Love it more and more as you progress through this fabulous build..... Stunning work.....

Regards

Alan

Hi Robin, saw your post last night but realising id need 15 mins to read it properly I saved it for the morning
Love the MKIV detailing, I did think about the guns not tapering also but like you I have also seen them straight barrelled so went with it. Seeing as yours were near prefect then no point in messing with them, mine were 1mm difference around the diameter!
Really like the Lewis guns, very nice job, and also like the extra armour on yours, something else I was going to do on mine.
Still got to make a mould for my spuds yet so will be watching yours with interest
Steve

Is there anything that you do the easy way, Robin?

ABSOLUTELY amazing!!!!

PLEASE keep going!

Adrie

Many thanks to Adrie and Alan! Greatly appreciated! Easy way? what's one of them? Anyway, YOU'RE the one building a blooming great battleship out of paper and card!
And Alan, that WW1 book I mentioned which had the unfortunate encounter with a cup of tea, the Works finally got it back in stock, AND its a Centenary Edition too!

Ok, on with the spud box!

Part Twenty Two:

The Spud box was constructed from a sheet of 0.5mm plasticard, the main components of which were shown in the final photo of last week’s post. In Photo 31, you can see what became of those bits! The basic rectangle has been glued together and I’ve begun to apply the ‘U’ brackets to the front and back sides. These were also cut from the same plasticard sheet. On the real tank, these are simple U shaped brackets, bolted to the roof of the tank and then the steel spud box is lowered into them and bolted in place, there are no brackets on the side walls. Also visible is the cut-out fore and aft for the exhaust system to pass through. It would probably have been easier to cut this out before gluing the sides together! I’ll have to remember that on Number 2! When I took this photo I had a sudden urge to get a 1/72 scale model child to have playing with his own 1/72 scale model fort! Funny how those super glue fumes work!
On to Photo 32 and the exhaust itself. The top of this photo shows the kit exhaust system whilst the bottom shows the same part with the tube replaced with an aluminium tube upgrade. You might notice some white areas on the kit part, this is due to bending the plastic in to shape. Although the kit part is moulded straight, the instructions tell you to bend the tubing to give a 6mm ‘kink’. This has also been added to the metal tube version although you can’t see it at that angle in the photo. The only thing that I couldn’t replicate was the tiny little kink in the tube right at the exhaust end. Even my set of miniature spring pipe benders weren’t that small! It doesn’t really matter too much though, by this time, the exhaust pipe was becoming even shorter, eventually ending up just a little longer than the rear end of the spud box itself.
We now come to what must have been the most infuriatingly fiddly upgrade of the lot, even more so as I could probably have got away with ignoring it altogether! Those thrice damned Unditching Rails!! If you have read Stevies excellent diary on his 1/35 scale bigger brother you might remember he mentioned that in his kit the rails were moulded inside out with the flat side pointing outwards instead of the horizontal top edge. Well that’s what I thought too! But when I came to look at my kit parts, lo and behold, they were moulded the correct way around! The only problem with my rail was that I didn’t think it was anywhere near thick enough for what it was designed to do. Checking through all my pictorial reference I came to the conclusion that these things must be at least 4” square angle, if not 6”. The Emhar kit rails look to be about 2” angle iron. Now the “Unditching Rails” as the name suggests are to enable the tank to ‘unditch’ ie, drag itself free from an enemy trench into which it has fallen head first. To do this, the unditching beam, a baulk of wood almost the size of a railway sleeper which is chained to the rails on the roof of the tank is chained instead to an adjacent track link on each side. Once attached, the tank is put into forward gear and the beam of wood slides along the rails, over the front of the tank and buries itself into the top of the trench where, hopefully, it gives enough purchase to the tracks to allow the tank to heave itself up and over the far edge of the trench. Somehow, I don’t think a length of 2” angle is going to be strong enough to support a railway sleeper! I needed a thicker piece of angle therefore, so off to town I went.
Unfortunately, that particular trip ended in disappointment. What I really wanted was a couple of lengths of 1.5mm brass angle but there was nothing suitable anywhere. My second option was to get a pack of the plastruct styrene moulded angle but of the two closest packs I could find, one was virtually the same size as the kit rails and the other was 2.0mm angle and even in the packet, looked far too big. So the next problem was, how do I make my own 1.5mm angle? As it happened, it proved to be easier than I’d thought! Those of you who have followed my DelPrado Victory diary may remember my solution to a) the curved head timbers at the bow and b) the hull side steps. For those who didn’t, the curved timbers were formed from a length of very thin brass ‘U’ profile which I filled with molten solder and the steps were formed from plasticard flat and quadrant profiles. Well I still had a 5” length of the brass channel and when I bought the flat strip plasticard I wasn’t quite sure what the width was so I got both 1.5mm x .5mm and 2.5mm x .5mm packs. As it turned out it needed 2.5mm so the 1.5 didn’t get used, until now that is! By a lucky accident I discovered that placing a length of the 1.5mm in the ‘trough’ of the brass channel as in the diagram, left exactly 0.5mm sticking up out the top. By carefully applying glue along the side of another length of plastic strip I could offer the two pieces up together and create an angle of 1.5 x 2mm, just what I required give or take a fraction of a millimetre. The brass channel was only half the length of the strip so it took two sessions with drying time in between but it worked! The result can be seen in Photo 33 with the completed left hand rail at the bottom, the component parts for the right hand one above and the kit original at the top. (Why Emhar couldn’t mould the whole rail in one piece I don’t know, it would have been much easier!) I decided the easiest way to form the wedge shaped ends which were welded on to the hull plates was simply to cut them off the kit parts. I also added tiny triangles of plasticard to the edge as you can see in Photo 35 (I’ve missed out 34 somehow!) as the Haynes Manual drawing seemed to show the angle iron effect continued down the wedges. The central support strut was scratch built from first one short length of the 1.5mm strip, and then two pieces glued together, both to strengthen the joint and also to allow a 0.5mm brass rod to be drilled and glued to fix it in place on the hull roof. It should be noted that I did eventually razor blade slices off those wedges until they actually fitted the hull without ‘bowing’ the rails out of line. The hull roof was drilled out with a .5mm bit to match the positions of the centre struts and the protruding brass rod was stuck down through before first gluing the front wedge support in place followed by the rear one. It sounds very simple but believe me there was a great deal of non-repeatable language during that process! First it wouldn’t stick, then when it did it was found to have slipped out of alignment and had to be ‘popped’ off and re-done etc etc! As far as the MkIV tank goes, the un-ditching rails are definitely my nemesis! (“We hates them we does!”).
Once the ruddy things were in place, I turned again to the Haynes Manual for the extra welded supports shown in the main drawing of the MkIV. In Photo 36, you can see the component parts for the Mid-Rear supports. These are found right beside the front of the spud box and were made from two pieces of plasticard topped off with a tiny section of the spare angle from the rails. The glued supports are shown in Photo 37 and fixed in position on the hull roof in Photo 38. Note also the little exhaust pipe support on the right. Goodness knows how many times I looked at the drawings before I actually noticed that one!
Finally for this instalment, we come to the rear towing hitches. Initially, I had tried to construct these from the same brass components as I used for the front hitch as in Photo 39 but I just couldn’t get them quite small enough to look right. The white cylinder beside the ‘U’ piece is a slice of the insulation from the barbed wire, this was carefully slit down the side to allow it to fit over the centre part of the ‘U’. In the end I settled for making them completely out of plastic as you can see in Photo 40 (held in the spring tweezers jaws). The round white centre was sliced from Plastruct 1.1mm styrene rod as was the tiny top piece. The grey ‘U’ piece came from part of the Emhar kit itself but I won’t describe exactly how it was made here as the process is already earmarked for another section of the diorama with its own ‘How to’ description to come in a week or two. Suffice it to say it worked quite well and in the final Photo 41, you can see the set of four rear tow hitches together with the brass version which illustrates how that one was just a little too oversized to get away with!
In the final section of the MkIV (apart from the track up-grade) we’ll see how all these individual parts finally fitted on to the kit and how the basic kit tracks went on (surprisingly well too!)
So, until next Thursday, Happy building to All!


Robin

Superb work Robin, amazed at the detail you put in even at this scale - really enjoying this build I have PM'd you also!
Steve

Hi Robin
Very nice progress, love all the little extra's your putting on that tank, and I mean little too!
Im going to hang on a bit before making my spuds to see how yours go I plan on making a master and pressing this into a clay mould and then use melted solder to fill the moulds.
I also found the tracks nice to work with although they are horribly wrong in the pattern of the plates, I couldn't be bothered to change this though even at giant 1/35 scale.
Steve

Hi Robin, every time I look in at your build I end up with a WOW feeling.... inspirational and beautiful to see..... .. Looking forward to the next instalment.... ..

Regards

Alan

Many thanks indeed to Stevie, Alan and Adrie, gratefully received again.
I never knew that the Exeter was remodelled after the River Plate but I suppose that would have been the ideal time to do it, she was little more than a floating hulk when she got back to Devonport!

Ok, it's back to the trenches for a couple of weeks!


Part Twenty Four:

“Into the Trenches!”

Old Joe Whip, mounted on the parapet
Old Joe Whip, a Mills bomb in his hand,
Old Joe Whip, he stopped a blooming whizzbang,
Now he's a bomber in the promised land.

“Old Joe Whip, to the tune of Casey Jones”

Time for another little History Lesson! Discounting a simple dug out trench with no re-inforcement to the sides and a purely sandbagged defensive position, there are three main types of trench linings, each of which was used by all sides in the Great War. I will be employing all three in the diorama to various degrees, one of them is fairly self explanitory but the other two will require scratch built items to complete the effect. (Photos of the Messines trenches courtesy of the Channel 5 Archaeology program.)
The first and most basic is the wicker work panel or screen. This was constructed in the centuries old method as used by basket weavers and almost all pre-industrial occupations from shepherds to eel fishermen. The panel consists of a simple line of stakes pushed or hammered into the ground and then criss-crossed by thinner flexible wands or “withys”, usually of hazel or willow branches which are very bendy but almost any type of wood could be used if the branches were green-wood (not seasoned). These wicker panels can be clearly seen in Photos 1 and 2. In most cases, thicker stakes or posts would be hammered in at regular intervals to add extra strength to the panels. These posts would also be used as convenient points for securing the various wires and cables so necessary for the front line communications (see Photo 3 with it’s dozens of insulators hammered into the posts!) Although many of the main front line firing trenches can be seen with wicker work in place, this medium was used almost by default in the smaller winding communications trenches like the one beside the bunker. How to construct this material in miniature will be the subject of the mini tutorial in this instalment!
Secondly, the next most common building material for the trench sides (and other locations as we will see later) is good old ‘wriggly tin’ or corrugated iron as it was more ‘properly’ called. Corrugated iron is simply a flat sheet of thin steel which has been placed into a high pressure stamping press which forces the flat sheet into a serpentine shape when seen edge on. (Everybody knows what the damned stuff is but I have to make the effort!!) Anyway, the corrugations or ‘ridges and valleys’ give the sheet far more rigidity than a plain flat one, allowing piles of sandbags or earth to be piled on top for extra protection when used horizontally, ie, roofs etc. In the case of the trench sides however, the sheets can be used either side ways or on end to suit the situation required. Going back to Photo 1, there is a single sheet of this material stuck up in the centre of the photo whilst in Photo 3 both sides of the trench are formed from sheets used horizontally. The normal method of fixing these sides in place is to simply hammer in fairly thick posts on the inside of the trench to keep the sheets from falling inwards. How to create these sheets for free will be the subject of next week’s instalment (as long as I can get the photos done! I’ve made some sheets up during the experiments stage but I’ve slightly changed the methods now so I’ll need to start the ‘How to’ from scratch!)
Also in Photo 3 but mainly in Photo 4 you can see the third main type of lining – wooden planking! This is the self explanitary one, familiar to all those of us embroiled in our wooden ships! The planking will be made up from the Costas Coffee wooden drink stirrers just as the wooden floor of the bunker was.
The wooden planking was generally used in areas where little ‘extras’ like the hinged grenade store were kept. One such cache is shown in Photo 4 after the rusted on door was prised off, revealing a locker full of live stick grenades inside!. This is right outside the entrance to the bunker and although the original had a roof over the top effectively making it a tunnel entrance, I’m going to incorporate the feature in an open fire trench but still roughly in the same place with regards to the bunker which is of course, now a heavy MG position as well.
With regards to Photo 3, what does seem a little strange is that there are two sets of fire-steps pointing in opposite directions! Since normally you would only expect the fire-step to point towards the direction of the enemy, I have an idea that this trench is actually a much larger communications trench (backed up by the number of telephone cables running along it) but is also a fall back position in the event of the front lines being over run (as indeed they were during the first few hours of Messines). This trench is probably running east to west and so you could expect to see advancing enemy infantry moving eastwards on both sides of this position from where the Germans could fire into both flanks of the Allied troops either side of them.
Photos 5 and 6 illustrate where I am anticipating placing the various trench sides. So far, I have just finished the wicker sides of the left hand trench leaving the bunker (down by the number 5). I had planned to join the wicker work to the bunker with a single sheet of corrugated iron, but now that I’ve done the panel and slid the bunker unit into place for a check on the fit, the wicker is so snug and tight against the bunker wall that I think I’ll just leave it as it is! Pictures of that area to follow in a few weeks.
And now on to the ‘How to’ tutorial on making up scale wicker fencing. You’ll have to please excuse the confusing photo numbering. I did this section months ago during the early working out sessions and it was originally designed to be a stand alone tutorial without the introduction above so unfortunately the photos start from 1 again!
Many, many years ago before the introduction of photo-etched brass sets and a thousand and one other commercial products for us busy modellers, there was an age undreamed of …(or was that the intro to Conan?) Anyway, back then, if you made up your airfix biplane and you wanted to rig her up with the bracing wires, you either used the finest thread you could get (very fiddly) or you did this … welcome to the ancient art of stretched sprue!
Now as 99% of readers will know, ‘Sprue’ is the waste plastic which joins all the pieces of a plastic model kit together. It is a part of the moulding process and is simply the channel down which the molten plastic is pumped to form the kit parts. When the kit is made, the sprue usually goes in the bin (recycle bin I hope!) but in actual fact, this ‘waste’ is incredibably useful stuff!
The first diagram explains it all but, I must emphasize! This should only be carried out by an adult or at the least under adult supervision as the process requires a naked flame heat source – namely a candle!
For this demonstration I wanted to produce a brown sprue example so I am afraid to admit that I nicked a bit of sprue from my years old unmade Revell kit of the Sovereign of the Seas. I must do a review of this little beauty soon, when I do you’ll see the missing sprue sections! The actual wicker panels I’m constructing now are grey/green in colour, exactly the same colour as the Emhar MkIV tank in fact!
The procedure is dead simple once you get the hang or ‘feel’ for it. It is more of an art than an exact science but once learnt you never forget it.
In ‘1’, a length of sprue is cut to size and held about an inch over the candle flame, slowly turning it like cooking on a spit. The first thing to look for is a slight bulging in the plastic and a change in the appearance as the surface of the sprue turns shiny (2). Keeping the softening sprue above the flame, keep gently turning it until the straight piece of sprue begins to flex and become ‘floppy’ (3). This is the point which is more art than science and only trying it can teach you the right moment but when it comes, remove the wobbly sprue from above the flame and gently but firmly pull the two ends apart (4). The further apart you pull it, the thinner the sprue will become and you can literally get it finer than a human hair if you want it like that! But caution is required! As soon as you feel a tug or resistance in the pull, that’s the time to stop! Pulling any further will result in the stretched portion snapping and the resulting halves curling up like a corkscrew!
The photo below the diagram illustrates some of the stretched sprue results. As you can see, the thicknesses obtained are very variable which is exactly want I want for the wicker effect as it gives a very natural random look to the finished article. Going back to the biplane rigging, once cut into lengths, the stretched sprue is completely straight and rigid enough to be cut to size and glued into place with ordinary polystyrene cement (which is all we had back then!)
For this demo I just drilled a line of tiny holes into a piece of plywood and stuck the thicker ‘posts’ into the holes (without gluing) as in the NEW Photo 1 below. The thinner lengths were then just threaded between the posts, alternating front and back positions as they were built up the posts as in Photos 2 and 3. Once the fence was complete, the whole thing was painted with Humbrol Liquid Poly using the built in brush in the bottle. This has two beneficial effects, firstly, it binds the whole structure together, bonding the ‘withys’ to the posts and to each other, and secondly, the poly cement reacts with the surface of the sprue giving it a ‘crackled’ surface which by pure accident looks just like wood bark! This demo piece was then painted both sides with Citadel Spearstaff Brown and then given a wash of Humbrol Dark Brown Enamel Wash. I have since experimented on this piece with a drybrush of Citadel Grey which produced a beautiful weathered effect which will fit in perfectly with the ‘real’ weathered wood along side it.
So that’s it! A simple procedure (under supervision for younger modellers!) which, once mastered creates a thousand useful things from what was basically ‘waste’ From aircraft (and ship) rigging (see my 1/700 scale finished ship thread) to aerials and, in my case, the towing hitches on a MkIV Tank! Remember I said I’d explain how I made them later? Streched sprue!, heated as above but pulled around a piece of aluminium tube of the right diameter held in a vice before it went hard again to form the ‘U’ shape! Simples!
So for the next instalment I’ll try and get the tutorial for making corrugated iron put together. You’ll never guess where the raw material for that comes from!!

Happy Modelling till then!


Robin

Hi Robin, your skills never cease to amaze me..... where do you get your inspirational, off the cuff ideas for resolving modelling problems from..... You certainly have a special talent and am so chuffed you share it all with us..... .. Outstanding work and so looking forward to the next episode.....

Regards

Alan

Thank you all so much for those lovely comments! It is such a reward for all the brain work that goes in to a model like this, especially when the original plan of action keeps getting altered and rearranged as I come up with 'up-grades and improvements' to what I had originally thought up!
I get what you mean now about the Exeter Adrie: improvements in her original build due to lessons learnt on the York! I'm sure at the back of the attic, buried under 101 other 'youth built kits' I have another HMS Exeter! Much larger than the Matchbox 1/700, she's got to be at least 18" long and I think, might be an old Frog kit! I must try and get to her one day and maybe a re-build and super-detail project for the future?
Thinking back to that Revell SOTS kit, I've just had an idea (probably insane!) I was going to build her in a year or two, changing the bulkheads to match Alan's masterpiece etc. (That's not the insane bit! ) The bit that might be, is to replace all the heavily oversized moulded shrouds and rat lines, and maybe ALL the rigging with plastic alternatives made from her own stretched sprue! The real beauty with that stuff is when using the really thin lengths you can obtain lovely natural 'droops' and curves not available with the kit thread in that scale! There's a thought!
And Derek! !!!


And finally, here's a sneak preview of what the full height wicker work looks like!

See you soon!

Robin