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Nice start Robin and once again very well described..... Now eagerly waiting for part 7.....  Regards Alan
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 Rank: Super-Elite        Groups: Registered
Joined: 30/01/2013 Posts: 4,604 Points: 13,607 Location: Monmouthshire UK
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Excellent start Robin, Can't wait to see the trenches. Are you going to depict the comparative luxury of the German trenches compared to the British ones?  Steve
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Thanks to Alan and Steve and sorry for the delay, spent most of this week in bed with some 'orrible winter bug, only felt well enough to face the computer yesterday!  Yes, the trenches will be both bigger and better constructed than the poor old Tommy Trenches. The Archeological program that I have taken much of the design from had a host of little 'extras' which they dug up, many of them were unknown before they came to light and I'll be trying to model some of them as we go! And I nearly forgot! Many thanks indeed to Mr T for making me all sticky!!  Here's the first of the mini tutorials: Part Seven: Barbed Wire.If you want the old battalion, we know where they are,
We know where they are, we know where they are,
If you want the old battalion, we know where they are,
They’re hanging on the old barbed wire.
We seen ‘em, we seen ‘em, hanging on the old barbed wire,
We seen ‘em, we seen ‘em, hanging on the old barbed wire we seen ‘em
Hanging on the old barbed wireBritish army trench lament Whilst the planning stages were still under way I began to think up what sub-sections I could make a start on while I was still sending off for the kits and figures etc. There was one commodity which I was going to need in great amounts, quite literally ‘yards of it’ and that was the horrendous barbed wire to be used for the German defences. First World War barbed wire is not the nasty stuff used today by farmers to keep their animals in place! Military barbed wire in the Great War was far worse, the barbs were longer and more lethal with three or four more times the number of barbs per foot than modern wire. In my sci-fi diorama I came up with a simple form of barbed wire, which was very easy and cheap to make. This was formed from a sheet of aluminium mesh as sold for car body repairs by Halfords and many other motor parts suppliers. The mesh comes in a diamond form and by carefully snipping along both sides of one of the diagonal lines we end up with a basic ‘long wire with sharp bits sticking out both sides’ type of barbed wire. For my Space Marines diorama, that was fine (and it was over thirty years ago!) In fact it does look more like modern ‘razor wire’ so could be used for modern period models ‘as is’. For this commemorative model however, only the best and most authentic looking wire would do so I began a search on the web looking for something a little better. I did find a commercial ‘barbed wire’, which was nice and cheap, about £4 for nine metres but it was not actually ‘barbed’! It was formed from two strands of wire, one slightly larger than the other and twisted together to give the impression of barbed wire (which it did very convincingly until you looked really close) but I had already decided that my wire really had to be barbed for realism. I found a few ‘how to’ items on the web, one was very similar to my diamond mesh method but used a nylon mesh to a similar effect, the others were by and large variations of the method I have used here. Basically, the only way to make convincing barbed wire in miniature is, guess what, make miniature barbed wire! For the first attempt, at ‘proper’ barbed wire I used a variation on one of the web methods with individual barbs applied and soldered to a single solid electrical wire. Without using the micrometer, I would estimate the wire was about 0.5mm in diameter. This method worked quite well and did produce nice looking barbed wire, but it had one disadvantage; it wasn’t quite flexible enough. It would be fine for single strand fences, but I couldn’t coil it up to produce the dense ‘forest of wire’ effect which would be needed for the diorama. I therefore had to return to a method nearer that found on the various web tutorials. The first three Photos, 1-3 show the real thing. First, in Photo 1 is a used roll of WW1 German barbed wire still on its original ‘dispensing frame’. This photo, believe it or not came from Ebay where said roll was offered for sale! Photo 2 illustrates the ‘forest of wire’ type defence, which was employed by all sides on the Western Front. This particular photo which appears to show two men trying to force their way through the wire is a little misleading, I cropped the picture to make it fit better, it actually shows French soldiers laying the wire, not trying to get through it! Photo 3 shows the other type of wire defence, again used by all, this consists of a simple wooden ‘X’ frame with barbed wire stapled between the ‘X’s. Sometimes just straight lines, sometimes with a coil of wire strung out along the centre. Haven’t decided which sort I’ll be making yet, it will probably depend on how much wire I can create before going insane! The ones I do make will be positioned around the trench sides, the ‘forest’ will be further out with the MkIVs ploughing through it. Photo 4 shows the basic raw material for making scale barbed wire – a coil of thin electrical wire (the same size as I used for the Victory’s cannon tackle) 7/02mm (seven individual strands of 0.2mm tinned copper wire inside a plastic insulation sleeve). Together with this wire you will need the following: A pair of wire strippers to remove the insulation, (my automatic type is shown in Photo 5), a mini bench top vice, a standard pin vice (my Victory’s bestist friend!), a pair of fine wire snips, a soldering iron and solder and finally a piece of scrap wood and a dowel to make a jig, (don’t look too closely but Victory just lost one of her less than straight spars!). In actual fact, I’ve used two mini vices, one clamped to the work top and one screwed to the jig but you can use just the one, my set up is just a little easier to use. The first task is to remove the plastic insulation from the wire strands. I’ve found it easiest to remove the sleeve in small steps of about 2” at a time, (this is about the maximum length that the auto strippers can do by coincidence) any longer and there is the risk of either breaking the individual strands or else producing a ‘kink’ in the wire which can break during the later procedures. It’s also handy to remove the sleeving from one end first until the last few inches and then remove from the other end leaving a small ‘collar’ of insulation. This collar will keep the strands together and they can be pulled out one by one when required. The length of the wire will depend on how long you have made the jig for the following sections. After the insulation has been stripped, first take two strands from the group and lightly twist the ends together (only a ½” or so), then carefully insert this end into the jaws of a pin vice as shown in Photo 6. With this done and keeping the two strands as straight as possible, lightly twist the other end together and then clamp that end in the mini vice as seen in Photo 7. This can either be the mini vice on the jig or, as in this case, another one on the bench top. With both ends of the wire now clamped, simply spin the pin vice (I tend to do it clockwise but either direction is fine). Keep spinning the pin vice gradually twisting the double strands until they look similar to the effect in Photo 8. There is no set rule for this, too loose (not enough turns) and the effect will look wrong, too tight (too many turns) and the wire can snap of its own accord! It’s just a matter of trying it a few times and eventually you can ‘feel’ when it’s just right. This ‘twisted pair’ will become the core of the wire onto which the barbs are fastened. The next stage is to fit the twisted wire onto the simple barbed wire jig, which is shown in Photo 9. This is composed of just three components: a base of wood (this one is about 20 x 40mm), the mini vice screwed down at one end and a simple wooden dowel fixed at the other end. The dowel has a groove set into it at the same height as the vice jaws and the distance between the vice and the dowel is approximately 7”. This is about the maximum length that can be made in one go, any longer and the wire begins to stretch too much during the next part of the procedure. (With a slightly more complicated jig it may be possible to have a moveable clamp which slides along the length of the twisted core which would make longer lengths possible). Photo 10 illustrates the technique of constructing the actual barbs into the length of wire. The first step is to wrap the coil around the groove in the dowel and fix it either by twisting in place or by a quick twist and a drop of solder. Once secured to the dowel, pull the wire taut between the vice jaws and tighten the vice. Next, using a single strand, grip the strand at one end with flat pliers and loop the wire around the core, do this at the dowel end for reasons which will be clear below. Pull the loop tight and repeat with a second loop as shown in the first two yellow diagrams. At this point you can give the tightened loops a little solder just to ’fix’ it on the wire. Some of the website’s instructions have the loops simply tightened and left ’as is’, but I’ve found that they do sometimes come loose later so I’ve got into the habit of soldering each one after every ½” of wire is completed. (A drop of super glue might be a useable alternative if you don't want to solder). Next job is to bring the wire strand back to the core and repeat the double loop from the opposite side of the wire as in the third diagram. Tighten the loops up and repeat again as shown in the fourth. You might well find (as I do) that the act of tightening the loops will, after an inch or so, cause some stretching of the twisted core. The best way to tighten up the twisted strand is to loosen off the jaws of the vice, pull the core tight and then close up the vice again. That’s why we start the looping at the dowel end. I mistakenly started a couple of lengths at the vice end (see Photo 9!) and the only way to take up the sag in that case is to loosen off the wrap of wire around the dowel and re-tie it or to pull the completed barbed section back through the vice, neither is very easy or convenient! The result of all this looping, tugging and soldering is shown in Photo 11, a whole line of half loops along alternating sides of the coiled core. The last part of the physical process is shown in Photo 12 and consists of simply snipping off the loops close in to the core strand. The best looking wire turned out to have approximately fourteen barbs to the inch which means with two barbs to each loop, you need to aim for about seven loops to the inch (on each side of the core). There are sixteen barbs visible in Photo 12, so this picture is just over an inch across. This concludes the actual construction of the barbed wire and results in a ‘brand new, straight off the roll’ appearance. Using this method, you will end up with individual lengths of barbed wire, each about 7” long which is easy to shape into the various shapes required for the different defensive formations either straight or coiled. This is a very time consuming task (or to put it more accurately, flaming boring!) After my first half dozen lengths, I’ve managed to complete one length in just under one hour although most of them were done in stages over two or three evenings with other, more interesting jobs in between! All that remains now is to turn the ‘factory fresh’ wire into the battlefield, weathered variety and that, fortunately, is the easy part! As mentioned, the finished barbed wire is very shiny and looks just like it’s come straight from the factory. There’s no doubt that some dioramas would picture a scene where that’s just what happened! New defensive positions being fitted out with brand new wire. In the case of Messines however, the German positions, as indeed the British ones facing them, had been there for months and had been subjected to many bombardments and gas attacks as well as the previous winter’s weather (does poison gas affect barbed wire?), anyway, some deterioration was required! Photo 13 shows the conversion process from shiny new to rusty old barbed wire. The top strand is one of the brand new lengths, nice and shiny all over. The first step is to reduce or dull down the overly shiny appearance and this was achieved with a wash of Citadel’s Bolt Gun Metal acrylic paint (basically a form of gun metal). This was diluted down into a wash of about one part paint to two, possibly three, parts water and literally ‘dribbled’ along the length of the wire, first one side of the barbs and then the other. The second strand down shows this although I took the photo right after I applied the wash so it’s still wet and will dull down even more as it dries. The reason for the thin wash is to not swamp the tiny coil details in the barbs which a straight application of Citadel would do! Once dry, the final step was to apply an uneven rusty look and for this I used the new Humbrol Rust Wash Enamel. Although its already a wash, I thinned it down a little more, probably 50/50, eg, one brush of wash into the mixing tray with the brush then dipped in white spirit and a quick mix together before again ‘dribbling’ it along the wire. The final result is a quite pleasing ‘ old rusty wire’ effect, not too shiny and not too overdone. Like I said, easy to do which, with yards of it to go is just as well! In Part Eight I hope to return to the main base work and the shaping of the slope leading up to the trenches. I’m in the process of experimenting/building/designing my own larger scale hot wire foam cutter, if successful, this will be the next session along with how it was used to shape the base. Ahem! IF successful! Bye till then and watch out for those damned winter bugs! Robin Plymouth57 attached the following image(s): First wooden ship: The Grimsby 12 Gun 'Frigate' by Constructo Second: Bounty DelPrado Part Works Third: HMS Victory DelPrado Part Works 1/100 scale Diorama of the Battle of the Brandywine from the American Revolutionary War Diorama of the Battle of New Falkland (unfinished sci-fi), Great War Centenary Diorama of the Messines Ridge Assault Index for the Victory diary is on page 1
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Rank: Super-Elite Groups: Registered
Joined: 30/01/2013 Posts: 4,604 Points: 13,607 Location: Monmouthshire UK
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Absolutely brill razor wire Robin, so well explained - I model in 1/35 and can buy this easily for my models but 1/72 is a world of difference, the barbs would be microscopic, well about 0.2mm I guess. I truly admire anyone producing dioramas to this scale, it's going to be fantastic if you continue to stick to this attention to detail. Steve
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Fantastic work Robin, some of your micro modelling skills are simply fantastic... inspirational to say the least.....  .. Consider my skills as amateurish in comparison..... .. Keep up the great work and I have no doubt this will finish up being something memorable...... .. So looking forward to the next instalment.... Regards Alan
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Nice walk through making scale barbed wire, and the end result is great.
Jase“Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.”
-Mark Twain
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Many thanks to Stevie, Alan and Jase! I had a go at trying to measure those barbs with the digital micrometer, not very easy but I think the barbs are about .3 to .4mm! (They can still give a nasty cut though!) Part Eight (a bit more of Part Six!)Two good reasons for the change of plan! Firstly, I still need to get a couple of small springs to use on my hot wire cutter so more on that in a later section, and secondly, I just realised that there are a further three photos languishing on my desktop screen which were supposed to finish off the last base work episode! So this week’s posting will be the finalisation of Part Six with Part Nine next week. (This is all getting very confusing!!)I forgot to number the photos this time around but it’s fairly self-explanatory . The Top Left Photo shows the base board up at the German trench end before the actual trenches seen earlier went into place. The big white dollop is a splodge of standard PVA glue which is about to be brushed over part of the green sub-board. This is the section where I had my brain wave a few weeks ago and if you look closely at the photo you should be able to just make out a line scribed into the green foam base. I’m still not telling you what the great idea was yet, but you might be able to guess from this. That line represents the centre of the drainage ditch that runs beneath the German trenches and was formed very easily by simply pressing a cocktail stick into and through the ditch at the two far ends and at each turn of the trench. It was then just a game of ‘join the dots’ with a six inch steel ruler and an old blunt knife blade to scribe the line as shown. The next stage was to use a cheapie flat paint brush from a ‘The Works’ paintbrush set (ones I bought to try out dry brushing techniques on the Victory with) to brush out the PVA glue across the green foam base. But! And this is the big but! It was only applied to the green foam on the left side of that line, (where the dollop of glue is sat), none was applied to the right hand side for the reasons that will become clear in a week or two. Once the glue was down, the trench system was stuck down with a few cocktail sticks pushed into the glued half to prevent any sliding about. In the Bottom Left Photo, you can see this accomplished as the next step follows on. The trenches are now stuck in place (partially), the final strip of white foam has already been glued down on the left hand side (which becomes the bottom of the diorama eventually) and the main middle section of white foam is about to be stuck down. There is no need for any careful application of PVA on this bit, as you can see, just ‘whop it in’ like fixing tiles on a wall! Since the thin strip is already glued down there was no need for any cocktail stick re-enforcements which was just as well as the hot wire cutter will later be carving its way diagonally through these layers, foam and very thin layers of PVA is fine but you’d need a white hot cutter to get through a cocktail stick! In the final main Right Hand Photo, the three layers of foam board are all in position with the glue setting under a heavy weight composed of both the eventual bottom solid pine board with the weightiest thing I could find in the vicinity! In all the other shots, Victory is just out of camera shot usually sulking on the computer chair off to the left where my computer station is set up snuggled around the chimney breast. At least in this photo she can be of some help!  So that’s it for this week, hopefully by next week I’ll have got the last bits for my DIY foam cutter and that will be the next section. (If not I’ll do a bit more to my first tank and stick that up instead!) See you soon! Robin Plymouth57 attached the following image(s): First wooden ship: The Grimsby 12 Gun 'Frigate' by Constructo Second: Bounty DelPrado Part Works Third: HMS Victory DelPrado Part Works 1/100 scale Diorama of the Battle of the Brandywine from the American Revolutionary War Diorama of the Battle of New Falkland (unfinished sci-fi), Great War Centenary Diorama of the Messines Ridge Assault Index for the Victory diary is on page 1
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Lovely work Robin, looking forward to seeing more...
Regards
Alan
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Rank: Super-Elite Groups: Registered
Joined: 30/01/2013 Posts: 4,604 Points: 13,607 Location: Monmouthshire UK
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I cant wait to see you begin the tanks Robin, a great to this dio though and look forward to seeing this come together. Steve
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Many thanks to Alan and Stevie, first appearance of the tank next week! Part Nine: Shaping the Slope.If you get stuck on the wire, never mind
And your face may lose its smile, never mind
Though you're stuck there all the day, they count you dead and stop your pay
If you get stuck on the wire, never mind!From the Tommies Trench Song “Never Mind” This installment includes some electrical work. It’s only 12v and low wattage, but if you are not completely sure of working with electricity outside of basic commercial tools (Dremels, Drills etc – Please consult with a competant professional before trying this for yourself! After much experimenting my Hot Wire Foam Cutter finally worked! This is the story of how I built this very useful tool to shape the upward (or downward if you’re a German) slope into the flat sheets of foam. This operation could probably have been performed with a large serrated bread knife but having used the smaller commercial hot wire ‘knife’ on Brandywine, I wanted to see if it was possible to make up a larger version for this project. As it turned out, it was indeed possible, but not necessarily as easy as it first looked! The inspiration for this tool came from searching for “Hot Wire Cutters” on Youtube. A quick search will reveal lots of ‘how to’ videos and this instalment is a combination of several of them. Many were how to build a static cutting table where the foam is moved onto the wire but this version is the other way around, a mobile tool which is moved into the static foam block. The first thing which became apparent was that the ideal type of wire to use in this cutter is actually a guitar string! A High ‘E’ string to be exact. Plymouth used to have quite a few music shops around the city centre but I’m not sure if any of them are still around today so a check on Ebay (as usual) found a company called Rotosound who sell the strings for about 98p (plus £1 p&p) so within a few days I had a suitable wire to begin the project. (One word of advice, based on my experience, at that price, if you want to try this for yourself get three or four strings at a time, just in case!) Photo 1 shows most of the components for this tool laid out before construction. At the top is a simple piece of wooden strip 40x20mm and about 2” longer than the diorama is wide. Below that is the square envelope containing the guitar string with a packet of ‘L’ brackets beside it (about £1.50). They are both resting on a box of nuts and bolts (From the £1 section in my local tool shop or a Pound shop if possible). To the right is the other Ebay purchase, a 12v 2A power supply. This was actually designed for powering LED strips for commercial lighting applications and was £4.99, not too expensive fortunately, (just as well as it turned out!) Photos 2 and 3 illustrates just how simple the basic construction is. The two ‘L’ brackets are screwed to the ends of the wooden ‘bar’ to become the attachment points for both the guitar string cutting wire and also the electrical supply wires. Photo 3 shows the two bolts secured onto the bracket with the relevant nuts. The electrical supply bolt only needs a single nut to tighten up the wire with, the cutter bolt as you can see has two nuts, one to secure the bolt to the bracket and a second to secure the guitar string. (This arrangement will be slightly altered later). Photo 4 shows the MkI version of the completed tool. At this stage the electrical supply wires are terminated in the screw adapter which came with the power supply. The operation of this cutter is very simple, it’s basically an electrical circuit about to blow it’s fuse! When a circuit blows a fuse it’s because of an overload of current which the components are not designed to carry for any length of time. The fuse is a self contained section of wire (usually a single strand) which is designed to melt and create an open circuit cutting off the supply. Now before it melts, the fuse wire first gets hot, then it gets red hot and finally it gets so hot it melts and performs its sacrificial duty (protecting the rest of the equipment and us from worse damage or injury). A hot wire cutter is therefore a simple circuit in which the cutting wire is the fuse which gets hot enough to melt the foam but not so hot that it suffers the fate of a ‘proper’ fuse. That’s the theory anyway! Now the Youtube DIY’s had all specified a power supply in the region 12v 2A which is exactly what I bought, so, with all the construction complete, I plugged in the 12v power lead into the adapter and plugged the black box into the mains and…absolutely nothing! The cutter didn’t even get warm! I’m not exactly sure why it didn’t work but I have a theory. As mentioned above, this is basically a circuit operating on the threshold of an overload, that’s why the cutter gets hot. Now if you remember the old style power supplies or transformers as they used to be called, they had a solid, heavy wire wound transformer which could chuck out quite a bit of power (and get quite warm themselves) anybody remember the old Amiga computer power supplies? About the size and weight of a good house brick! These days, similar rated power supplies are a light as a feather in comparison and I think they have their own solid state overload protection built in which simply prevents them from getting anywhere near an overload situation. Brilliant for health and safety, but awkward if you’re trying to heat up a guitar string! Time for phase two. Phase two involved linking a couple of the heavy duty 6v batteries from my old electric bike but the result was the same (it might simply be the old batteries were defunct of course, I tried re-charging them but there was still no output. Onto Phase three! In the last photo of the last instalment, the one where the Victory is weighing down the glued foam boards, you can just make out a black box-shaped thing behind her stern. The top of this shape is my Mantua multi voltage power supply which powers the mini lathe (and I certainly wasn’t going to risk that!) but below it is an old power supply from a CB radio base set. When my place of work was sold to new owners they had a crazy need to simply junk everything that was there before them and waste good money buying in new replacements. This power supply went straight into a skip destined for landfill, I, on the other hand have always been a firm believer in re-cycling (wait till you see what gets re-cycled in this diorama!) so back out of the skip she came. I’ve since used this supply to power most of my dremel-type tools and had hoped to power the lathe as well. For some reason it wouldn’t work with the lathe at all, hence the ‘proper’ Mantua power supply (flaming expensive too!) Anyway, the Base set supply goes from 0 – 20v and has two sets of outputs, 5A and 12A. Forget the 12A! but I thought I’d give the 5A a go. I connected the cable into the output, set the voltage to 12v and switched on. It worked! The cutting wire did get hot, in fact it got so hot it turned a pretty cherry red and sagged about two inches! As soon as I turned off, the wire stopped glowing and shrank back to its original tension. With some trial and error I eventually found the correct voltage, which was about 9v. The wire would now cut the foam but I still had a problem with the guitar string expanding with the heat and losing its tension. On some of the Youtube videos, the static cutting tables were fitted with an expansion spring designed to take up the slack as the wire stretched so I needed something similar here. I spent two weeks searching for a little box of springs in the tool and Pound shops; it comes in the same sort of box as the nut and bolt set but no luck whatsoever. I did find an old box of springs but they were all simple springs and what I needed was the sort with a hook at each end. What I did have though, still languishing after many years in the old workroom were some broken old tape cassette recorders which I had been stripping down for parts back in my youth and I managed to get some springs out of the ejection mechanisms. These can be seen in Photo 5. Only the small spring connected to the steel bracket was used in the main cutting action, the longer one was used to cut the last inch of the foam as you will see below. With the tool now functioning, it was time to cut away the excess sheet to form the slope. To paraphrase General Plumer himself, this tool might not make history, but it will certainly alter the geography! Adjusting the voltage to just below the red glow I positioned the cutter over the edge of the trench system and began to lower it into the foam board. The first thing I noted was that as soon as the wire touches the foam it wants to dive straight down into the board. If I had wanted a completely regular cut I could have cut out two pieces of wood or even thick cardboard, shaped to the slope profile and allowed the wire to follow the shape from top to bottom. This is a natural slope in the landscape however so no need to follow any shape slavishly, a hand held even wobbly cut would be fine and the slight ‘step’ caused by the initial cut would be removed later anyway. The wire cut through the foam nicely, not exactly like a ‘knife through butter’ but without too much resistance right up until I got to the last inch. It wasn’t the wire’s fault, I think I got a little over-enthusiastic and pulled the cutter too fast on that last bit. The result was the guitar string snapped, about an inch in from the right hand bracket, still embedded in the foam. I gingerly tried pulling it out but it was virtually ‘fused’ into the board and wouldn’t budge. There was only one way out of it, a quick crocodile jump lead to join the broken wire and I was able to pull the hot wire straight up out of the foam. Then the broken end was secured back on the steel bracket and the second, longer tape recorder spring took up the slack and maintained the tension on the cutter. A few more seconds and the slope was completed! Phew! The end result of this trial and experimentation can be seen in the last two Photos, 6 and 7. This is only the basic wedge shape of course. The next step will be some vigorous rubbing with coarse grade sandpaper to add some more natural variations into the ground before the final step before the terrain putty goes on – adding a lot of shell holes! To sum up, it is possible to build yourself one of these very useful tools. The components are readily available and not expensive at all. The only problem was getting a sufficiently powerful power supply despite the seemingly easy options as seen on the Youtube videos. The only thing I would advise is not to try a 12v car battery jump starter!! I did, for about half a second!! Just for Stevie though, in Part Ten I’ll be starting the first stage of putting the metal monsters together with the first of the three MkIV tanks. Bye till then! Robin Plymouth57 attached the following image(s): First wooden ship: The Grimsby 12 Gun 'Frigate' by Constructo Second: Bounty DelPrado Part Works Third: HMS Victory DelPrado Part Works 1/100 scale Diorama of the Battle of the Brandywine from the American Revolutionary War Diorama of the Battle of New Falkland (unfinished sci-fi), Great War Centenary Diorama of the Messines Ridge Assault Index for the Victory diary is on page 1
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Fab work Robin, think I'll start nick naming you 'Robin the Mini Inventor'...  .. Diorama is really taking shape now (excuse the pun), looking forward to seeing the detail being applied...... Regards Alan
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Many thanks again Alan and at least that's better than some names I've had! At long last - Tanks! (Or at least, one of them!) Part Ten: The Beast of War!I’ll take the tripod
And you take the gun
And you’ll be in action before me
And if you get shot
I’ll take the bleedin' lot
And I’ll eat your rations
In the morning.Tommy humour to the tune of Loch Lomond.In this instalment I begin the construction of the first of the three MkIV Heavy Tanks. Although this will be the most basic of the three, built ‘out of the box’ apart from some extra detailing, I’m using this one as a guide to what will need to be changed or upgraded on the other two which, you may remember are going to be two opposite half tanks with as full a detailed interior as I can manage. This section will just be the construction of the basic hull for now, but I thought it would be a nice comparison with Stevies bigger brother 1/35 scale version! Firstly though, a little bit more of the history lesson – I finally managed to research the three tanks which will be featured in the diorama. The first one came as a surprise on my third viewing of the archaeological program when the tank was not only named but its actions were described as well. Tank number one is “Rumblebelly” Serial No. 2019, Tank No. B24, commanded by 2nd Lt. Vans-Agnew of B Bttn, 5th Company RTC. This tank passed right through the area of this diorama and made the furthest inroad into the German rear, killing many of the enemy, destroying artillery positions and generally making a real nuisance of itself before turning back low on fuel and finally stalling whilst trying to crawl out of a large crater. By now every surviving German gun had taken a strong dislike to Rumblebelly and shells were raining down like hail. Giving up on trying to restart his engine, the driver put her in reverse and the tank slid backwards into a hull down position where she remained, driving off repeated infantry attacks with her Lewis guns until nightfall when Vans-Agnew led his crew, some badly injured back to the new British lines, earning himself a Military Cross in the process. Tanks two and three took part in the assault but I have no info that they were in this particular area, I have included them though as representative of the courage of the RTC during the battle. Both these tanks were from A Bttn, 3rd Company, 11 Section RTC, Serial No. 2003, Tank No. A54 “Iron Rations” commanded by 2nd Lt. S.F. Young and Serial No. 2666, Tank No. A55 “Revenge” commanded by 2nd Lt. J.L. Loveridge. These two operated as a pair during the battle, supporting the infantry when the foot sloggers were held up by heavy machine gun fire from a series of farmhouses. A few 6pdrs through the windows forced some of them to surrender and the final strongpoint, refusing to follow suit was silenced by both tanks driving through the walls from opposite directions! Iron Rations and Revenge will be the two half tanks on either side of the diorama. In all the photos, the numbers inside of the black circles represents the part number in the kit instructions. In Photo 1, we have the four component parts of the driver and commander’s ‘cockpit’. In the kit instructions, this is actually the third section after the 6pdr and sponsons but for my construction they will be one of the last parts to go on. As with Stevies’ version, unlike the good old Airfix (and most other companies) there are no locating pips and holes on this kit (other than a pair each end of the hull ‘horns’), all the joints are butted together. In the case of the internal detail versions later, this is actually quite helpful as I won’t have to file off any ‘bumps’ that shouldn’t be there, but it is quite fiddly to put the thing together and I wouldn’t recommend this kit for a complete novice. Photo 2 shows the completed box shape, in the second version I will have to sand away the part numbers before gluing the pieces together. The next Photo, number 3 is a line up of the main parts of the big boxy looking hull. Again, the part numbers will have to come off as will the Emhar wording on the floor of the hull. To be honest, once the internals are in, you probably wouldn’t see that there anyway, but it’s always better to have a flat base to work up from and those raised letters might put something off the level. I find the easiest method for me in gluing these panels together is to almost ‘spot weld’ them in position with the great little Revell ‘Contacta Professional’ glue bottle. I got this one when my brother gave me a partly started 1/72 Flower Class Corvette kit (Matchbox, or was it Airfix?) It’s the original version before Revell bought it up and included wood veneer and photo etch (Damn their eyes!). The little glue bottle with it’s ultra thin applicator tube had remained in the box along with umpteen tins of Humbrol enamel until I remembered it might come in useful for this build. And I love it! No more trying to apply rapidly stringing poly tube glue with a cocktail stick! Just the right amount, just where you want it – highly recommended! The beauty with the thin nozzle is that once the parts are held in the right position I could then apply a very thin weld line along the inside of the join, like silicone sealing in micro! This allowed the panels to be securely glued with no dribbles to mar the outside, and believe me, with the microscopic rivet detail all over this thing, getting any kind of ‘welding’ glue in the wrong place will show up like a sore thumb! Photo 4 shows the main hull components safely fixed together along with Part No.2, the right hand inner hull section. This is also shown in Photo 5 from a different angle. Note the two superimposed grey areas in both these pics. Panel ‘A’ is the area which will have to be cut away on the second versions as it sits underneath the driver’s cabin and isn’t there in the real vehicle. (If it were, the drivers would either be blind or have a very stiff neck and head!). So whereas A is a removal job, ‘B’ in Photo 5 is an add on job. This is the line of the inner hull wall which is completely missing from the kit (unfortunately). These will have to be cut from sheet plasticard and then liberally covered in holes both large and small and all different shapes. I used the hull of this tank in order to mark out the shape of those walls on white card, even then, it took four goes, each slightly altered from the last until I got them to fit well enough. Strangely, even though both the resulting plasticard walls are exactly the same size and shape, one fits the left side better and the other fits better on the right – hence the LHS in Photo 7! Before that however, in Photo 6 we have a close up of the lower hull plate Part No. 8 which shows the moulded tow hitch bracket with a hole drilled through. Unlike Stevie who replaced his version completely, I’ve left the moulding in place and will be adding a tiny plastic upper piece later, with a cut down brass pin from Victory for the joining bolt or pin, whatever the proper term is? As already mentioned, Photo 7 shows the hull so far posed on the foam base (roughly where she’ll be at the end), with the plasticard inner wall just popped in place, thankfully a tight enough fit to keep it there! You can just make out the shapes of the cut outs which will have to be taken out, the largest rectangular one in the centre is for the 6pdr, the others are axle holes and access panels for the drive gears. You might also just make out a couple of fainter lines on the inside of the big rectangle. This marks the size of the outer hull main rectangular hole into which the sponson fits. As can be seen, the outer hull hole is smaller than the inner hull hole (try saying that quick!) and there will be slanted joining strips between the inner and outer which themselves are pierced with holes; ammunition stowage in the forward panels and track speed gear levers in the rear ones. There’ll be a hell of a lot to squeeze into these things! Photo 8 shows the left hand outer hull plate in the process of drying off. With all these butt joints, the one thing that all Emhar kits will need is a copious supply of clamps! To be honest, so far I’ve been pleasantly surprised with the actual fit of the component parts, they go together without any noticeable gaps (so far anyway!) the biggest problem is actually getting them into position and gluing them without any marring of the surrounding plastic. These outer hull plates, as mentioned earlier are the only parts with a locating lug, one at each end. A drop of glue on them, clamp them together and I was able to use the long nozzle to apply a weld seam along the inside edges of the main hull and along the inside of the ‘trough’ along the top and bottom where the tracks will eventually cover everything up. I unfortunately neglected to mention gluing on the opposite inner hull plate, Part No. 1, (but I did, promise!). Once the left outer hull was dry I repeated the procedure with the right hand one, the only difference being I also ran a bead of glue around the projecting ‘box’ of the hull compartment before fixing in place with clamps and ‘welding’ the top and bottom troughs as before. The final Photo 9 shows the main hull completed although in all the pics, the driver’s cabin is just clipped in place as I’ll need to drill out the position for the Lewis gun mount before finally fixing it down. So that’s it for the tank for a short while, it’s been really good to go back to plastic again even if I am re-learning all the old skills (I’d forgotten what poly glued finger tips felt like!) the next step is to convert the wrong-angled petrol tank, get the exhaust ready for painting (won’t be fixed until everything else is done though) and sort out all the little extra details, brackets etc to be added on. (Having seen Stevies exhaust, maybe a new one of those too now!) In Part Eleven, back to the base work with the final additions before the terrain putty stage and the answer to the brainwave I had right back at the beginning! I need to make a correction! In Part Nine, “Shaping the slope”, I said the Rotosound Guitar String p&p was £1, it wasn’t! I just found the delivery note and the postage was a mere 33p. (Even better!) See you all soon. Robin Plymouth57 attached the following image(s): First wooden ship: The Grimsby 12 Gun 'Frigate' by Constructo Second: Bounty DelPrado Part Works Third: HMS Victory DelPrado Part Works 1/100 scale Diorama of the Battle of the Brandywine from the American Revolutionary War Diorama of the Battle of New Falkland (unfinished sci-fi), Great War Centenary Diorama of the Messines Ridge Assault Index for the Victory diary is on page 1
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Rank: Super-Elite Groups: Registered
Joined: 30/01/2013 Posts: 4,604 Points: 13,607 Location: Monmouthshire UK
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Love it Robin, such a detailed description. The "little" tanks are very well detailed and if it wernt for the clamps giving away the scale Id think it was the same as mine. Like I said in one of my posts - the fit on these kits is very good, but fitting it together is not! The only clue on mine, and a good starting point was that the hull bottom and rear panel join as a 90 degree, with the rear panel sitting on top of the bottom - everything else is based on this being done right. Looking fab though and looking forward to more Steve
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Nice progress, following with interest.
Jase“Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.”
-Mark Twain
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I know what you mean Stevie! That 90 degree joint was where I started too (it's about the only right angle on the thing!) As long as that was ok and the front 'angled' joint was straight, the rest (should) hopefully follow suit! It's good fun going plastic again though! Robin First wooden ship: The Grimsby 12 Gun 'Frigate' by Constructo Second: Bounty DelPrado Part Works Third: HMS Victory DelPrado Part Works 1/100 scale Diorama of the Battle of the Brandywine from the American Revolutionary War Diorama of the Battle of New Falkland (unfinished sci-fi), Great War Centenary Diorama of the Messines Ridge Assault Index for the Victory diary is on page 1
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Lovely work once again Robin and very well described.... am also loving the history lessons leading to the construction of all this...... keep up the great work, I'll be following intently.... Regards Alan
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Many thanks to Alan, Jase and Stevie! The MkIV is progressing slowly with some extra bits of detail sprouting out. I'm considering trying to get some suitable brass angle and completely replace those unditching rails with a better version, time will tell! Right then, back to the ground work again... Part Eleven: Shelling the Slopes.They’re warning us, they’re warning us,
One Shell hole shared between the four of us,
So thank your lucky stars there are no more of us,
‘Cos one of us could fill it all alone!Another verse from “Bombed last night!” (It seemed appropriate!)In part nine, the main slope of the landscape running up to the German trenches was shaped with my DIY electric foam cutter. This resulted in a good overall shape to the slope but with a series of small ridges caused, mainly, by hesitation and movement in my hands as the hot wire sliced through the thick foam boards. The first act therefore was to smooth out those little ridges by a vigorous sanding down by hand. The sander I used was a cut off section of belt sander paper roll, Grade P180, (I’m not really up on what grade is what, but I would think it’s a fairly medium one by the feel of it.) This was another good value buy from the local “Tool Shed” shop in its £1 section. I did this outdoors on a day without gales and rain (which is why I had to wait a while!) as I’m not sure what the dust from the foam is like health-wise. Further small scale sanding was later carried out in the workroom with a vacuum nozzle close by. The initial results of this work can be seen in Photo 1. Photo 2 beside it is a closer view of the same with the first MkIV tank body placed in there just to illustrate the scale of the terrain. With the ground surface smoothed off sufficiently (it didn’t need to be perfect as the terrain foam will cover over most of it later) the next job was to decide where to place the myriad shell holes, which will be dotted around the scene. The best way to place these is to try and randomise the procedure as much as possible. Placing them manually always results in a far too contrived or unnatural looking effect, either too regular or too bunched up (or both). To get them to look natural I went back to my store of Woodland Scenics ground work material which I originally bought for the Brandywine diorama and simply took half a handful of their “Talus” (medium sized rocks in English!) and just dumped them on the base from a foot or so above. The eventual placing seen in Photo 3 was the third attempt. The first one resulted in most of the rocks ending up in the trenches. Pretty good for the British gunners if they had been shells, but a little ‘over the top’ if I wanted to actually model the German trenches, not just some big holes where they used to be! On the second try I dropped the stones a little too high up, after a couple of bounces they all rolled back down the slope to the bottom. Again, perfectly possible, but not that pleasing to the eye! Attempt number three was just about right. I did jiggle a few of them around a little, if three or four were too close together it would prove difficult to cut the individual craters out and still retain their own identities. I also placed a couple of extras on the separate ‘banks’ on the opposite side of the trenches where no actual rocks fell just to spread it out a little more as well. Once the overall effect looked good I then carefully removed each rock in turn, marking its location by sticking a sharp pencil point into the ground under it. This is the state as seen in Photo 4. Photo 5 is a diagram outlining the actual procedure of creating the craters. I had thought long and hard about how to go about this. Years ago during my wargaming era, I had created shell craters into old style polystyrene tiles by simply squirting a little Airfix Polystyrene Model glue onto the surface where it ate down into the tile, (a bit like the scene from Alien!) I did actually try this on the green foam but this stuff is a little tougher than a ceiling tile, it marked it certainly, but it didn’t go down very deep. Method number two produced a beautiful crater complete with a ‘terraced’ effect inside the crater walls. I gave a scrap piece of green foam a hefty whack with a ball pein hammer! Like I said, a lovely looking crater but one with a possible defective future. I had visions of the finished diorama sitting in a sunny window somewhere commemorating the Great War and as the model warmed up, of its coming back to its original flat shape like some demented type of memory foam! So for the last two weeks, that trial piece has been sat on top of the hottest radiator in the house. I can now happily report that heat has no effect of the foam at all, so if anyone else wants to create special effects in this material by hammering the hell out of it, go right ahead! Unfortunately, in my case I hit another snag with this method. Producing a crater into a 1” thick piece of foam is easy, reproducing the effect into a multi layered foam hill side is another matter. When the material gets over a certain thickness the hammer head just bounces back off it without ‘denting’ it in the process, at least, not denting it in a controllable way! Back to the drawing board and the good old Hot Wire Knife. As you can see in Photos 3 and 4 (and which I forgot to mention), the slope has also acquired a couple of gullies just to add a little more visual interest to the scene. Although these are quite deep and steep sided at the moment, they will be much shallower and ‘softer’ after the Terrain putty has been smoothed over them. The gullies were carved out with the electric Hot Knife just as the big one in Brandywine was and I eventually decided on using this tool to make the craters too. In this I was aided greatly by a tool which I have had for donkey’s years – a rotating cake stand. This is a plastic turntable about ten inches across which has proved invaluable for working on various models, especially rigging ships when you need to get at both sides of the model easily. Instead of having to move the hot knife around to cut out the crater, I was able to keep the knife relatively still at a suitable shallow angle and rotate the entire base around instead. Some of the craters towards the sides of the base couldn’t be done this way as the centre of rotation was too close to the edge but it did well for the majority. So looking at Diagram 5, ‘A’ shows the hot knife being pushed into the foam at a shallow angle to one side of the pencil marked crater centre, ‘B’ shows the base being rotated around on the turntable as the knife cuts out a shallow cone of foam and lastly, ‘C’ illustrates a craft knife (or Pound Shop special in this case) cutting the inner core of the cone if required and levering the centre out and away to leave the depression of the crater. Photos 6 and 7 show the finished cratering from above and lower down. Just like the gullies, they will be considerably shallower after the Terrain Putty is smoothed into them but overall the effect does look quite random and not too artificial. Photo 8 illustrates the three stages of how the craters will be finished off at a later stage. On the left is the raw foam cut out with the hot knife. The centre example has been smoothed over with the Terrain Putty to reduce its depth and then left to dry overnight. The right hand one has had a second application of the putty which has been slightly moistened to allow it to be better moulded and used to build up a slight rim and a rougher interior. Bear in mind that this was just a ‘quickie’ example with fingertip modelling only, the real ones will be further improved with various moulding techniques and tools (like old toothbrushes for example!) And so finally to that great idea that I had back at the beginning of this project! As I have said, it was a really simple and basic idea but one which would be of great help during the construction. The normal method of creating a diorama base incorporating various ground works is to work from the lowest portion upwards and this was just what I intended to do at the start. The drainage ditch, being the lowest part would be modelled first, water effects added and then the duckboards fitted over the top before working back up the trench sides and down the slope. After some deliberation however, a simple fact occurred to me – the ditch was going to be covered over with the wooden duckboards anyway so it didn’t really matter when that was built. That being the case, instead of having to build in all the construction detail of the trenches from ‘outside’ and above, why not leave the very back of the trench system unglued when I stuck down all the various layers of foam board, (see the description back in Part Eight) and then later, (ie now!) carefully slice along the middle of the ditch and slide out the rear section of the trench from the unglued base board below. This is what you can see in Photo 9, this is the main part of the base looking towards the British assault with the rear section, now separated, in the little Insert 10. I will now be able to work on both sides of the trench system from literally ‘inside’ the trench itself which will be so much easier, and when the two sections are completed, they will be joined back together and the joint (which is of course the ditch) worked in with putty, painted and ‘watered’ and the wooden duckboards built up to cover the join! It’s always worth spending long hours just thinking about how you’re going to do things in a diorama, sometimes a flash of inspiration works wonders and saves a lot of work! In Part Twelve, it’s back to the barbed wire again and the construction of the first bit of ‘battlefield debris’.  Bye ‘till then. Robin Plymouth57 attached the following image(s): First wooden ship: The Grimsby 12 Gun 'Frigate' by Constructo Second: Bounty DelPrado Part Works Third: HMS Victory DelPrado Part Works 1/100 scale Diorama of the Battle of the Brandywine from the American Revolutionary War Diorama of the Battle of New Falkland (unfinished sci-fi), Great War Centenary Diorama of the Messines Ridge Assault Index for the Victory diary is on page 1
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Stunning work Robin and once again superbly described.... The way you set about your tutorials is something I admire about your diaries.. Maybe you should consider gathering all of these and putting together a book on modelling tips and techniques.. you make it appear so easy to follow.... .. Eagerly waiting for your next instalment.... Best regards Alan
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Rank: Super-Elite Groups: Registered
Joined: 30/01/2013 Posts: 4,604 Points: 13,607 Location: Monmouthshire UK
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Absolutely brilliant Robin, really enjoying this diary. Like Alan has mentioned you could publish a book on the info you provide in your builds. Out of interest, as I also am planning a dio for my tank, what size in diameter would the average crater have been? Obviously depends on the shell size but I have a plan for just one or two shell holes in my dio and was just wondering on what size they would be in relation to my tank. Steve
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Hi to All and especially to Alan and Stevie for those wonderful comments above! In a way, the method I use to compile these diaries is almost like writing a book in the first place! The first step is taking the photos usually as I'm working although occasionally its necessary to go back and take photos of a second version as they can't physically be taken the first time round! With the photos on the SD card I then transfer them to the desktop, renaming them as I go ready to construct the diary pages. The pages are then put together with a 14 year old Corel Printhouse program which also contains the associated Corel Photohouse which allows me to crop the photos to size and sometimes to alter the brightness etc if the originals aren't quite right. The various diagrams are also put together in Printhouse. The finished pages are then printed off on my cheapie Epson inkjet, normally two to a sheet, but if the post has three pages then I stick them all on a sheet using the Windows Picture and Fax Viewer. With the hard copy of the photo pages now in front of me (just like a book version) I can then compose the text which describes the whole process into the dedicated MS Word file. When everything's done I can then highlight and 'copy' the text before logging on to the diary and using the 'paste' to enter the Word text into the box. After that, it's just a case of editing the pasted text into bolds, italics and smilies where required. And with that all explained, its time to paste in the following! ‘Additions’ No.1: Shell CratersHello All! Stevie’s question about the size of shell craters in a modelling environment set me wondering myself, so in the first of what might be a series of little extras (or not as the case may be!) I did a little searching through my Messines picture collection and have come up with this, a quickie modellers guide to British artillery of the Great War and it’s effects on the battlefield. The following photos are not numbered but they all have their own indexes so they should be self explanatory. All the photos of the artillery come from a brilliant new source of Great War images I discovered quite by accident. They are all available to use for free as long as the site is mentioned as the source so here it is… Photos of the Great War, web address: www.gwpda.org/photos it really is a wonderful source of info for anyone building a WW1 model or diorama so please, have a look for yourselves! As mentioned in the historical run up to the beginning of the diorama diary, the initial bombardment of the German trenches on the Messines ridge would have been conducted by the heavier guns of the British Artillery and some of these monsters can be seen in the first two sets of photos. ‘ Long Guns’ and Howitzers are the long range ‘smashers’ of the Great war (and the most hated by the infantry of both sides), although theoretically, the Howitzer has a shorter range than a ‘normal’ gun, the sheer size of these things as seen in the woodland picture meant their ranges could be measured in tens of miles just the same. The largest ‘road worthy’ pieces required huge traction engines to haul them into action but these things were totally useless unless a good road surface was available on which to move them, that was why General Plumer had battalions of engineers ready to build and/or repair the few roads still in existence in the Messines region, just so he could move his heavy guns forward with the assaults. The largest and heaviest weapons were the Rail Guns ( it wasn’t just the Germans who thought bigger was better!). The example in the photo is actually quite a small one! The Navy provided some of the biggest with 15” and even larger calibre battleship's guns being adapted to railway carriages. The smallest calibre gun in these photos is the 18pdr QF which is shown both on land and crossing a river, something that none of the others would be capable of. The 60pdr which I think could be the one pointing off into the distance was the largest piece capable of being moved without a whole regiment of heavy machinery although it would still need a large petrol or steam tractor. This particular weapon was so useful in fact that examples were still being used by the British Army as late as 1944. Going back to the 18pdr, this was the most common piece of field artillery and the only one which could actually be ‘manhandled’ across the battlefield. It was the 18pdrs which carried out the ‘ creeping barrage’ as the infantry advanced and the 18pdrs which would be called upon to home in onto any German counter attack, consequently, any model or diorama of the Western Front would have more shell craters of this calibre than any other. As to the size of the craters. Take a look at the aerial photo of the Messines Ridge, the entire area is literally pockmarked with craters, almost all of them I would think are of the 18pdr variety. Looking at the enlarged section you can see a length of zig-zag German trench. The larger photo is itself a cropped down section of the original and in that one, way down out of sight off the bottom left corner is another section of trench but this time ‘battlement’ shaped. This makes me think that the zig-zags are in fact the smaller communications trenches which would make them about six foot wide (the larger main front line trenches are about ten feet across). That being so, the average size of the shell holes looks to be about 10 – 15 feet. There are a few larger ones of about 20 feet or so, and in this photo one massive one of about 30 –40 feet (of course, that may be caused by multiple smaller shells all in the same spot!) So anyway, as far as us modellers are concerned, the size of our base work craters would be ( roughly) as follows: 18pdr shell holes (the most common) = 10 – 15ft in actual size, (1.6 - 2.5” in 1/72 and 3.4 - 5” in 1/35) 60pdr = 15 – 25ft (2.5 – 4” in 1/72 and 5 – 8.5” in 1/35) Heavy Guns and Howitzers = 25 – 50ft? (4 – 8.3” in 1/72 and 8.5 – 17” in 1/35, (you could do a whole diorama inside one of these!!)) So there you have it. Of course, there are so many other factors which would come into play with shell holes, the type of ground, the angle at which the shell hits, even the weather conditions but I hope that this little exercise might be of some use to anybody else planning a Great War model for this year’s commemorations and best of luck to you all. Part Twelve to follow. Robin Plymouth57 attached the following image(s): First wooden ship: The Grimsby 12 Gun 'Frigate' by Constructo Second: Bounty DelPrado Part Works Third: HMS Victory DelPrado Part Works 1/100 scale Diorama of the Battle of the Brandywine from the American Revolutionary War Diorama of the Battle of New Falkland (unfinished sci-fi), Great War Centenary Diorama of the Messines Ridge Assault Index for the Victory diary is on page 1
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