There is a weasel at bovington tank museum it used to be inside the Buffalo amphibious vehicle. I went there at the weekend and they have had a move around of the exhibits and now it is out on show on it's own.
Marty
Marty
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The smaller parts for this kit are nearly all on strips of resin, attached with thin tabs or stalks. Like these wheels:
[ATTACH]431878[/ATTACH]
Ruler included to show just how big these are … There are two types of wheels, the vehicle has four bogies per side, with two axles per bogie, and each axle has two of each type of wheel. That makes 64 of these shirt buttons wheels to clean up, plus a few spares you thankfully get in the kit in case you break or lose any:
[ATTACH]431879[/ATTACH]
And this is not even half the fun! There’s eight bogies to clean up, a half-leaf spring with etched mounting to go under each of them and a connecting arm above, not to mention four return rollers and their etched supports …
I also glued stuff into the body tub:
[ATTACH]431877[/ATTACH]
This is most of what I showed in the earlier photo, but now glued down, as well as a few other parts.
If only Bovington were closer than about two days’ travel away
But I remembered this afternoon that I made the acquaintance, a few months ago, of someone who owns a real, restored M29C … so I sent him an e-mail to ask if I can come and take some pictures of it.
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Its certainly cleaning up well , and to think you might get the chance to see one in the metal as well :thumb2::thumb2::thumb2:Comment
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Its' development priority was just behind the "A Bomb", due to its' secret mission to attack the Nordic center for Axis atomic bomb development. The M28 performed poorly in the snow & worse in the water as well as shedding tracks at the slightest provocation. The M29 & M29C were much improved & performed well in all theaters.Comment
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Well … all theatres except my particular part of the world They didn’t work very well in the North Sea in autumn, unless you were looking to explore the wonderful world underwater.
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Interesting kit Jakko. Coming on nicely too.
AndrewComment
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Hi Jakko
Work so far looks neat with no real fit issues. Cleaning up wheels seems to be a big part of the hobby
JimComment
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Jakko,
I know that bovington has a YouTube channel where they talk and do a walk round of the exhibits you could always search there otherwise.
MartyComment
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Don't think it was ever intended to be ocean going. I think initial requirements were to navigate snow & unfrozen streams. The C was to meet later river requirements once the initial mission was scrapped. The C improvements included additional freeboard (due to front & rear flotation additions), & rudders for more steering control.Comment
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This was the easy bit, now we get to all the small detail parts
I’ve seen worse resin kits, yes. Casting quality may not be exactly Verlinden, but I’m glad it’s also not even exactly AEF Designs or Elite Models …
Good point, I know they did a video on the LVT (4), but not sure about the M29.
That was the problem, yes LVTs could handle the North Sea coast well enough, though you probably wouldn’t really want to be aboard one, but Weasels tended to get swamped very quickly. A while ago, I added some numbers and the conclusion actually startled me: on 1 November 1944, in operation Infatuate (that is, the landings on Walcheren), around a hundred Weasels were transported to Westkapelle and anywhere between two and 24 to Vlissingen (the actual number is not clear, but photos exist that show two). After the fighting, a little over a week later, some 40 was all that could be brought together … That means that something like 60 to 85 or so were lost.
The one I mentioned earlier was lost, then retrieved in 1994 and restored (oh, the owner got back to me, but he said it’s inaccessible at the moment because the building it’s in, is full of caravans
) and I have this nice image of another:—
[ATTACH]431889[/ATTACH] (courtesy of Arie de Lange)
I don’t think I'll build mine to represent this particular one’s current condition, though
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It says on the box that this is a kit for advanced modellers, and they’re not kidding. It has a lot of tiny, fiddly parts that require care and a bit of work to fit correctly, and being a resin kit, things simply don’t slot together as well as for a decent plastic kit. Case in point: the springs.
On the real Weasel, there are four half leaf springs sticking out on each side of the lower hull. These serve as both springs and suspension arms, since the bogies are bolted straight to them, with a stabiliser arm at the top to keep them from tilting sideways. There’s a protective bit of steel over part of the springs and this incorporates a rubber bump stop.
In the kit, this is made as four springs per side, with a piece of etched brass to bend in shape for the cover, and two tiny (longest dimension is about 1 mm) bits to represent the bump stops on each of the brass parts. Oh, and you have to make your own spacer to get 2.4 mm clearance between the outer ends of the springs and the underside of the hull.
What I did was first add the etched parts and bump stops, then make a spacer from some 2 mm square rod and a bit of plastic card (thinner than 2.4 mm in all, because the model will be carrying some cargo). That left finding a way to actually add the springs. If this were a plastic kit, you could just glue all eight in place, then put it on the spacer before the glue sets and line them all out. But with superglue, that’s hardly an option, so I had to glue all eight springs in separately.
I ended up using some Blu-Tack to stick the model to a piece of glass, near the edge to give me room to manoeuvre the springs in on one side:
[ATTACH]432974[/ATTACH]
Once the glue had dried, I did the other side as well, then built the etched return roller mounts, but I don’t have a picture of them yet.Comment
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Looks really fiddly…….could you have used five minute epoxy to give you wriggle room to line them up?Comment
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Hi Jakko
The end result looks good but what a fiddly, complicated proceedure you had to go through to get there.
JimComment
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That might work, if you’re quick enough, I suppose. I don’t have any that quick, only 30-minute, and I wouldn’t want to use that for that exact reason. The annoying thing with two-part epoxy is that it works almost like a lubricant until it sets, so if I had used that I would probably have found eight springs fallen out of the model. But five-minute epoxy is probably fast enough that you could do it, I think.
The looks of the remaining parts and the instructions make me think that this is not even the fiddliest part of this kit … If you have friends who like the look of a real Weasel, or even own one, and think “I’d like a model of one, I’ll buy that LZ kit and build one!” — then do dissuade them unless you know they’re skilled modellers
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All of them are on now, as are the drive wheels and the return roller mounts:
[ATTACH]433049[/ATTACH]
The drive wheels are in two halves that you have to align yourself — there’s only one position in which the tiny teeth and the spokes of both halves line up. The idler wheels are similar but easier, as they just have a bunch of holes through them to line up, but one of the four halves had rather more hole than it should:
[ATTACH]433047[/ATTACH]
I superglued it onto a piece of 0.25 mm plastic card and, when the glue has dried, I’ll cut it out and (hopefully) drill open the holes:
[ATTACH]433048[/ATTACH]Comment
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