If i can dig it out of the loft Robin and it hasn't already gone to the charity shop i'll send you my copy of Angels one five, your brick walls look fabulous, looking good mate.
Paul

Now building brick by brick, unbelievable.... .. Can see this is going to be another great build Robin....

Regards

Alan

Hi again to All!
Many thanks for all those wonderful comments! I found after the first few bricks that my tweezers were a little easier to use than the 1/72 scale trowel!
That would be brilliant Paul if you can find that film, the old b/w ones are a great source of contemporary info!


Not many photos this week, when you’re building a brick wall one brick at a time it doesn’t give many opportunities for wildly different views! (But I’m glad you’re following it closely Jase!)
In between brick laying I’m also getting on with the little Bedford QL Bowser - there’s a lot of details to add on that one, the bigger Matador Tanker comes with a driver (albeit with no legs!) and a steering wheel. The QL comes with neither! And I’d forgotten that none of the Airfix RAF Emergency and Refuelling set vehicles have any clear windscreens - more scratch building to come then!
Anyhow, in Photo 1 we have the wall a little higher up than in the last instalment with the wall former sat in its groove behind. Also visible in this photo is the door former and the first of the three and a half window formers. These are made from quite thick plasticard (1-2mm) are are glued on to the black plasticard wall with liquid poly adhesive. The door was attached when the wall reached the first three courses, the windows had to wait until the wall got to twelve bricks high. The actual placement of the door and windows was worked out from the freeze framed Battle of Britain DVD as mentioned earlier.
Photo 2 was taken about six courses later as you can see from the window openings beginning to take shape. By this point all of the window blanks have been attached, the half sized one is just out of the shot though.
The last two Photos 3 and 4 were taken to illustrate the procedure in between the bricks going on when the top of the preceding layer is gently sanded with the emery nail file to remove any ’awkward’ lumps and bumps caused by slight variations in the thickness of the bricks. As you can see in Photo 4, the interior of the wall is actually more ’regular’ than the exterior. This is simply due to the bricks being pushed back flat against the black plasticard former. I’m not bothered about the difference however, I’ll probably clean up the brick pillars a little once the wall is completed, but many of these buildings were ‘rushed up’ at the beginning of the war and a little ‘roughness’ adds to the character I think. The other way of looking at it, is if I was actually building a full sized red brick wall unaided, this is the way it would look too! Now if I could get hold of a 1/72 scale ‘Brickies Tool’ gizmo like my full sized one!!
I was worried that the 2000 bricks in the Juweela pack wouldn’t be enough to complete the hut walls. As it looks at the moment, I think they may just be OK. I keep taking them out a ‘pinch’ at a time which is about 15 to 20 bricks and it’s amazing how little the bag seems to be going down. Now that the window blanks are all in place, much of the remaining wall is ’empty’ and I’m pretty sure the actual wall will be done with the remaining supply, the only doubt is whether there’s enough for the internal pillars too - still, we’ll find out soon!

Until the next instalment, Happy Modelling to you all!


Robin

Hold on! Photos haven't uploaded properly, be right back! .... Sorry about that, somehow the photo pages I put together on the netbook resized themselves up into 100's of kb! All better now!

Darn right there Stevie, and I even gave them a whole thimble full of tea too!

Battle of Britain interesting fact No2:

The two main advisors for the film were Britain's Wing Commander Stanford Tuck and Germany's Luftwaffe General Adolf Galland. In January 1942 Tuck's Spitfire was shot down near Boulogne. He was captured and brought infront of Adolf Galland for interrogation. Three years later Tuck escaped and made his way safely back to Britain. Shortly after Galland was captured by the Americans as they fought through Germany and Galland was flown back to Britain ... where he was then interrogated by Stanford Tuck!


Ok, the wall is progressing fine, the lintels over the door and windows are in and only a couple more courses of brick and the gable end wall to finish now, more on that coming soon.
For this instalment we're going from brick to plastic!

This instalment sees the start of the first of the Airfix plastic model kits which will be making up the ‘vehicle’ part of the build. I’m starting with one half of the Airfix RAF Refuelling Set the “Bedford QL Tanker” (or Bowser as they were called in the RAF) The other half of this kit, the larger ‘Matador’ tanker won’t be used as that particular vehicle didn’t come into service until after the Battle of Britain. In fact, to be absolutely accurate I shouldn’t be using the QL either as this one didn’t actually appear until 1941, the year after the Battle! I’m not exactly sure what they were using during 1940, but I’m going with the Bedford because its one of them that takes a direct hit when the airfield gets bombed in the movie (so there!)
Photo 1 illustrates the main components of the Bedford’s chassis; a single piece moulding of the main chassis frame and the four suspension springs, shown here still on their sprues. As you can see, there is a fair bit of flash to be removed together with various moulding knobs and additions. I’m not sure if the kit I bought on ebay is a first edition of this set or not, I suspect not as the instruction sheet seems a little too fresh for an ‘oldie’ and I don’t recall the box art featuring Mosquitoes when the kit first came out many years ago. Still, can’t complain, the parts were still sealed up in their poly bag and everything’s as good as new. The other vehicle I’ll be starting on soon, the Ambulance, is very definitely an original kit from decades ago complete with the first box artwork too. (There were a few unexpected surprises with that one – more on that when she gets started!)
Photo 2 shows the main parts cleaned up and ready to glue together. I did go back and sand down the chassis frame a little more afterwards, it looked fine to the naked eye but it wasn’t until I used this photo that I could see the bits that needed a little more work!
What I didn’t mention at the beginning was that I’m not following the schedule as laid out in the instructions. Section 1 is the cab construction, Section 2 is this chassis, Section 3 puts the cab on to the chassis together with the tank supports and finally, Section 4 is the construction of the tank itself. The cab is, unfortunately very basic in nature and since I’ll be having the driver’s door open, needs a whole lot of scratch building to avoid awkward questions of how does it get steered, braked or gear changed with none of the above supplied in the kit! My first stage therefore is to build up the actual chassis and supports (with more super detailing on that as well!)
Before that, Photo 3 shows the other two main parts straight out of the kit, the front and rear axles with their drive shafts and the tiddly little universal joint thing that connects them all together under the chassis.
In Photo 4, the four suspension springs are glued onto the chassis frame. This procedure illustrated the need to read the instruction sheet, check the parts against the drawings and then read the instructions again! You can’t really tell from the photos but those springs have very fine moulded details which show the multi layered construction of the springs themselves. What I didn’t realise despite the fact that it is shown in the line drawings, was that they only have that detailing on ONE side! Why is a complete mystery, Airfix could just as easily have moulded it on both sides – but they didn’t. Needless to say, when I was fixing up this photo having just glued the springs on I suddenly noticed that whilst the front springs were nice and detailed looking, the rear ones were very plain and smooth, well, on the outsides they were, on the insides they were as detailed as the front ones! Fortunately I’d used liquid poly to stick them on with not super glue, so off they came to be reversed before it was too late! So – read everything at least twice!
Now for the first of the upgrades. Photo 5 illustrates the three (sorry, four) new pieces to make up a replacement exhaust pipe and silencer. As you will see in the following photo, the kit part was very thin but came with a nasty moulding ‘ridge’ down the middle so rather than trying to sand it smooth I went for a scratch build replacement instead. The pipe work is made from a length of styrene rod of 1.1mm diameter whilst the silencer is a small piece of aluminium tubing about 2mm or so in diameter. The rod needed a couple of complex curves to follow the shape of the original. The tight curve at the end was formed by very gently warming the rod near a candle, not as hot as stretching sprue but just enough to soften the plastic so it could be drawn around a drill bit clamped in a mini vice. This was done a couple of inches in from the end of the rod and then sliced off close to the curve. The other, more gentle ‘sideways’ bend was achieved by simply applying pressure between thumb and forefinger, this styrene is quite a soft plastic and the rod retains any slight bends forced into it. The fourth piece is a length of 0.5mm brass wire super glued into a same sized hole drilled into the aluminium tube to form the locating peg as seen on the original kit part. This did mean slightly enlarging the corresponding hole in the chassis to get it to fit!
Photo 6 shows the difference between the kit and replacement exhausts whilst Photo 7 shows the assembly fitted on to the chassis. The photos don’t show the compound curve very clearly, but as well as the sharp bend up at the engine end, there is also an ‘S’ bend (very shallow) which is necessary to bring the pipe back in line with the locating hole for the silencer. This shot also shows the three drive shafts and the axles in position too. The end of the exhaust pipe was also drilled out to give it the hollow tube effect.
Photo 8 returns to the upper side of the chassis with the fuel tank and its shelf support. The petrol tank was super detailed with better straps and a filler cap but I didn’t take any photos of the process so I’ll illustrate it with the smaller side mounted oil tank instead. I managed to get some really nice photos of a completed 1/48 scale Bedford before my unfortunate virus episode. That model sported a wooden crate of some sort fixed to the free part of the support with various tools etc inside so I think I’ll try and replicate something similar for mine further down the line. Photo 9 shows the aforementioned oil tank as supplied in the kit, still attached to the sprue. In the case of the fuel tank I added the new straps over the top of the moulded on ones but for the oil tank I decided to remove the moulded straps entirely, along with the flash and start from scratch. In Photo 10 you can see the first of the pair of straps going on. They were made up from a very thin slice of the Decra-led adhesive lead strip. The slice was cut overlong and simply wrapped around the sanded down tank, held in place with a pair of long nosed spring tweezers as seen here. When the strip was in just the right position a drop of super glue was applied with a cocktail stick and capillary action sucked the glue right around the tank. Once dry, the excess was cut away with a safety razor blade and another drop of glue applied to the cut off point to seal the ends. This was then repeated for the second strap before the completed oil tank was permanently attached to the locating struts sticking out from the side of the chassis as seen in Photo 11. Photo 12 shows the chassis back up right again, in the instructions, the tyres (or wheels) are not glued on but simply passed over the axles and then the hubs are glued in, fixing the wheels in place but still free to turn. There’s not much point to that on this particular model, it’s going to be as immovable as the spits and hurricane so I didn’t bother with that procedure. The wheels do give the model some much needed stability however (it can’t balance with all the bumpy bits underneath) so I glued the wheels on permanently, ensuring all four were nice and level, both horizontally (flat on the ground) and vertically (not leaning over – and that wasn’t as easy as it sounds!!)
In Photo 13 we have the two side panels, which fit on to the main tank supports. I’ve included the shots of these mainly for complete newcomers to plastic kits just to illustrate how much better the average kit part is for a little cleaning up. It’s very easy to get over keen when building these things and skip the sanding down and/or trimming off jobs. Looking at the many old plastic kits in my attic, most built before I reached my teens I can’t believe how many of them have sprue attachments still sticking out of the fuselages and wings! And I thought I’d made them all so well back then too!! The closer of the two panels is as it came off the sprue, the background one has been trimmed back to remove those moulding knobs, sanded down on the four edges to remove the flash and also trimmed out along the inside edges where the flash was obstructing the holes. As you can see in both this photo and also Photo 16, that little extra work pays great dividends to the finished appearance.
The main tank supports mentioned earlier are seen in their component parts in Photo 14 and in the process of construction in Photo 15. As well as the obligatory sanding down I also re-drilled the holes in the middle of the struts, which gives a truer scale appearance (and also took care of the flash!)
Finally, in Photo 16 again we have the so-far completed chassis (as it was a week or so ago) with the up-graded fuel tank finally visible, (note the lead strip strapping and the tiny filler cap from stretched sprue). After this picture was taken I suddenly realised that the oil tank also had a filler cap, getting one stuck in place tucked under the chassis frame was – interesting! In this shot, the finished side panel is glued in, the not so finished one isn’t. A note to anyone else building this little Bedford, take special care with that front support, whilst the rear one has no ‘front or back’, the front one has a ‘T’ shaped hole in it which marries up with a ‘T’ shaped peg under the main tank – the cross of the ‘T’ faces backwards!
In the next instalment I’ll be carrying on with more added detailing to the chassis before she gets her first undercoat and starting on the main upgrade – the cab interior.

Until then, Happy Modelling to you All!


Robin

Certainly has all the makings of being another fantastic dio from you Robin with more superb scratch building..... Great work and look forward to more....

Regards

Alan

Many thanks to Kev, Alan and Dave!

I thought I'd seen a 'dinkier' looking Bowser out there, watching through the scenes again it's definately a QL in the movie, in fact judging by the extra 'conduit' panels which hide some of the piping I think its actually a late war version pressed into Battle of Britain service for the film!
Much as I'd like to put in the proper one, as Magnus Magnusson used to say in Mastermind "I've started so I'll finish!" or, as in my case "I'M NOT STARTING ANOTHER FLAMING ONE NOW!"

So here it comes!

In Photo 1 we have the easiest of the super detailing on the Bedford, the pair of towing shackles found at the front of the main chassis frame. These were formed in exactly the same way as the shackles on the MkIV tanks in the Messines model, namely from stretched sprue. The sprue was heated over the candle flame and stretched but before it cooled down the strand was pulled over a small drill bit held vertically in the mini vice and the two ends touched to each other, fusing together as seen in the photo leaving a ‘D’ shackle at the other end which just needs to be sliced off with the safety razor blade as seen in Photo 2. The two shackles were then ‘spring fitted’ over the ends of the chassis and secured with a drop of liquid poly glue (making sure they both hung straight down) as shown in Photo 3.
During the research on the web into the Bedford, I found a little detail which had been omitted on the Airfix chassis: On both sides of the front tank supports, there is a short double step ladder designed to allow the ground crew to climb up onto the side shelf and operate the swinging arms which hold the petrol hoses. These ladders were formed from an off cut of the 0.5 x 1.5mm Plastruct styrene strip as seen in Photo 4. The main vertical bar is the full sized strip with the side bars and steps cut down from the main strip. Photo 5 illustrates the first ladder getting it’s side bars glued in place, using the second ladder’s main strut and the rest of the off cut to support the side bars so they’re nice and level. Photo 6 shows the left hand ladder in position, the actual treads were attached after the frame was good and solid on the tank support strut. One thing you have to watch with the ladders is to make sure that the second one is the mirror image of the first, make two the same and one will be ‘inside out’ when you go to fit it on! Photos 3 and 6 also show off that extra filler cap placed on the fuel tank mentioned earlier. (More Youtube watching has since shown me that there's a thin locking bar on top of the cap, that'll be coming soon!)
In Photo 7 we come to one of the more demanding procedures! The photo shows the combined driving cab floor and mudguards. Shape-wise this is fine, the problem lies in the thickness of the kit part. The various photos of the real thing show that those mudguards are really thin, in real life probably ¼ inch steel, the kit part on the other hand would work out to about two or three inches thick instead! What I did was to use the rotary tool with a grinding stone (the cylindrical type’ to very carefully grind away the thickness of the plastic (underneath) to reduce it down to a better looking finish. This was a very delicate process, a little at a time and all the while expecting the stone to come tearing its way through the soft plastic. The photos here do not show the finished result very clearly but once the cab goes on the effect should be easier to see. The ground down mudguards are seen in Photo 8, alongside the front of the chassis. As I said, it’s difficult to see the difference in this shot but notice the dark grey ‘box’ sitting on the top of the chassis. As you might have noticed on the earlier photos, there is no moulded engine block with the kit. Now I’m not sure if the thinned down mudguards make it even more obvious, but with the cab floor in position you can see right through underneath, making it too obvious that there’s actually no engine down there! The simple solution was to use a section of sprue from the Emhar MkIV and just to glue it down on top of the chassis (after a couple of trim backs to stop it fouling the front of the cab floor!) It doesn’t have to look like anything ‘proper’ – it’s just there to block the gap! As you can see from this photo, the ‘detailing’ of the cab floor consists of a moulded box (possibly the gear box or something similar) and two blocks used to locate the two seats with. (Lots of scratch building to come here!)
Photo 9 illustrates the one piece of ‘detail’ that does come with the kit, the ‘dashboard’ together with the cab front into which that part fits. Actually, as far as the dashboard goes, the original is very simple and Airfix have at least got the right number of dials and other shapes (possibly air vents?) and in the right positions too. What they didn’t bother at all with however was all of the rest of the bits and pieces necessary to drive the thing, including, incredibly, a steering wheel! That is really strange since all the other vehicles in the sets I’ve purchased for the diorama all come with the steering wheel included (admittedly half of them won’t be in the diorama of course!) I will be having a go at scratch building a correct wheel later, annoyingly, the Matador and Fire Engine come with four spoked steering wheels whilst the Bedford has a three-er, on the other hand, I’ve just won a Bofors Gun kit on ebay which arrived a few days ago and the Morris Tractor does have a three spoke wheel – but I don’t like to ruin a whole kit just for one item so I’ll try a few scratch build versions first. Fortunately the wheel can be added on after all the rest has been built and painted so apart from the deadline there’s no great hurry for that one item.
Before starting on the cab there was one task I needed to do first – making up the windscreen and door windows, which are also missing from the kit. In Photos 10 and 11 you can see the procedure for making these up. First job, using a newly sharpened pencil is to mark the four corners of the windscreen onto a piece of thin card. Fortunately the Bedford’s windscreens are of the flat ‘Landrover’ type, although, as you can make out, they are not true rectangles like the ‘Rover but slightly angled, sloping down towards the sides of the cab. The glass itself was cut from a fairly thick sheet of clear plastic, I’ve no recollection of where I got this from, I don’t think it was a bought sheet, it seems to be more like the kind of sliding partition that comes in some cheapie tool boxes – I just hope I don’t need that box one day! The first window fitted perfectly first time and you’d think the second would just be a mirror image of the first – so did I but it took three attempts before one would fit in the frame. In Photo 11 the glass panes are just resting in the cab front, one does look as if it has a gap but it will go down tighter when pressed in place. Again like the Landrover, these windscreens are separate to the body of the cab and are designed to hinge outwards for ventilation. Come to think of it, since the Bedford came first, it’s actually the Landrover which is like the Bedford!
In Photo 12 we have the two cab side doors with their own windows. Fitting these will be a lot easier than the windscreens as Airfix haven’t put in the vertical bar which splits the window into two, the wind down main part and the smaller triangular front bit. Once I have added those bars, the glass will be further cut down so that the main windows are partly wound down to improve the ‘in use’ effect.
Now we come to the most enjoyable part of the cab – fitting in all the missing details! For the reference photos I turned to the web again, using both photos of some other larger scale models of the QL and perhaps even more useful, some shots of ‘scrapyard’ Bedfords in the process of being lovingly restored by very talented Military Vehicle enthusiasts. One of the best was a video by rockola59 on Youtube showing his Bedford QL Army lorry version from rusting to bits in a scrapyard to driving along continental roads to a Military Vehicle meeting looking like it just came off the factory floor! Highly recommended for all those little cab details especially. Most of the following additions came from those pics apart from the foot pedals which are pure conjecture on my part as I couldn’t find any photos of the ruddy floor!(At least, not until after I'd made mine up!)
Photo 13 shows the first of the new bits – the three foot pedals – brake, clutch and accelerator – every manual vehicle needs those don’t they? And the steering column for the missing steering wheel. The pedals were cut down from Plastruct styrene strip and the steering column was from Plastruct 1.2mm rod and an off cut of thin plasticard.
Next in line came the housing for the three gear sticks? Three levers of some sort anyway and the additional details on the top and side wall of the moulded casing. Plastruct strip provided the housing sides whilst the other details were cut from various thicknesses of plasticard sheet. These can be seen in Photo 14, (before being sanded back smooth). Moving on to Photo 15, the smaller section of the triple lever box has been roofed in with more plasticard sheet and the rearward facing extension to the casing has been sanded down from a strip of plasticard which was itself a thin strip sliced off one of my thickest sheets of the material (about 2mm thick I think), this was the strip I cut to form the lintels in the red brick wall (but you haven’t seen that yet!) After all of that was completely dried, the edges of the box walls were sanded smooth using a strip of medium sandpaper glued on to a lollipop stick and then it was time to make the actual levers themselves. If you remember the construction of the wickerwork trench linings in the Messines build, I was left with loads of ends of stretched sprue – too thick at the ends for the wickerwork but never thrown away (something I think all modellers eventually become – HOARDERS!) These scrap bits are just the right thickness however for the gear levers. In Photo 16 you can see them under construction. The ends of the previously snipped off sprue were very slowly brought close to a candle flame as they were when the sprue was stretched but this time the object was to slowly melt the tips until they formed a bulbous end to simulate the gear knob. Do this too close to the flame and the plastic will simply melt and droop, just keep getting closer and closer to the flame until you see the tip begin to swell up – then remove quickly. Any really young modellers will need some adult help or supervision for this procedure! Three of the levers were formed this way, the fourth one is actually the hand brake. This one (at the bottom of the group) was first heated to produce the ‘bulb’ and then quickly squeezed with tweezers to flatten the round bulb. After just a few seconds to cool, the shape of the hand grip was trimmed down with the razor blade.
Photo 17 shows all of the above additions in place with the final Photo 18 also having the two seats just placed in position. One word of warning – when using photos off the web for information, always use the ones of the actual vehicle as the final check – I fitted that handbrake in after looking at a photo of a resin kit (1/35 I think) and it was only after having another look at the full sized vehicle under restoration that I realised (although in hindsight it was obvious) that they’d put the handbrake in backwards on that model! It’s also on backwards in my photos too – although it’s now the right way round!
In the next instalment I’ll be finishing off the cab detailing with the side doors (including the tiniest little window winders I’ve ever made) and gluing the back on before priming everything.

Happy Modelling until then!


Robin

Robin

Really great work your doing with this one.

A real treat to see those Airfix kits being put to good use. Brings back some memories as I made up those sets from airfix as some of the very first models I ever made.

Great diorama idea you have yourself there.

A very comprehensive update Robin, I have just read the last 2 and the extra detail and scrath building you are putting in amazing. I do enjoy ready the your posts about how you went about doing things.

Keep them coming

Many thanks for those kind words Tony, Dave and Kev!

I'm glad you like the descriptions Dave, many of the procedures used in the diorama are a learning curve for me as well, I've picked up so many hints and tips on this forum, it's nice to be able to share some back to those who might like to try them too!
Like you Tony, I also made these same kits many (many) years ago, back then they would have been straight 'out of the box' of course. In those days only the 'experts' with a huge library of expensive books would have had the knowledge to add the details I'm putting in now. The modern internet age is a Godsend for us modellers!
I know exactly what you mean Kev, I was going to say that the scratch-build super detailing bug was like a disease once you've caught it, but in actual fact its more like a drug habit! You add a little bit here, on the next model you go a little further and eventually you just can't make any kit out of the box anymore. The thought of building one of these Airfix kits 'as is', even the new tooling ones gives me withdrawal symptoms!!
The Hut is coming on really well, the brick wall is complete apart from the internal 'pillars' which I'm making separately to glue to the wall. I'm currently trying out a few different ways of making the multi-paned windows to see which method looks best. More on that after the first few instalments on the Spits!
Talking of those Spits, I was going to begin that section with a short review of the new Airfix kit but that really belongs in the kit review thread so watch that space in a couple of days or so!

Robin

ben a while since I looked in, nice to see your eye for detail is really raising the bar on the trucks.

Jase