1:35 LEP Up Armoured Scimitar CVR(T)

[Ian M]

That looks like a good fit.

Have you considered building them in Brass strip and rod? I think the extra stiffness will make it easier to both build and handle.

Ian M

[Guest]

I'll be using brass rod for the vertical rods, but the 0.5 mm plastic strip is robust enough for the outer frames and gives the right look (plus I've now stocked up on the plastic stuff!)

Further news, Terry from CastOff has been in touch and is sending the missing resin bits over! So it will be full steam ahead very soon (fingers crossed!)

[Guest]

Excellent news, and a nice job in photoshop mate

[Guest]

This is the result of two evenings work so far:

I'm happy with the two on the left but the one on the right is going in the junk pile! The most difficult thing about these builds is getting the holes aligned. Just a fraction of a mm out and it mucks up the alignment. I'm thinking I'm going to have build a different jog to drill the holes AFTER I've assembled the bars as drilling before seems to produce just too much variation and this rate of progress is only barely deserving the name "progress"!!

[Guest]

Shame to waste the "not so good" bits ... can you not use them and make the tank "battle bent & damaged" or would it play on your mind and bug you everytime you looked at it (as it would mine i think)

[Guest]

They get chopped up for other bits and bobs such as...

The Jig is Up!!!

New construction jig after an idea came to me last night...

Instead of drilling all the strips before assembly - assemble the frame and then drill each vertical using the jig!! The frame to the right is the first made this way and it was much easier, however there is a bit of wonkiness in the verticallity (cor I'm good at this lingo!) which I need to try to even out in the next one. Thats 3 of the 4 hull side plates built which is a good thing. The others are a bit smaller, although the turret ones have an extra bar for which I'll need to add another slot in my jig.

[Guest]

Two days on and some more to report. First off, sadly that jig didn't work anything like as well as I expected. It was very diffciult to get the vertical bars truly vertical as can be seen from the two on the right here:

At this point I was on the very of calling it a day and giving up, however I had one more idea on how to drill the bars so the holes lined up better and so created another, smaller - in fact tiny jig that supports the bar pieces and lets me measure the space between two holes and then gives me a good alignment to drill the next hole. This does mean that I've given up on trying to drill whole sequences of holes and switched back to one at a time. IT may take a bit longer but it is more accurate and in the long run faster as I make fewer mistakes and don't have to keep rebuilding pieces .As it stands, the two on the right in the above photo are not fit for anything except the spares/scrap box.

The good news is that since I started using the new jigs, progress has accelerated so that now I have these pieces all done...

The two pieces in lower left and lower right are in the process of having their holes drilled for the brass rod, but its nice to have finally got some good, even looking pieces so it has given me much encouragement to continue and return to the larger pieces.

Now in the meantime I've been checking more photos of the bar armour in situ. Checking the Concord "British Army Battle Group" and the Tankograd Task Force Helmand, has made me realise that the plans I had before are still wrong... the front and rear plates are too narrow and also the wrong configuration. On the hull rear, there are three sets of 2 "column" bar armour, plus single columns either side, to make a total of 8 columns width. The hull front and turret rear has a single 6 column panel flanked by 2 singles. In my earlier drawing I had them all 6 columns wide in total. Thankfully, that doesn't make a difference to me yet as I haven't built that far.

Its off I feel like I make a bit of progress, then get bogged down and stuck for a while, then make another small sprint forward! This time I feel much more positive and am enthused about moving forward!

[Centurion3RTR]

Liking what i see here Andrew, can't wait to see more. Keep up the great work mate, you're giving me ideas lol.

Have fun. John

[Guest]

This is a really fascinating build Andrew

[Guest]

Well another few days go by and I am very happy to report some good progress, but rather than blather on, let me show you a photo:

Its been a bit of a marathon effort to get these done - each hole for the vertical bars has been measured and drilled individually as it was the only way I could get anything like consistency in the spacing. Even with that, there is some variation, but within acceptable tolerances - well I think they are acceptable These are the successful pieces - there are a few more that got rejected and built again. Even some of the relatively simple single column pieces got ditched and done again as they were either too small or askew.

All that is left is to make the corner pieces. These are a bit tricky as they are 14" wide on the outside but 11" wide on the inside, so I'll have to cut the ends at a 45 degree angle! That will be a job for tomorrow though as all this concentrated delicate work has given me a headache - well the CY and poly cement fumes might have contributed as well

My god I might even get around to doing some painting! Gasp!

[papa 695]

Stunning work Andrew bet your cross eyed now

[yak face]

Andrew this is just amazing work mate. Regardless of the tank ,you deserve 5 stars just for these bars! Your determination to get it looking correct , and skill in succeeding is inspirational (wow, just exhausted my big word bank!!LOL) Keep it up mate its going to be a show winner , cheers tony

[Guest]

absolutley brilliant Andrew.

Tony used all the big words i was gonna use first so thats it from me .... brilliant!!

[Centurion3RTR]

Looking good Andrew, you're giving me inspiration to give it a go. Can't wait to see it in paint.

Have fun, John

[Guest]

Hehe John you must be loosing your marbles if you are tempted into trying this! I've been talking to the guy who does the CastOff models resin for the LEP and he's been trying to get resin casts of this stuff for 3 months so far so we've been exchanging notes and comparing plans and we've both learned a lot from each other and spotted mistakes. he reckons he might have a resin set sometime in the near future - his target (like mine) is to get it ready before the Nationals. If he does I'll definitely be buying a couple of sets lol!

Thanks also Ian and Colin and multitutinous gestures of appreciation to Tony (thesaurus.com FTW!) for the comments, on a project like this every bit of encouragement helps!