Metalizer Gunmetal using the AB since there's so many nooks and crannies, I wanted to get a good coverage of all the surfaces.



Throughout this process I did one track run and kept the other in the condition of the previous step so I could better demonstrate how the look changed from one step to the next. The first step involved drybrushing Steel with a 0 round brush to create a metallic foundation along with the Gunmental. The metalizer provides some nice "tooth" in its finish for drybrushing and it doesn't take much to achieve the desired look.



A little closer examination:



The next step involved applying a 90/10 thinner/paint wash of Rust with a size 1 round sable brush. The purpose of the wash is two-fold...it blends in the drybrushed Steel and also provides the first stage of oxidized metal. If applied carefully, it will allow some of the Steel to still show through but not as stark as in the drybrushed step.



The Rust wash is allowed to air dry, which doesn't take that long to accomplish, but in the process the Rust wash in combination with the metalizer undercoat takes on a truer rust looking appearance vs. just the straight paint. Once confident that it's fully dried, I used the same 0 round brush as before to drybrush Burnt Umber over the Rust to deepen the color and look.





Last step involves going back over the raised surfaces very lightly with an old worn out 20/0 detail brush and drybrush Steel to restore the worn look to those surfaces only.



A test fit on the vehicle was in order to see how they looked. The Rust still shows up more prominent at this stage than I'd like, so I'll probably give some spot attention with some black artist pastels to the too-bright areas. Also, since the final weathering with MIG pigments hasn't happened yet this isn't the true final look, but it's progressing the way I'd like so far.

Now, tell me those tracks don't squeak when they move! I don't think I have seen better! What a great technique!

Thanks Jim for the kind words, the advantage of the workable tracks design from Tamiya allows for a lot of flexibility (no pun intended) in working with this type of finish, so I took my time working on them. First time I've spent an entire modelling day on just the tracks in fact.

Great work on the tracks. The results is quite realistic and the technic to go there doesn't seem too complicated. Exactly what a noobie like myself need.

This thread (or feature if you write one) will be bookmarked for sure. I think I may have to create a Bill Plunk folder on my HD :-)

Thanks for the comments Richard, I hope the technique is of some use to you.

Which magazine? I have the December issue of Tamiya Model Magazine, which features the "making of" the B1 Bis, and the Dec/Jan issue of Steel Masters with a diorama involving the model...

@Bill_: Interesting solution on how to paint the tracks. Will you add some further pigment?