Robin

A simple fantastic build. This really is worthy of being a museum exhibit as it's so detailed and really shows the atmosphere of what was an aweful period of history.

Your attention to each small scene within the overall diorama is stunning.

A real credit to your skills in not just modelling but the immense amount of research you have carried out - very well done.

Happy modelling

Tony

Hi Robin, absolutely incredible detail on display, right down to the murky puddles of water you have created in the shell holes..... .. Best dio I have ever seen..... hats off to you!!!!

Regards

Alan

Fantastic work Robin, you would think those figures are 1/35 by the quality of your painting, Brilliant


Steve

Many thanks yet again to Alan, Mr T, Stevie and Nemesis! I just have some intricate carpentry to do around the sides of the base to tidy up the edges and then I can take the finished builds set of photos! (I've never been that competant controlling a jigsaw unfortunately! )

Until then, here's the next 'fill in' section...


Part Thirty Nine: Front Line Medic with Casualty.

As promised last time, this is another conversion of the MG08/15 gunner featured in the last post together with another trench mortar Commander, this time ‘as is’ except for a paint job on his helmet!
The gunner this time will be featuring as a casualty, crawling on the duckboards with a Field Medic in attendance. The basic figure is again shown in Photo 1, (lifted straight from the last instalment!) This time, instead of leaving the MG intact (apart from the bipod of course), the whole thing was cut away together with the right arm, which was holding/firing it. The resulting figure is depicted in Photo 2 after some ‘cheating’ PhotoHouse/PrintHouse graphics. The next step was to take one of the Grenade Launcher operators as seen in the box drawing in Photo 3 and remove his right arm with a sharp safety razor blade. This arm and the figure’s right shoulder were then drilled with a 0.5mm bit and a short length of 0.5mm brass wire was pushed into the arm, cut to size and then pushed into the shoulder, joining the two parts together. Once in place the usual drops of super glue were applied by cocktail stick to seal any slight gaps and effect a good bond. (Or at least as good a bond as you can get with this polythene plastic. On the couple where I changed my mind about the final position of joints etc, it wasn’t too difficult to pull them apart again!)
Photo 4 shows the arm in position, although at this angle it doesn’t appear to stick out as far as it actually does. Once dry the figure was undercoated and painted as per the earlier models before moving on to the Medic. He was formed from another trench mortar crew figure, this time without any modifications as seen in Photo 5. He too was painted up after removal from his base and drilling out for the pin in his foot, with the only difference being his helmet which was painted in Admiralty White with a Red Cross over the front painted in Citadel Red Gore before the helmet was given a diluted wash of Citadel Shadow Black ink.
And that’s all there was to this pair! I still need to cut a rifle away from another figure to lay on the ground beside the casualty (as I do for another shot figure down the other side of this same trench) but I also needed to convert another soldier. The Medic is obviously calling out to somebody and that somebody had to be a purpose built stretcher bearer running to assist. This is what happens a lot in dioramas, each figure is part of a story being told in ‘real time’ and sometimes one figure only makes sense when it leads to another to complete that part of the story! I've also made a stretcher squad for the ANZACs too, which will appear a little later on.
For the next instalment it’s a quick return to the bunker to see the scratch built MG08 and it’s also scratch built operator.
Incidentally, I’ve now discovered how the MG’s operated, both the German 08’s and the British Vickers were both basically Maxim guns built under licence (until the war began, then the British carried on paying the licence whilst the Germans just carried on building them anyway! ) The cartridges were fed into the receiver on the right hand side via a canvas belt. The belt itself then exited the gun on the left side but the action of firing and the bolt recoil extracted the spent round from the belt and ejected it separately under the gun. So both variants would indeed have a pile of brass cartridges mounting up on the ground below. Phew!

Until next time, Happy Modelling!

Robin

Class, shear class once again....

Regards

Alan

Many thanks to Alan and Tony!

At long last here's another 'tanky' bit!

Part Forty One: Painting and Weathering the MkIV Tanks.

In the first, un-numbered Photo we can see the original full hulled tank ‘2019 Rumblebelly’. The inset picture shows her before any paint is applied, with the white styrene plastic and copper tube scratch built additions standing out like a sore thumb! In the large picture she has been given a single coat covering of matt grey car primer. This is a very good quality paint, sprays on really evenly and dries to a dead matt finish which shows every little detail right down to the tiniest rivet and bolt as you can see. The manufacturer’s name is ProDriver and it comes in a 210ml aerosol can from no other than the Poundland stores! Be advised though, they actually do two versions of Grey Primer, this one, which is simply marked Grey Primer on the can, and another one marked ‘For Cellulose Paints’. The other one will also spray onto styrene plastic (model kit parts in other words), but it dries to a slightly darker and metallic grey. Acrylics will go over this finish, as this was the first can I bought before I realised there were two versions and I tested the Vallejo acrylics on a scrap of sprayed plasticard, but you can’t beat the matt grey for bringing out the details!
So on to Photo 1. This is the first half hull section belonging to 2003 Iron Rations, again sprayed with the Poundland primer. The following day I then airbrushed the hull with thinned down Vallejo 70.850 Medium Olive. Just a couple of squirts from the paint pot into the airbrush’s jar and then diluted with clean tap water. As you can see, we now have a nice green tank, the only problem being the Medium Olive is just a touch too bright. If I’d gone for a dark olive I would probably have been just right, but the colour charts on a PC screen don’t always come across as true to life as we’d like!
The next task therefore was to tone down the Medium Olive. I was considering this task for some time, should I try and airbrush either a darkened olive paint or a thinned down black ink wash or try something else. Controlling an airbrush is not my greatest skill I have to admit, I was pleasantly surprised just how even the Medium Olive had come out, so in the end I decided not to push my luck and went for a much more basic approach – a nice soft haired No.6 sized brush with a very thinned down Citadel Shadow Black Ink wash which was liberally ‘splodged’ over the whole vehicle. The first brush full proved to be not quite diluted enough (applied to the belly of the tank where any disasters could be hidden away!) but a quick dip of the brush into clean water and the ‘too dark’ belly was soon looking quite good. With the wash now the correct consistency, the whole tank except for the tracks was given a rapid once over and left to dry. As you can see in Photo 3, the ink wash doesn’t dry to a consistent varnish-like covering, which was in fact even better! It produces a ‘dirty’ almost blotchy effect, which might not be what you’re looking for on another model but on the MkIV it’s perfect for an ‘In the field’ slightly grubby looking tank.
In Photo 4, the difference between the untreated tracks still sporting their ‘bright’ olive paint and the toned down hull plates is more apparent. In this photo, the basic ‘IFF’ identification stripes on the front horns have been carefully painted in with Admiralty White and Citadel Red Gore, and the tank’s ID number A54 has been added on. Unlike Rumblebelly’s B24 which was an inkjet printed and then over painted waterslide decal, by this time I had found my big envelope of Letraset rub down transfers so the A54 was much easier to put on!
The next stage was to tackle the tracks. In Photo 5 they have been given their first coat, which was Citadel Bolt Gun Metal (gun metal to anyone else!) After a few hours to dry they were then given a wash of thinned down Citadel Skaven Brown Ink, as I’ve said before, although called brown, it’s damned near black but without being a ‘dead black’ (Photo 6). This was later, again once dry, given another wash of Citadel Rust Ink as in Photo 7. The final painting was a light dry-brushing with Admiralty White again which was used to pick out the ‘hard’ angles and edges, especially around the side sponsons, the unditching rails and the many rivets and bolts around the hull. That was the last of the ‘liquid’ preparation, the final weathering came courtesy of the excellent Carr’s Mud Powders as used already on the groundwork itself. Using a cotton bud, a light dusting of the medium earth powder was rubbed into the track and then all around the parts of the hull where it would naturally accumulate, the under side of the nose, the bottom and lower front of the sponsons, a lot around the rear of the horns and the bottom edge of the main hull plates and finally the bottom part of the petrol tank and it’s extra armour plating. (Photo 8).
The last bit of weathering is unique to the British WW1 tanks and I only found out about it by reading the new Osprey book “British MkIV Tank”. Once I discovered it, looking back through all my other photo references showed it time and again and I’d never noticed it before! The tracks on a WW1 tank obviously go all around the main hull, unlike a more modern design where they are ‘down the bottom’. Consequently, the mud picked up on the tracks tends to fall off again as the tracks proceed over the top of the hull. It mostly falls off down to the ground again – except for two locations – the tops of the side sponsons where it collects up and forms great clods along the tops over the gun positions! To form this, I used the same Terrain Foam Putty as the ground was made from, making up two strips of putty onto two pieces of plasticard cut to the size of the sponson roofs as seen in Photo 10. This was not as easy as it seemed, the putty does not like going over a smooth shiny plastic! Once it was squeezed between the finger and thumb to produce a thin raised line, the putty was then stippled with a fairly small stiff brush to create the muddy texture. Again, this was not easy as the putty more than once just broke up and came away from the plasticard. Eventually though it was formed more or less as required and left to dry. (Photo 10) Once nice and solid, it was given a coat of the Woodland Scenics Earth Undercoat, followed by a rubbing of the medium and orangey Carrs Mud Powders, once the paint was dry. Finally, using a safety razor blade, a straight edge was sliced off on the inboard side and the whole ‘ridge’ of mud carefully cut away from the plasticard former as in Photo 11.
The finished effects can be seen in Photo 12 with Rumblebelly sitting squarely in her tank tracks in the soil (the adding in of those tracks will come in a later instalment when I set out how the groundwork went together.) Note! I had to 'squash up' this photo to fit it in the space here to the tank looks a little 'dumpier' than she actually is!

Finally, I’d like to dedicate this instalment to our dearest Sammy Shih Tzu who left us in the early hours of Sunday morning. His blindness, arthritis and finally diabetes caught up with his fifteen and a quarter years so quickly, we are all still feeling lost without him informing us when dinner time is due, right on time every day!

In Part Forty Two, some more figure conversions.

Bye ‘till then.

Robin.

Brilliant work Robin, your tenacity and patience has certainly paid off on this instalment.... Your dio just get better and better..... .. Looking forward to the next part in anticipation as to what it will produce..... Very well done and so sorry to hear about Sammy, you must be gutted....

Regards

Alan

Robin

Another really interesting instalment to your build. What appear to be be fairly straightforward conversions really do give you something different to work with - very skillful bit of building indeed.

Hi Robin, not only a very skilful piece of modelling but also an incredible show of imagination..... Where do you get your ideas from to be able to pull mods like this off.... .. Stunning work....

Regards

Alan

Thanks again to Tony, Stevie and Nem, much appreciated as always!
And Alan's question becomes a part of the next instalment!

Part Forty Three: The Anzac Lewis Gunner and Medics.

I wore a tunic, a lousy khaki tunic,
And you wore your civvy clothes.
We fought and bled at Loos
While you were home on the booze
The booze that no one here knows.
Oh you were with the wenches
While we were in the trenches
Facing an angry foe.
Oh you were a-slacking
While we were attacking
The Jerry on the Menin Road.

Tommy vents his anger to the tune of I wore a Tulip

In reply to Alan’s question, it’s usually a case of not so much designing the entire figure from scratch in my head (although sometimes it does come out that way!) as seeing ‘what comes out’ of messing about with the figures. The shot German soldier reeling back was a prime example of this, I had a basic idea of what I wanted to create and the MG loader (minus his right arm) provided a pretty close pose to that envisaged. It was only during the coming together of the figure and its new right arm with the rifle that the need to bend that arm and then one leg as well became apparent! If anyone remembers the old original Airfix ‘Multipose’ Figure sets (they were great fun!) then what I’m doing by cutting up these figures is basically converting a fixed pose in soft polythene plastic into a 1/72 scale Multipose kit, joining the various parts together with 0.5mm brass rod allows all the various arms and hands etc to be tried on different torsos and also rotated around into different poses. It’s surprising what you can end up with and each one becomes ‘unique’ to your own model. If anyone else is trying a 1/72 diorama give it a try – its nowhere near as difficult as it sometimes sounds in the text! OK then, on to this instalment’s figures!
Both of the two sets of Allied figures used in the diorama provided a light machine gun crew consisting of a Lewis gunner and his loader, despite both sets being made by the same manufacturer ‘HaT’ the pair in the WW1 British Heavy Weapons set (8177) are far more detailed in both the pose and the sculpting than their counterparts in the WW1 Canadian Infantry set (8111). Despite that, both sets have been used in these conversions.
First off though, we have a figure from the Canadian set as shown in Photo 1. This is a basic running or charging figure holding his SMLE rifle at ‘the port’. I have already used one of the complete Lewis Gun teams from the Heavy Weapons set on the right hand side of the diorama. Instead of repeating the same crew on the opposite side I decided to have the gunner in the process of moving up behind his supporting tank instead. The first task was therefore to remove the aforementioned SMLE with a nice sharp safety razor blade as out lined in Photo 2. Cutting off the muzzle end and the wooden stock was easy enough, carving away the middle portion was a little more ‘involved’ shall we say! Originally, I had intended to keep the left hand of the figure intact to support the Lewis, but a tiny little bit of excess weight behind a slicing cut meant I only had half of a hand (thickness wise that is) to play with so in the end I took the whole thing off and replaced it with a hand taken from a spare Officer in the same set.
In Photo 3 you can see the far more detailed Lewis gunner from the Heavy Weapons set. As you can see, he has no head! In this set, both the gunner and his loader have separate heads which allows for a more realistic pose to be sculpted (especially on the loader who is modelled leaning on his left side, his head can be glued on either looking ahead, back or anywhere in between!) There are four identical sprues in this set which gives me four Lewis gunners (and loaders of course), this was fortunate as one is on the diorama, one gave up his Lewis to this bloke and the other two gave their Lewis’s to the forward MG’s on the tanks! Also in Photo 3 on the left you can see an upside down ‘V’, this is in fact the separate bipod for the Lewis, the square peg at the top fits into a socket under the barrel. This is a great improvement over the moulded on ‘triangle’ as found on the Canadian gunner and indeed the German MG08/15 in the HaT set but as you will see in Photos 11 to 13, I chose to make up a new bipod from the good old 0.5mm brass rod again by simply forming a ‘V’ with the rod, squeezing the tip of the V together to form the locating peg and spreading the two arms out into the correct angle before snipping them off to the proper length. The Lewis gun was sliced away from the gunner, although Photo 4 shows the actual shape of the Lewis’s stock, in actual fact I just sliced the whole stock and the unfortunate gunner’s shoulder off in one go and then trimmed off his attached arm and hand before carving the stock down into the actual shape. On test fitting the Lewis to the new gunner I found out that the light MG was so much bigger than the rifle I had to slice away a diagonal piece from his gas mask case to allow the gun to fit snuggly in place, it also became apparent that it probably wouldn’t have fitted at all with the original left hand still in place! Unfortunately I didn’t take any photos of the fitting phase so onto the other figures!
In Photo 5, we have the kneeling figure of the Commander of the Stokes Mortar from the Heavy Weapons set, I assume he’s the Commander that is, the other member of the mortar team is holding a mortar round so he must be the one who does all the work! No conversion work was required at all on this one, just a careful removal from his base and then a paint job to equip him with a Red Cross armband and Red Cross markings on his satchel. Photo 6 illustrates the Vickers (or Maxim) machine gunner, as you can see from this photo, he’s pretty armless (sorry! I just couldn’t resist that one!) Just as the Lewis crew have separate heads, this figure has separate arms designed to fit into the two slots which leave his hands on either side of the MG handles. As you will see in the following photos, this simple kneeling pose leaves him in just the right position to be applying a field dressing to a wounded comrade. The wounded comrade in question was supplied by the Lewis team loader as shown in Photo 7. The only work needed for him was to remove the ammo drum as shown in the close up below. The field dressing itself which can be seen best in Photo 10 was made from an off cut of the useful ‘Decra-led’ lead strip which was first rolled flatter with a metal knife handle. From this a thin strip was cut out to form the bandage and another offcut (un-rolled) was cut into a tiny rectangle to make up the padded part of the dressing. Once again, only an arm band and Red Cross markings for the satchel were required in addition to the normal uniform painting.
In Photo 8 you can see the first finished pairing, the wounded man in this case came from the Lewis loader from the Canadian set, as before, only the removal of the ammo drum was required. Photo 9 shows the second pair and Photo 10 is the better view as mentioned earlier. In both cases the dropped SMLE rifles came from an old set of ESCI hard plastic WW2 Paratroopers. These are obviously Lee Enfield No.4’s not No.1’s but in this scale, slicing off the slightly protruding barrels gives them back the ‘look’ of the WW1 types.
Photos 11 to 13 illustrate the converted Lewis Gunner, (sorry I haven’t got a better view from the front! ) and finally, Photo 14 is an unashamed ‘rip off’ from the finished diorama set of photos, but it does show the medic in the centre and I needed a long thin pic to end up with!
As I said, these were the easiest of the conversions to make up! In the next instalment, two of the Germans I forgot to include a few weeks previously, (and in the finished photos too) – the last of their Medics (on leave from the Flammenwerfer Regiment!) and the other member of the bunker MG team with the sledge mount for the heavy machinegun.

Until then, Happy modelling to you all!

Robin