That’s probably the best way to go for a Mk. I or II: buy a resin conversion set and put it on the AFV Club hull. IIRC they saw action at Dieppe too, didn’t they? Or was that only Mk. IIIs?
-
-
With the JPK 120 finished, it’s time to return to this one. I wasn’t happy with the cover I had sculpted for the bow machine gun, mainly because it looked far too large. Turns out I had misjudged how far the gun sticks forward out of the front armour plate, largely because I forgot it pivots behind the main armour and not right behind the additional plate in front of that. Luckily, with some carefully applied force it broke off cleanly so I could build a little structure to represent where the muzzle of the machine gun approximately does sit:
[ATTACH]481563[/ATTACH]
And then sculpted a new, smaller cover with more Magic Sculp:
[ATTACH]481564[/ATTACH]
Yesterday, I sprayed the bridge decks white with an aerosol can of primer, after taping off the girders underneath, and now I’m halfway through masking the lengthwise slats:
[ATTACH]481565[/ATTACH]
This because these were usually painted white on the real thing, so vehicle drivers could see them better in darkness. Photos of the real bridge this represents also show that, so the easiest way to make them white is to paint them before the rest of the bridge, as masking off the slats will be easier than masking the decks.
It’s not that difficult, but it is kind of fiddly on the side towards the deck’s centre, as the transverse slats get in the way a little. Using flat tweezers to position the tape and a dentist’s/sculpting tool to smooth it down works well.Comment
-
With the slats taped up, I first sprayed the decks in a random mixture of Tamiya X-9 Brown and XF-1 Flat Black, more of the former than the latter. This because these decks were unpainted wood, and the model will represent the tank as it might have looked while in the landing craft, so everything would have been wet — which makes wood appreciably darker.
That done, I masked the decks with household masking tape 3.5 cm wide (the modern yellow kind, not that old white type that’s far too sticky), as it was exactly the right width. I then mixed Vallejo 71.279 Insignia White and MIG 111 (British 1941-44 Service Drab) in a ratio of 5:1 to get an off-white colour (this is easy enough with the dropper bottles: one drop of SCC 2 to every five drops of white) and sprayed the rest of the bridge with that.
[ATTACH]481595[/ATTACH]
The reason was that in the real world, an order came down just before D-Day that these bridges were to be painted white, so avoid them being seen too easily while at sea. It looks like this was also followed for the landing at Westkapelle, but it’s also clear from photos that the bridges weren’t exactly white: the white slats are clearly lighter than the rest of the bridge in those. My idea is that the white didn’t cover that well, so the original SCC 2 underneath would make the whole bridge have a cream-like colour. This is what I was trying to replicate by mixing some of it into the white.
You can see the difference in colour better in this close-up:
[ATTACH]481596[/ATTACH]
I think the contrast is not quite enough yet, but as I intend to add a wash over the bridge to shade it, that should increase. I will need to re-mask some parts of the slats for that, but the tape on them came off by accident when I pulled the wide tape off.
And here is a photo of part of the landing fleet in Ostend harbour, presumably on 31 October 1944, showing three of the four SBG bridges that were brought to Westkapelle:
[ATTACH]481597[/ATTACH]
In the background on the left is LCT 650, whose bridge never got ashore at all (but the tank that’s now a monument at Westkapelle did come from that vessel), while the bridge on the right looks like its transverse slats are also painted white. That means that bridge never came ashore either, because both of the bridges left on the landing beach had only the lengthwise slats painted. I don’t know the order in which the LCTs were in the harbour, so I can’t tell if the middle bridge is the one I’m modelling or not, but I do now know that the one on the right is in the landing craft that never got ashore at all and returned to Ostend heavily damaged the next day.Comment
-
Coming along nicely Jakko.Do like Churchills.I want to build a postwar Irish army one from the 50s.Found i had some decals stashed away.
RichComment
-
I’ve been thinking about that too, the medium grey colour would make a nice contrast to most other AFVs
Comment
-
Looking very nice .
Had some fun with that Cortex fuse, we had to measure a yard off the roll . Then take another length , light it and time it . Once that was done you were supposed to be able to work out how much you needed to light the fuse and walk away safely. Blowing a tank track apart with a W tray was interesting .
Those were the days
Comment
-
Fully agree, John: time it, measure it and WALK away, running is so unprofessional!
Comment
-
That sounds like you’re talking about safety fuse, though. Cordtex, as I understand it from the Churchill manual, seems to be what’s usually called detonating cord today — that doesn’t burn slowly but detonates along its entire length at once (well, at something like 8 km/s anyway).Comment
-
Very intense updates Jakko enjoying the build.Comment
-
Hopefully more than I am enjoying painting the insides of the bridge
After spraying (and re-masking), I mixed up a wash from the same white and SCC 2, but now in about 1:1 proportions, plus water. This got applied over all of the off-white parts of the bridge to shade them, and this was less than fun work where it came to covering all the braces inside the trusses.
Here is the bridge without wash on the left, with on the right:
[ATTACH]481916[/ATTACH]
Once it had dried, I drybrushed all of this with a cream white colour, Rackham Noëssis White (out of production for 15 years or so, but I have a few bottles ) to highlight the detail. Drybrushed on the left, not drybrushed on the right:
[ATTACH]481917[/ATTACH]
And then followed some more drybrushing, now with pure white to highlight the details and edges that will be towards the light once the bridge is on the tank. Here’s a view of the complete bridge:
[ATTACH]481918[/ATTACH]
Now the deck …Comment
-
Jakko that looks superb mate.Comment
-
Indeed,I certainly have to agree with the guys here,....Hopefully more than I am enjoying painting the insides of the bridge
After spraying (and re-masking), I mixed up a wash from the same white and SCC 2, but now in about 1:1 proportions, plus water. This got applied over all of the off-white parts of the bridge to shade them, and this was less than fun work where it came to covering all the braces inside the trusses.
Here is the bridge without wash on the left, with on the right:
[ATTACH=CONFIG]n[/ATTACH]
Once it had dried, I drybrushed all of this with a cream white colour, Rackham Noëssis White (out of production for 15 years or so, but I have a few bottles :smiling3: ) to highlight the detail. Drybrushed on the left, not drybrushed on the right:
[ATTACH=CONFIG]n[/ATTACH]
And then followed some more drybrushing, now with pure white to highlight the details and edges that will be towards the light once the bridge is on the tank. Here’s a view of the complete bridge:
[ATTACH=CONFIG]n[/ATTACH]
Now the deck …
That is some awesome building.. Superb stuff.
Comment
-
Thanks The hard part will be making the deck look convincingly like wet wood, though.
Comment
Comment