Hi there Trev and Mark! Many thanks for those kind words!
Yep! It's still very shiny Mark! Its a basic Chinese Model BD-130A (Cheapo copy of an expensive western airbrush)
I was really lucky to have this, a few years ago my good mate (Godan) wanted me to do a water colour painting for his wife for a Christmas present. It was a picture of a Humpbacked Whale diving under the water and he bought an 'all in' set on ebay with a lovely compressor and two sets of airbrushes, this one and one with the paint reservoir under the barrel. I used them with artist's gouache paints to airbrush in the shafts of light coming down from the surface. (Disappointed that he wouldn't let me add a giant squid or Marineville's Stingray though!)
When it was finished Godan left the compressor and brushes down with me and then found an even better set up on ebay which he bought for himself, 'donating' the first lot to me!
I haven't done that much airbrushing to be honest, I've always found getting the paint mixture and air pressure just right to be more of an art than a science but the beach spraying did come out quite nice!
As for airbrushing weathering on a 1/700 scale tank...hhmmm...NO!

Robin.

Diagram 5 illustrates the separate parts which went into the construction of the Flail assembly. With the exception of the drum itself which was styrene rod, the rest was all made from plasticard sheet from the off-cuts box. Photo 6 shows the completed drum and arms being test fitted onto a resin cast Sherman hull, the inside of the arms needed a little sanding back and even then it was a tight fit! I then had to create a silicone rubber mould to cast that complicated piece in resin. The flail was included with a few other ‘tanky’ bits so as not to waste the rubber but I ended up making a second mould before I could get any good castings from it (even now its about a 50/50 chance of a good one). Note: in this pic I hadn’t yet fitted the rear spacer beam! Two of the rare good castings are shown in Photo 7, as mentioned earlier, I was making two Flails, one working and one raised up. The other good casting that snapped in half whilst trying to sand down the arms a bit more will never be mentioned again! You will also probably notice I’ve fitted those chalk boxes on at the wrong angle! Fortunately they came off easily and went back properly before the tanks were primed for painting. (I actually tried a couple of times to make a mould of the Sherman hull with the chalk boxes included but again, it was too difficult getting consistant castings, one side or the other ALWAYS had an air bubble. Leaving the Flails for a moment, Photo 8 shows the component parts for the Fascine Carrier. We have the basic Churchill casting with the turret cut off and glued back on facing backwards and another piece of styrene rod, this time a larger diameter than the Flail’s drum. The ‘branches’ are the same styrene rod heated over a candle flame and stretched out to create the thin rods shown here. The thick rod became the core of the fascine, cut to width and then encased in a layer of the stretched rods shown going on with liquid poly glue as in Photo 9. When the core was completely covered I then glued more rods in the ends, creating the impression that the whole bundle was thin sections once the excess was sliced away as shown in Photo 10. The only other addition was the bar across the hull front seen here. Once painted, I’ll add some support cables from the elastic rigging thread before the vehicle is fixed to the base. Once again, I did try and mould a complete vehicle carrying the fascine but the old air bubble problem crept in again. In the end I moulded the fascine on its own for simplicity. I’ve cast a few of them now so I will probably do a few more of these with the AVRE mortar instead of the gun. The simplest conversion of all (apart from the AVRE shown below) is illustrated in Photo 11. All the Deep Waders required was three pieces of plasticard to represent the snorkels over the engine, as seen in Photo 12. When I tried to cast a complete wader, as usual the three little thin protruding bits equalled air bubbles and you can guess the rest. I can usually cast the two side snorkels and then simply glue a rear one on after! Photos 13 to 15 show the painting procedure for these tiny items. After super-gluing a stretched sprue gun barrel onto the turret up to five or six castings are temporarily glued to a lolly stick with Deluxe Card Glue and once dry, primed with Vallejo Grey Surface Primer. They are then painted with Mig Acrylic Russian Green (which is actually closer to the Olive Green in this small scale) and then later given a Citadel Skaven Brown ink wash. Once all dried they are then dry-brushed with Vallejo Khaki for the highlights before painting the tracks with Mig Polished Metal followed with a thinned Citadel Rust Brown wash to add a bit of rusty ‘dulling down’. Note the AVRE with its Petard Mortar barrel made from brass tubing instead of the stretched sprue.
The latest additions are shown in Photo 16 with the Fascine Carrier at the back with its reversed turret. Moving back to the pair of Flails, they have also had the same painting procedure as shown in Photo 17 and then received their ‘chain’ flails. This was a single strand of 0.2mm electrical wire (16/02 cable) which was gripped between a pair of pliers and a mini vice and pulled, stretching the wire about two inches, making it even thinner and dead straight. I then cut the wire into 1cm or so lengths and curved one end around a mini round file to approximately the same diameter as the drum. The curved end was then dipped in a little pool of super glue and carefully applied to the drum with micro tweezers. Once in the right position it was allowed to set for a few seconds before teasing into shape and trimming to length with tiny micro scissors. (This was not all plain sailing – that wire has a mind of its own!) I had been puzzling on how (and whether) I could form the steel clubs on the ends of the chains and the answer in the end was quite simple – Photo 18 shows what’s left of my 40+ year old pot of Citadel Bolt Gun Metal acrylic (gun metal to you and me!) This is more like a thick treacle than the lovely paint it once was but as you can see, scraping a big dollop out on a coffee stirrer and taking a smaller dollop on the point of a cocktail stick allowed me to carefully touch the end of each chain leaving a self rounding blob which dried into a club! Just goes to prove in this hobby – never throw anything away!
Finally I couldn’t resist the last shot in Photo 19 if only to prove that in WW2, Sherman Tanks’s really were two a penny! (Sorry!)(Still need to dry-brush the gun barrels yet!)
In the next installment, finishing off the beach and finally getting the resin base glued to the seascape section.
Until then, Happy Modelling to you All!

Robin.

Am utterly speechless with the detail you've achieved on something so small... Brilliant work....

Regards

Alan

Robin,

Totally lost for words, how can you work so small !!

Well done

Trev

More amazing work, dio is really looking fab....

Regards

Alan

Many thanks again to Alan and Mark! Things are moving - towards a log jam!
This is just a short update as things have now reached the Catch-22 point where multiple parts have to be finished before any of them can come together! I’ve been working on the next ‘Funny’ tank in the series, the Churchill Carpet Layer and after a few change of directions and re-thinks, it’s turned out pretty well! However, the big delay at the moment is the crew figures! Yep I need a whole load of 1/700 scale human beings, some on the surface, some on the towers (oh wait, that was Star Wars and/or The Dambusters!) I meant some on the ships and lots on the beach. The ships and landing craft are about ready to go down on the base now but I will have to get the crew figures fitted on first as it’ll be too difficult to get near the ships when they’re all in place together! (see Photo 17). While I’m working on them the next installment will be the Carpet Layer but first a quick explanation of the various layers going onto the seascape.
Diagram 13 illustrates the different media being employed. ‘a’ is the resin cast beach which is glued down, butted up to the printed sea effect. The first job is to mix up a quantity of the clear resin (the sort most often used to make paperweights with embedded items inside). This was poured over the inkjet printed sea forming Layer b, (I did check on a sacrificial printing that the resin wouldn’t just dissolve the ink) and the result is shown in Photo 14. It was intended to be a completely flat clear layer but I think it was too cold up in the attic workroom when the mix was poured on – it didn’t exactly ‘flow’ around the base and after persuading it into the edges with a spatula I got some ready made sea-swells built in! The second layer was easier to apply and has taken some but not all of the unevenness out – this was Woodland Scenics Realistic Water, a one part liquid used for (obviously) water effects like rivers and ponds. Pour it on in layers of less than 1/8th of an inch (or it could shrink and crack) and leave to dry overnight. This is Layer c on the diagram. When the ships are ready to go on a second layer of the Realistic Water will be poured on and the vessels placed in/on it effectively embedding or gluing them in place (Layer d). The smaller items like the landing craft and DD Tanks will then be fixed in place on top of this layer with a further drop of Realistic Water to fix them down. Finally, the ‘3D’ water effects: incoming waves, ship’s wakes and explosions will be made from another Woodland Scenics product – Surface Water ‘Water Effects’. This is similar to the Realistic Water in that it’s a one part substance but is much thicker and can be sculpted into shapes, in my case, with cocktail sticks. Mould it on a polythene type surface and when it’s dried into a semi transparent finish it can be peeled off and glued into position with Realistic Water, (e on the diagram).
Whilst I was casting the many (and many) landing craft for the diorama, occasionally I would just run short of resin and so I just poured what was left into the mould resulting in a few looking like the pair in Photo 15. These are both painted up now and when the final layer of Realistic Water goes on to fix the larger vessels in place these will be ‘sunk’ in a suitable location. The final positioning of the LCTs and LSIs will look something like the scene in Photo 16. As I said earlier, it’s getting crowded down there! So crowded in fact that some of the landing craft will be grounded further up the beach so I can fit them in. The next job now is to concentrate on getting as many crew and army figures painted up as possible, the LCTs are mainly crew orientated but the LSIs need both AA gun crews and lots of Infantry too. The one on the far left will have Infantry lined up on the deck as she heads for the beach but the others will have their ramps down and lots of figures pouring down (except for one which I might model having just unloaded with the men streaming up the beach).
So while I’m using the electron microscope to paint those figures, the next installment will be back to the Churchill Carpet Layer(s).
Until then, Happy Modelling to you All!

Robin.

Looking excellent Robin, some very nice work.

Mark

Many thanks again to Tony, Mark and Kev! Painting 1/700 scale figures is not easy! I'm using my bestist tiny brush and although the results look good with the naked eye, they still look like I used a six inch fence brush on the macro lens!
Photo 1 illustrates the actual Churchill Carpet Layer as employed on D-Day. This is the later production version with the much simpler support gantry design compared to the ‘Z’ frame on the prototype shown earlier. This one is also fitted with the deep wading kit I modeled on the standard ‘gun tank’ Churchill, for my model I’ll be leaving those off though, it’s complicated enough already! Compared to a standard AVRE, the Carpet Layer has a couple of extra attachments on the basic hull onto which the bobbin supports are fitted. There is a triangular re-enforcement near the front of the hull ahead of the hull hatch and a rectangular one just behind the same hatch. These are shown in Photo 2 made by super gluing tiny pieces of thin plasticard onto a resin cast hull (the piece at the back is just replacing the engine intake, which had an air bubble (again!) In the foreground is the first attempt at making one of the bobbin end discs. After cutting back the brass wheels and trying it on the tank I discovered it was only half the diameter it should have been! This was actually a great help as the correct diameter was the same size as the whole brass wheel as shown in Photo 3, which meant less work overall! The little brass wheels which provide the ‘spoke’ detail are from a small round pot of various wheels, cogs and gears I bought on ebay, supposed to be for ‘steampunk’ jewellery, they are perfect for tiny highly detailed mechanical do-dahs like this (only about £2.50 I think for about 50 or more). The plasticard discs onto which the brass wheels were glued were punched out of a scrap of styrene by one of my leather punches. I had intended to cast them with a little ‘nub’ to locate into a hole on the bobbin support, hence the wire axles but ended up sanding that off again to make construction easier later. To create the arms of the supports I needed to send off for a pack of Evergreen styrene ‘H’ beams. I tried to make them with flat styrene panels but it’s so darned small the glue kept melting the things! The H section was first sanded back into a U and cut to size to make the main support, the smaller angled piece was then fashioned from a U piece cut down its length as was the top cross piece. Photo 4 shows the layout of the next silicone rubber mould, the completed supports can be seen in the front of the group along with a length of styrene rod for the axle of the bobbin carrier. Also temporarily card-glued down are the Carpet Layer hull, a redesigned ‘travelling’ Armoured ramp, a couple of standard Churchill hulls (with and without turret), a few of the turrets and another Armoured Ramp ‘kit’ (using up the available space in the little mould, its always good to cast spares you know!) The results of the first casting are seen in Photo 5, all the main components came out well, especially those bobbin supports which I thought would be difficult to get! Some of the other hulls did get the odd bubble but it’s still worth casting multiples when possible – any excess resin just goes into one of the building moulds (or the next beach front cast).
With the main parts done I could then work on the second version of the model – the one with a full roll of carpet. The first job was to make the carpet roll, Photo 6 illustrates this under way. The carpet is a small piece of the self-adhesive aluminium foil I bought for the Card model of the Sopwith Pup. The hand roller shown beside it has a very fine striation finish on the roller (probably from the lathe cutter that made it) and I found that by pressing the roller hard onto the foil twice, at right angles to each other, I could form a fairly convincing ‘hessian’ texture. This is shown a little clearer in Photo 7, half of the foil backing has been peeled away to allow a slightly stretched single strand of 0.2mm electrical wire to be cut into lengths and stuck to the sticky foil to simulate the steel rods sewn into the canvas carpet. This is a second ‘production’ shot as I didn’t take any photos as I was thinking up the prototype! The foil and wire strips were then formed around a 2.5mm styrene rod (the ‘empty’ bobbin axle was 1.5mm) and pressed down with finger and thumb to accentuate the rods as shown on the original in the centre. Finally, a really small mould was made with the support arms and bobbin end discs thrown in for good measure to produce the resin version shown on the right. The resin bobbin is then trimmed to size to fit between the two ends and the support frame. The first completed vehicle is shown along with a subsequent casting in Photo 8 – I simply pour liquid resin into the moulds, poke around with a cocktail stick to dislodge air bubbles (mostly) and then stick a larger rubber mould and a weight on top, using it’s base to expel excess resin. I’m then left with a collection of parts in a thin matrix to be trimmed away as seen here. The two ‘raw’ models are shown in Photo 9, empty bobbin on the left, full on the right. What I forgot to mention before was that by casting the parts in an open topped mould the thinnest parts, especially the support arms end up a little over thick. I have to thin them down as much as I dare using fine sandpaper and then super glue them into place on the hull. Once they are firmly set I can then use a flat diamond dust file to thin them down even further with the hull and attached arm resting on its side on a flat surface, filing down each one in turn. The effect is shown in Diagram 10. The painting begins with the little Carpet Layers glued with Deluxe Card Glue onto a lolly stick as shown in Photo 11, this was after the first thin coat of Vallejo Grey Surface Primer. After the second coat of primer it’s then the usual Russian Green, Citadel Skaven Brown ink wash and Khaki dry-brushed highlights and finally the Mig Polished Metal for the tracks with a thinned down Citadel Rust Brown ink wash over the metal. The actual canvas roll was a mix of a Vallejo Flesh tone and white as shown in the ‘finished’ shot in Photo 12, (they’ll actually be on the beach when glued down). Finally, I’ve decided to do a little homage to one of the reference photos I found researching, which depicted a crossing of a narrow but deep stream/ravine during the Italian campaign. That photo showed an Armoured Ramp sitting in the stream without the moving ramps deployed, a second Armoured Ramp sat on its back with the little ramps out and a standard gun Churchill rumbling over the top of both of them! I’m not going for a triple decker here though, just one Ramp providing a bridge for its brother as shown in Photo 13.
That just leaves a tiny little trailer to make up to convert some gun tanks to Churchill Crocodile Flamethrowers plus the floating barrage balloons but in the meantime, the next installment will be creating the crew figures as mentioned earlier.
Until then, Happy Modelling (and stay safe) to you All!

Robin.

Nice work Robin, nicely detailed given the size.

Mark