Thanks for that Dave! It's a really strange feeling once the actual model is completed and I get into the catching up period! It's a sort of relief that it's all done and dusted but at the same time almost a period of withdrawal, sort of modelling cold turkey that it's done! That said, it's also nice to be able to collect all the unused photos and write ups to keep the diary going without the dead line pressure! Glad you're still enjoying the instalments, there's a few more to come yet!

After watching the movie umpteen times, especially the bombing of Manston Airfield scene I noticed that the slit trenches (being dug into the Kentish soil of course) had veins of chalk running along the inside faces. So, in the interests of authenticity, out came a once good but now retired thin paintbrush and the bottle of Admiralty White. This is a sort of dry-brushing, that white is getting so thick now there’s not really any other way to use it straight from the bottle! The upper white line was then ‘dabbled’ with the same brush dampened a little with water and the white paint already applied was diluted in situ to create the effect of the chalk weathering down into the soil as illustrated in Photo 1. It brings back nice memories of childhood holidays with relatives at Ramsgate, we used to bring back huge bits of chalk from the beaches and we had the only chalk rockery in Plmouth! Is that brilliant underground railway through the chalk down to the beach still there? It ran directly under our relative's house and we could hear it rumbling in the evenings!
Where was I? Oh yes, after the chalkie memories I needed to give the impression that the trenches had been dug quite recently (as most of them were at that time) so I muddied up the surrounding area using two of the Carr’s Mud Powders left over from Messine’s. Instead of the usual fingertip or sponge application I used a cheapie ‘The Works’ ¼” quite stiff natural bristle brush to vigorously rub the powder into the grass and turf. I did try my fingertip first but once the scenic cement had dried, that turf was like sandpaper! The results of the brushing in can be seen in Photo 2, together with the two packets of powder used. The next task was to make the two rows of sandbags, which line both sides of the slit trench. Although I’m showing this now, I’d actually begun this before the turf went on as you can probably see, lurking in the right hand background in this same photo!
Now came the most laborious task of the groundwork – sandbags! I was going to say the most laborious task of the whole diorama, but then I remembered the brick built Dispatch Hut! If you remember the Messines diary, I made the sandbags in that one out of Milliput epoxy putty, for this one however I decided to try out a different medium since, as strange as it sounds, there are about five or six times more sandbags in this WW2 scene than there were in the WW1 trench diorama! (Most of the trench sides were corrugated sheets or wicker-work panels with just a topping of sandbags.) Milliput is a brilliant material for making things out of, but it’s really messy if, like me you dislike getting your fingers all sticky, and on top of that, it’s not exactly cheap either! In Photos 3 and 4, we have the basic material out of which the sandbags were created: DAS air hardening clay. I’ll have to admit here that I was ‘slightly’ mislead by the packaging of the clay (obtained from Hobbycraft by the way), I read the word “Pasta” on the pack and thought that it was ‘pasta’ coloured – ie, a sandy brown perfect for the base colour of sandbags. It was only when I opened up the pack a few weeks later that I realised that whatever language it was (Italian I think) pasta simply meant ‘clay’! Ah well, at least it wasn’t Day-Glo Orange (and they do that one too!) On some Youtube videos, DAS clay is refered to as ‘Paper-Clay’ and if you look closely at Photo 4, you can see tiny little paper fibres sticking to the edge of the plastic knife edge. I believe it is these little fibres which bind the clay together and prevent it from cracking up as it dries. The only other tools required to make any amount or scale of sandbag is a good long kitchen knife (sorry Mum!), a roller of some kind (I used the sprung tube/axle from a toilet roll dispenser!) and the ever useful Pin Vice as shown in Photo 3. You will also need a jar of clean water as I’ll show later. The first task is to cut off a thin slice of the clay from the main block and roll it out to about 3mm thickness (1/72 scale, probably 5mm or so for 1/35), preferably on a sheet of suitable glass, this keeps it flat and makes it easier to remove. Then, taking the pin vice roll it over the flattened clay to produce the imprinted ‘hessian sack’ pattern shown in Photo 3 again. Once this is done, using the long knife blade cut the patterned clay into parallel strips about the width of the bags and then, (easier with a safety razor blade) cut the strip into individual sandbags. (I found wetting the knife blade makes cutting this stuff easier). Using the razor blade again, pick up the sandbag and then use the thinner handle of the pin vice to round off the longer sides of the bag before adding a concave to each end (like a pillow case), again with the pin vice handle. You’ll see the effect clearer in the later photos but the first set I made is shown in Photo 5. This is where I hit a little snag in the construction process. I had a nice little row of sandbags all right but the next day, after drying out overnight I found I had a nice little row of completely separate sandbags! The only solution was to replace them in position one by one in their original places brushing PVA in between the joins to glue them back together as shown in Photo 6. I later found the solution to this was far easier than gluing with PVA, all that is required is to liberally brush over the bags as they were pressed down into position with a brush-full of water. Keeping the clay wet as the bags are built up literally welds them together, the semi-liquid clay (or ‘slip’) which fills the gaps between the bags, acts as all the glue you need. Photo 7 illustrates the two rows of sandbags completed. The foreground one has been given an undercoat of the Docrafts All Purpose Acrylic Paint – Sand, the same one I used for the Messines sandbags, the far row still in it’s natural terracotta (and not pasta) was put together with the water brushing method and is a single entity once dried. The advantage of making up the bags in situ is that they can be pressed down into the ground work, taking up the contours in a natural manner, something you can never quite get with pre-formed plastic commercial sandbags. The individual bags shown in Photo 8 show the procedure I mentioned earlier, rolling the pin vice handle along the longer sides to round them out and also that concave ‘dimple’ in the shorter ends. You can also notice that in this state the bags are fatter than they eventually end up, the act of pushing them down into place flattens them out slightly, back to the ‘floppy sack’ appearance required. Finally in Photo 9, we have the finished rows, the sand undercoat has been given a thinned down wash of Citadel Skaven Brown Ink to accentuate the joints and shadows, and once the wash was dry, a dry brushing of Admiralty Yellow Ochre to give them a slightly more hessian sack finish, followed by a final Admiralty White drybrush to pick out the edges and highlights. The white was also used to paint the inner, end sandbags as per the movie where those particular sandbags were whitewashed to mark the slit trench entrances. In this photo you can also see the spruce side panels and the top of the pine board have been given the first few coats of Ronseal Quick Drying Teak Varnish.
In the next instalment, another couple of hundred sandbags and the decorative border strips!

Happy Modelling to you all ‘till then!


Robin

Many thanks indeed for those great comments Kev! To be honest I'd have no idea on how to enter any competition, I've never been a member of any modelling club or society and had always thought you had to be one in order to go in for all these events! On top of that, in my present circumstances (I bet that gets re-spelled!) my 'disposable income is around £5 per week so any 'day outs' are way out of reach. It's a lovely compliment though and many thanks for it!

And so, on with the Bofors Gun Position!

The first step in creating the Bofors Gun emplacement was to measure the actual gun and work out how big the ring or wall of sandbags would need to be. The completed model was placed on an offcut of Upvc, the sort of lengths used in the Soffit and Conservatory building trades of which I have a (large) store in the garage, all of which I got for free from a very nice man who used to deliver ‘recycle-bound’ reject lengths to my old place of work, a Devon wildlife park! I eventually decided on a 65mm diameter which was duly pencilled on to the Upvc as seen in Photo 1. The sandbags were then created exactly as seen in the last instalment, beginning with a single row as also seen in that photo. There was no gluing involved, the stickiness of the DAS clay was enough to fix it onto the plastic surface where it remained (mostly) until the sandbag position was completed when it could be gently prised off the plastic again for painting. Once the inner ring was completed, another outer ring was then added to create a double wall and once this was also finished, the ends which formed the single entrance, were joined by a cross-wise bag to finish off. This bag began the second layer of sacks and also formed the ‘brick layer’ jointing. Theoretically every bag should have been placed over the join of the two below it, but slight variations in the size of the individual sacks (plus differences in how hard they were pushed down in place) meant that they didn’t always line up that way! On the other hand, those differences make the whole thing look more ‘hand made’ and less ‘artificially regular’ (and this is a really useful excuse for future projects too!) Having learnt the ‘keep ‘em damp’ trick in the trench sandbags, again, no glue is needed to ‘weld’ the bags together. The first two rows are illustrated in Photo 2.
After that it was just a question of adding row after row of sacks, each time beginning and ending at the entrance with a cross-ways sack, and with each one set back a little to create a stepped end to the wall. In Photo 3 you can see the third row going on, note the darker sandbags in the centre, these have just been soaked with a brush full of water to weld them together. It is also necessary to brush over the completed lower row when adding the next on top, this way you don’t have to complete a row in one operation, you can add the next ones after the lower row has dried out simply by wetting it again. The higher the wall went, the greater was the urge to fill it up with red coated members of the 24th Foot – maybe another time! The completed ring is shown in Photo 4 after the multiple coats of paint and inks as laid out in the preceding instalment. Also shown here is an after-thought I had to use up some of the clay from the final set of sandbags – empty sacks. These were simply rolled out thinner, imprinted with the pin vice and then cut into flat sacks to make an untidy pile near the entrance, as can be seen in the finished shot in Photo 5. The green ammunition crates stacked around the inside were made from the Costa coffee wooden stirrers, two glued together for double thickness, sawn into individual lengths, sanded smooth and given a pair of encasing strengthening ribs from Plastruct styrene strip super glued in place and then painted with Vallejo Medium Olive 70.850.
The next task was to fit the decorative wooden trim around the pine board. The trim came in about 6ft lengths from a local DIY store but you can find virtually the same profiles in B&Q or any other supplier. The bare wood is shown in Photo 6 whilst the example shown in Photo 7 (actually slightly different in shape) has been given a couple of coats of Ronseal Quick Drying Teak Varnish (water based). Funny story about the different profile – actually not very funny at all, a ruddy nuisance in fact! I’ve recently finished a hand drawn family tree for my ex-boss’ daughter, a huge thing which goes back over 1500 years! I bought enough of the profile to create a picture frame for the A1 card it was drawn out on (two 6ft lengths) only to discover after I got back home and started to cut the wood to length that some wally had put the wrong length back in the pigeon holes after looking at them! It was my fault as well of course for not double-checking, but the difference between them was so miniscule you’d need a magnifying glass to notice, or at least until you tried to fit them together in a 45 degree joint you would! Anyway, the varnished one is left over from the picture frame and I had to buy another full length to make the diorama frame up with. Moral: Always take your reading glasses when buying wooden profiles!
In Photo 8 you can see the decorative edging strips in place. As you can see, the profiles create a little trough, into which the future protective Perspex case will fit, (another funny story about the Perspex ‘fitting’ in the next instalment!). The edging was glued on with standard PVA with the addition of a pair of steel panel pins just down from each corner ‘just to be certain’! The profiles were pre-drilled to avoid any chance of splitting and then hammered in until just proud of the wood and finally tapped in flush using a steel nail punch. The black arrows in the last photo indicate the approximate location of the pins.
In the next instalment, creating the Perspex case and starting the various ‘accessories’ around the base terrain. Plus – what has a forty year old toy Matchbox lorry got in common with the Airfix Bedford Bowser?

Until then, Happy Modelling to you All!


Robin

Darn right Kev! I use the occasional stirrer for paint err, stirring too! You get the odd warped one which is perfect for that but by and large the wood isn't a bad quality at all. In the next year or two I'm hoping to design and scratch build a Martian Sky Galleon from the Space 1889 board game. By then I'm hoping to have enough good stirrers to plank the entire hull with!
Anyway, enough of the fantasy plans, on with the base!

In Photo 1 we have that forty year old Matchbox lorry mentioned last time, found in a large box full of old Matchbox toys from long ago. The answer to the question what has this toy in common with the Airfix Bedford Bowser is simply that it has exactly the same axle dimensions as the Airfix kit! And the reason that is so useful can be seen in Photo 2 – wheel tracks in the grass! Because the toy is all metal, it can be pressed down into the layers of grass and the foam board beneath and then rolled along the base to create the tracks that would have been left behind by the full size vehicles. Even if the Airfix kits had been built with moving wheels, they would have been far too delicate to push in hard enough for ‘tracking’.
In Photo 3 we move on a little (and will be back tracking later) to the creation of the protective Perspex cover. A few years ago I had a commission to build a snake vivarium for a student at work and despite trying to give back all the surplus materials which he paid for he said “keep them!” For that I deeply thank him and here’s the left over Perspex finding a use at last. (It didn’t get used for the Messines cover as I was ‘ahem, unsure of it’s location at that time!) This is where the other ‘funny story’ about the fitting of the Perspex comes in. I’d designed the Scramble base with a little more ‘leeway’ in the trough area to avoid the overly tight fit I had with the Messines cover. Unfortunately, that extra leeway would have been fine with the 2mm sheets I’d used then, I’d completely forgotten however that the vivarium Perspex was the thicker 4mm grade! The problem wasn’t obvious until I had measured and cut the two long side panels, the Bofors gun side actually did fit in the trough but the opposite panel was about ¼ mm too big to slide down! After mulling it over for a while, (enlarge the trough? File down the bottom of the panel?) the easiest solution was to increase the width of the smaller end panels by a couple of mm which would allow the whole cover to sit on the top of the decorative edge instead of sitting down in the trough. It didn’t really matter too much, like the Messines base, the wooden side strips had already been fitted with the glued on captive nuts (which I’d forgotten to mention before, the photo of which comes a little later!) so the cover would still be fixed in place by brass M3 bolts. So in Photo 3 we have the end panel (now 2mm wider) being clamped in position for gluing. Unlike the Messines cover which I glued with superglue, I purchased the ‘proper stuff’ for this one. The little insert pic shows the bottle of PWS (Plastic Weld Solvent) from Burnley Direct Train Spares (www.directtrainspares-burnley.co.uk) (although I went through Ebay to actually buy it) This solvent will stick “Styrene, ABS, Perspex and many, many more”. It’s not bad for price at £3.50 for 100ml which will last a very long time (although the p&p doubles this to £7.00. If you can find a model shop or model train shop that stocks it even better! It comes with a syringe and blunt needle to apply the solvent, as you can see in the photo, the three sides are clamped tightly together, the side panels being bolted on as well. To weld the panes together you simply draw up half a syringe full of solvent, hold the needle on the top of the joint and very gently squeeze the syringe until the solvent travels down the joint by capillary action. You can see the join go darker as the solvent spreads along and once it reaches the bottom, that’s it! Only a tiny amount of solvent is used, the only reason to half fill the syringe is to make the squeezing out more controllable (you have to squeeze harder towards the top of the syringe). Once both corners are glued you simply squirt the rest of the solvent back in the bottle. In welding all four corners AND the entire top the bottle has gone down about 3mm – it’s very economical! The main thing is to get the edges to be welded as flat as possible, if it’s too rough or not level, the solvent can’t spread along the joint to weld it together. I found the best method to cut the Perspex, especially the 4mm was to score half way through it with the Olfa Plastic Cutter and then to finish off the cut with the Exacto Razor Saw before sanding off the cut edge flat. In Photo 4, all four sides have been welded together and the top panel (2mm this time) is just resting in place in Photo 5. In gluing the top in place, I’d cut the panel about half a mil smaller than I meant which actually turned out to be a blessing in disguise. As there was this 0.5mm ‘lip’ set in around three of the four sides, and I was able to place the tip of the syringe needle on that lip and apply the solvent in stages, about every three inches or so. On the fourth side (one of the shorter ends) the lip was in reverse, ie, the top sheet protruded out 0.5mm. That again was simple, once the other three sides were dry, I removed the cover, turned it upside down and then welded using the lip as before!
With the cover now complete, apart from some cosmetic sanding to be carried out in the future I can return to the construction of the various ‘accessories’ around the diorama. The first one is the ‘Painter’s Table’ which I included as part of the ‘work in progress’ in camouflaging the Dispatch Hut. There are two ladders along with the table, one of which is the twin of the access ladder holding up the Hurricane, the other is a standard wooden ladder of which more later. The painter’s table is the type of collapsible ‘bench’ still used today for wall papering etc. Try as I might, I couldn’t find any references on the web for 1940’s era RAF painting accessories. I know Dad had one of these tables for donkey’s years so I hope and pray they were around back then too! The components of the table can be seen coming together in Photo 6. The table top is a fairly thin offcut of plasticard with the under framework and the folding legs cut from strips of 0.5 x 0.8mm Plastruct. After the two leg frames were glued in place, the locking arms were cut from some thin stretched sprue. The tins of paint were made from suitably sized aluminium tubing, cut into length by razor saw and the open ends then counter-sunk to thin down the thickness of the tubing to a more life-like thickness. I also needed some tin lids, one for the un-opened tin and another two to lay on the table top. These were formed from the DecraLed strip using a multi-diameter leather punch to punch out tiny little disks as illustrated in Photo 7. I didn’t bother with bottoms for the tins, they were just super glued onto the table top after the plastic miniature had been primed and painted with Revell Wood Brown 382 (and also after the plasticard hinge in the middle had been added on too). Once the glue was dry I used thin brushes to dribble the Revell Dark Green and Dark Earth camouflage paint into the tins along with some thinned down ‘stains’ on the work surface (backed up with some Revell Sky for good measure). The almost complete table which sits comfortably on the proverbial penny (although I must have forgotten to take a penny shot) can be seen in Photo 8. The paint in the tins did shrink a little as it dried so I added some more and also dunked in a couple of stretched sprue stirring sticks for extra effect together with some dustcloth/rags formed from rolled out thinner lead sheet as seen in situ in Photo 9 (alongside that other access step ladder).
Before the second ladder, here’s that captive nut epoxied to the inside face of the wooden side panel I forgot to put in earlier! The hole was drilled through the wood and the M3 Brass bolt inserted through with this nut tightened up on the inside before applying epoxy glue around it. The hole into which both the nut and the brass bolt fits can be seen in the foam board just below. (Photo 10)
The common type ladder shown in Photo 11 was very easy to make up, just two strips of 0.8 x 2.5mm Plasticard (actually it’s four strips, they were doubled up for thickness making the bars 1.6mm thick) together with rungs of 1.1mm Plasticard rod. The holes were drilled into the sides for the rungs (drilling through both sides at once) and the ladder was started by fitting and gluing the first and last rung only as shown in Photo 12. By letting the ladder dry in this condition it’s far easier to add the remaining rungs without the whole thing wobbling around and going out of true. Once all the rungs were in and set, the protruding parts were sanded down flush to the sides before the ladder was primed and painted wood brown. The finished item is seen in Photo 13 with the ‘painter’ hurriedly ‘knocking off’!
In the next instalment; deckchairs and seats, table and newspapers!

Until then, Happy Modelling to you all.


Robin

Many thanks Stevie, I must admit they do look really cute down on the base!


This instalment has been quite a difficult one for me to put together! Unlike nearly all the others which involves a good deal of scratch building and converting, with the attendant descriptions, this one is, apart from a couple of slight changes all about simply using items straight out of the box (and I’ve almost forgotten how to do that!) Anyway, here goes!
Photo 1 is a composite of the table and chairs as supplied in the excellent Preiser Set No. 72508 (or Art No. as it is in German) “Pilots and ground crew. Luftwaffe. The German Reich 1935-45” Despite the new Revell RAF Personnel set (which is about as rare as Hen’s Teeth despite the Battle of Britain anniversary), this is about the best set of figures to make into the RAF as you can get. I did get a set of the old Airfix RAF Personnel which provided a few figures but there are surprisingly few useable poses in that set, especially in the ‘Scramble’ context. Although the Preiser set are actually the opposition, the differences between the British and German uniforms are so minor the figures can often be converted with no more than a change of paint scheme. Preiser really missed out on increased sales though by not bringing out a new set of RAF figures for the anniversary, there must be thousands of modelers out there who, (like me) would have snapped them up! The top part of Photo 1 is a scan of the inside of the Preiser box which contains painting tips and pictures of the sprues of parts. When I get to the main figures I’ll try to illustrate which parts went into which figure, the torsos are fairly easy but the many arms get very confusing! The set contains four chairs and actually two tables, the one shown here (Parts 86 and 87) are moulded in a light sandy brown plastic along with the chairs, there is also a second table attached to the main sprue, moulded in the German Grey plastic as well. The chairs are single mouldings, very finely cast with incredibly thin legs, three of them were painted with the Revell Wood Brown for use out on the grass with one of the tables, the last one was painted in Vallejo Mahogany to fit in with the scratch built desk inside the Hut (more on that one in a later instalment). The tables are moulded with playing cards arranged on top and also a leather flying helmet in one corner. I chose to sand off these details to replace them with some newspapers and sheets of paper instead. The newspapers were authentic front pages from the Battle of Britain period, downloaded from various royalty free websites as shown in Photo 2 and then reduced down and down until they reached scale size. At the same time I also obtained various posters which were also scaled down for the interior of the Hut, and the whole batch was put together using my Corel PrintHouse graphics program and printed off on the thinnest photo paper I had available (though it still looks like a full thickness newspaper once printed!) In theory, if you could get down close enough you should be able to read the things on the model – probably not in 300dpi though! (Photos 3 and 4).
There are two deckchairs provided in the set, Parts 88 and 89, and they can be made up in two versions – occupied or empty. Part 69 on the main sprue is a reclining German pilot relaxing on the material part of the deckchair which he is moulded to. He can either be dropped onto the delicate moulded wooden frame as in Photo 5, or the empty canvas part can be used instead. As all my pilots are running for their aircraft (mostly out of shot) I used both the deckchairs empty. You can see in Photo 5 that the wooden frame includes arm rests. Although this type would have been around over here, those features are more ‘continental’ than your typical British beach version so the arm rests were cut away as depicted in Photo 6. Now came the slight, er, mistake! Somehow I convinced myself that the deckchairs featured in the movie were all single coloured ones, which is how I painted them to begin with (Photo 7). However, a final viewing of the DVD revealed that they were actually the stripey variety so it was necessary to do a little more work on them. I went for a nice blue and white stripe although I think the film ones were actually triple striped – blue, white and red! The canvas seats were first painted in Vallejo Grey Blue 70.943 (the colour of the German’s trousers in the Messines diorama). I then tried painting the white stripes on which looked horrible, both my white acrylics, Citadel and Admiralty are getting too thick with age, thinning them down with water helps but they’re still not ‘as good as new’ so to make things easier (and after a second coat of blue!) I put the white stripes on using the white based inkjet transfer paper that I used for the ambulance red crosses. I simply sliced a thin strip off the top of the sheet, cut it into lengths a little longer than the canvas and dipped them into the Humbrol DecalFix. Once the strip began to loosen on the backing paper I slid it off into position, bending the excess length around both ends onto the underside. This was a little more difficult than it sounds, again I should have applied a varnish or lacquer over the white decal and didn’t, which made the thing very difficult to keep straight. Eventually I got the stripes on and left them to set before cutting shorter lengths to join up the underside ends into a continuous stripe. Overall, it came out really well with nice straight, even edges as can be seen in Photos 8 and 9 with the overall shot showing the deckchairs, table and chairs with dropped newspapers in Photo 10. It's a pity nobody makes 1/72 scale tea sets though!
In the next instalment, completing the interior of the Dispatch Hut together with the ‘Ring like ‘Ell!’ outside!

Until then Happy Modelling to you All!


Robin

Thanks for that Kev! The deckchairs and seats are beautiful little castings in that Preiser set (as are the figures as you should be able to see soon!)What I like especially is the quality of the plastic, not the cheap and cheerful polythene of the Airfix and all sets, just a little bit softer than the standard plastic kit material. Easy to convert and to glue together!
So here's the first part of the Dispatch Hut interior, non-confusingly called:

Hut Interior Part 1:

This instalment is necessarily ‘heavy’ in graphics I’m afraid, most of the items featured were scratch built in plasticard and once that process starts with all the gluing and cutting, it’s difficult to stop mid-process to take photos! The first item on the list is the wooden desk/table occupied by “Arnold” the Dispatch Officer (who will be covered fully in the next instalment). Diagram 1 illustrates the component parts of the desk, all cut from thin sheet plasticard with the legs from Plastruct styrene strip. There were 11 parts altogether including the two false drawer fronts. The completed desk is shown in Photo 2 after a coat of spray primer, followed by Vallejo Mahogany Brown 70.846. Note the telephone wires running along the floor behind the desk. There are three altogether, two for the telephones on the desk top and a third which runs further along the ground then up the wall to the wall mounted ‘phone shown in Photo 6. The wires are made from single strands of 6/.2mm electric wire painted matt black with Citadel Chaos Black to give a 1940’s black rubber appearance.
Of the three telephones, the wall mounted ‘intercom’ is the smallest and most basic, as shown in Diagram 3. The main body is a strip of plasticard cut from the edge of one of my thickest sheets, probably about 3mm or so, (A). A ‘V’ slot was filed into the end of the strip to take a receiver handle made from stretched sprue (B) and the receiver ‘cups’ were from the Riko Plastic Rod, heated over a candle flame to produce a dished end, which was then sliced off and glued to each end of the handle (C). Once this was dry, as shown in Photo 4, the strip was sawn off with the razor saw and any rough edges sanded smooth. Gripping the body of the telephone in a pair of long nosed pliers, two 0.5mm (or maybe smaller) holes were drilled into the base of the body, one to take the telephone wire mentioned previously and the other for a shorter length of the same wire looped from the receiver to the base. As you can see from Photo 5, I actually did this procedure in reverse, the telephone was made first and the wires added in with super glue. Once painted black, the ‘phone was super glued to the wall and the long wire then bent to shape to fit the wall and floor. The two ‘buttons’ on the front of the body were an attempt to add coloured buttons which didn’t look right so I painted them over black! That is the standard penny shot in Photo 5 with the finished set up complete with wires in Photo 6.
The second telephone is basically a typical bakelite telephone of the time, the same design found in millions of homes and offices before, during and for many years after the war. Again, a very similar construction using the same plasticard strip (A), a little more complicated filing to obtain the body shape (B), with a virtually identical receiver. The only addition being a disk sliced from a round offcut of sprue to form the dialling disk (C). Getting that sprue to slice off evenly was a right old job! The finished telephone is shown in the insert, I did try to add the dialling holes but just couldn’t get them looking even enough so like the intercom buttons, the dialling disk ended up painted over too! (Diagram 7)
The third telephone is not only the most complicated, it’s also the only one that gets used in the movie! In Photo 8 we have the Field Telephone, Set D MkV. This was a very clever little machine, only about half the size of the field telephone I made for the German bunker in the Messines diorama (and therefore twice as difficult to make! ) This machine was not only designed to be linked to the ‘other end’ by a dedicated cable like a true Field Telephone but it could also be plugged into any civilian telephone system and used as a normal telephone. On top of that, it also comes with a morse code key so that encrypted messages could be sent down unguarded lines in morse. Apparently, when using a civilian network you had to tap the morse key at the end of the call to disconnect! One of the references I came across referred to an Army Signals operator who ‘unofficially’ plugged one of these into the remains of the German telephone network a short time after VE Day and spent his cold winter’s evenings chatting happily to his wife back in ‘Blighty’! Diagram 9 illustrates the 14 separate bits, all plasticard apart from the bell ringer which is again heated plastic rod, whilst Photo 10 shows the completed machine held in a pair of spring tweezers before it’s painting up. There is no receiver on this one of course as this will be held in Arnold’s hand linked by a length of cable. Finally in Photo 11 we have all three telephones glued into position on the wall and desk together with another mini newspaper and some more sheets of paper made up at the same time as the last lot.
In Part 2 of the Hut Interior: the posters on the wall (a couple previewed here), the brass bell and sign board, a coat rack (occupied) and the first of the converted figures – Arnold.

Until then Happy Modelling to you All!


Robin

A master class in scratch building

Brilliant work yet again Robin, love it!

Steve

Many thanks indeed for those wonderful comments from all those above!
I'd have to admit to Hans though, when I scroll up and down, I keep finding the things I forgot to put in earlier in the diary! In keeping with the scratch building theme, here's the last part of the Hut interior!

In Photo 1 we have a selection of the war time posters obtained from various royalty-free web sources, (wiki is a good place to look!). Of those shown here, the three biggest ones were produced for public education whilst the three smaller b/w ones were official ‘Know your enemy’ posters supplied to the RAF detailing the inner workings of the Me109, Stuka and Dornier. The downloaded jpegs were fed in to the Corel Printhouse program and reduced down to scale size before being printed off on thin photo paper as shown in Photo 2. Note that the yellow ‘Ring like ‘Ell’ board is the Mk1 version. From memory I was sure it read “Don’t just come and tell – Ring this like ‘Ell!” In actual fact it simply read “Don’t just tell – Ring like ‘Ell!” so there was a Mk2 which followed later! The same wrong version is shown in Photo 3 underneath the framed board into which it fitted. The board is simply a piece of plasticard with edge strips cut off the same sheet and painted with Revell German Yellow acrylic. I had also given the photo paper a coat of matt varnish, which didn’t quite work as you can see here, the final version received a coat of acrylic gloss instead which didn’t cloud out the writing. Accompanying the ‘Ring like ‘Ell’ sign is the brass bell (obviously!) I did toy with the idea of trying to carve out a plastic bell on the Mantua mini lathe but in the end I took the easy way out and bought a pack of brass ship’s bells from the local Antics store. I can’t remember the supplier and can’t find the packet label but it’s the same as the Part No. 80052 in the Hobby’s Catalogue which I think are all Constructo packs. Nice and cheap though, the catalogue says £1.49 for a pack of eight (this IS a 2006 catalogue though!). The first thing to sort out was how to suspend the bell from the gantry, the solution is shown in Photo 4, a tiny piece of round plastic, drilled through to accept a length of ship’s rigging thread and painted in Humbrol Brass acrylic. The white ‘rod’ below from which the plug was cut is actually the exhaust pipe silencer from the Airfix Ambulance kit (which was replaced with aluminium tubing if you remember). The white thread was first knotted and passed up through the plug and then the bell, a drop of super glue gel on the top of the plug and the upper part of the knot then glued the thread into the plug, and the plug into the inside of the bell as shown in Diagram 5. The components are: A: The red brick pillar built into the hut walls, B: The three part ‘gallows’ cut from Plasticard, C: A hole drilled up into the end of the support beam for the thread, D: The white thread knotted top and bottom, E: the plastic plug securing the thread and finally, F: the brass bell itself. The whole thing is shown glued into position with the sign board in Photo 6.
Photo 7 shows the component parts for the little coat rack in the corner of the hut. I must admit, I was really pleased with the way this item turned out. In the movie, the scenes inside the hut usually showed a variety of equipment hung up in the corners beside the various doors and I wanted to try and give an idea of the ‘in use’ appearance seen there. There were many different items in the movie but for this attempt I decided on a greatcoat, a gas mask case and attached ‘tin helmet’ seen at different times through the film and another Mae West lifejacket (I say ‘another’ but I haven’t posted up ‘Skipper’s’ building yet – his was the first one! The main part, the greatcoat and Mae West were moulded or formed together from a small amount of Milliput epoxy putty as shown here. The Mae West was further detailed with some straps made from the lead strip and both the gas mask case and the steel helmet were cut from a couple of unfortunate polythene soldier figures, the case also getting a lead strap too. In it’s ‘raw’ state as shown here, the Milliput creation looks really rough but with a couple of coats of Revell acrylic it becomes quite a nice little representation of what I was trying for, as you can hopefully see in Photo 8 alongside the traditional penny. The gas mask case was supposed to be fixed in place by the sticky Milliput only but it did come away during painting so it was glued down with a tiny spot of contact adhesive. The steel helmet was too small for that method however and so I drilled a tiny hole into the underside, pushed a piece of 0.5mm brass rod into it and drilled a corresponding hole into the Milliput, super gluing it into place. The greatcoat and the helmet were both painted with Revell RAF Blue (361-79), the coat then getting black ink shadows and a Blue and White mixture dry brushed on for highlights whilst the helmet received a coat of Humbrol Satin varnish to bring out the ‘metallic’ look. The gas mask case and straps were Vallejo Khaki (70.988) and the Mae West was Revell German Yellow (36-310) (of all colours!) with khaki straps. The wooden coat rack to which the Milliput was super glued is just an offcut of Sapele wood. The final effect can be seen in Photo 9 along with a couple of the other posters.
And now, to the first of the figures in the diorama. I had thought that Arnold, the Dispatch Officer was the first figure I made but when I was getting the photos off the memory card I couldn’t understand why his arms were different. I then realised that Arnold was in fact the third figure, the first two were Squadron Leader ‘Skipper’ and his ground crewman readying his harness straps which were made as a pair. It just so happens that Arnold and the ground crew man shared the same torso on the Preiser sprue so here’s two figures for the price of one! Photo 10 shows the relevant sprue from the pack, the torso used is part 40 which is actually a leaning fighter pilot, Arnold’s left arm was part 36 (for holding the telephone receiver) and either part 27 or 42 (probably 27) for the right arm waving out the window. Both used heads wearing the standard forage cap. I didn’t photograph Arnold’s construction so the other chap is standing in for him here. The only major surgery required on this figure is to sand down his lower legs, the pilot figure comes wearing flying boots, which had to be sanded back to form standard trousers instead. Photo 11 illustrates the figure after the usual spray of Poundland grey primer and then brush painted in the Revell RAF Blue. In Photo 12, the creases and hems have been picked out with Citadel Shadow Black ink applied with a very small pointed brush (00 I think). This was then followed when completely dry by a subtle drybrushing of the RAF Blue mixed with a drop of Admiralty White which not only accentuates the highlights of the folds and creases, but also ‘deepens’ the shadows at the same time (Photo 13). In Photo 14 the figure really comes to life with the painting of the flesh. This was Admiralty Flesh, a nice ‘suntanned’ colour (as the crews of old sailing ships would have been of course!). Once dry, this was given a thinned down wash of Citadel Flesh Wash which really brings out the fine detail in the face and hands, no highlighting was required, the wash providing the shadows and leaving the highlights intact. Once the flesh was completed, the last of the details like the black shoes, hair colour, brass buttons and light blue shirt collars etc were added in, with either Humbrol, Revell or Admiralty acrylics. Photo 15 illustrates probably the hardest part of constructing these figures – gluing on the heads! The Preiser plastic is a little on the ‘slippery’ side when it comes to holding on to it, this head is balanced on my index finger tip to give an idea of the size (and the great moulding detail). Be very careful when trying to hold these parts with tweezers to attach them onto the body – I was very lucky and managed to find each one that ‘pinged’ off into the distance – which was a minor miracle in my attic workroom! Arnold himself is pictured in Photo 16, as you can see, he has the same torso and legs as the other figure, just different positioned arms and one of the heads with more of a ‘looking up’ neck shape. I’ve placed another telephone receiver in his open left hand with a length of that single electric wire super glued to the end, painted a creamy brown to match the actual telephone cord. In the final Photo 17, Arnold has been glued in place beside the desk with his right arm waving out the window and the receiver cord cut to size and simply stuck inside the bottom of the Field Telephone. It wasn’t glued in place, just pushed inside the box for effect, hopefully Arnold isn’t going anywhere! Incidentally what looks like a sprue attachment on his back isn’t! It’s an unfortunate effect from the folds and shadows in the uniform – honest! The sprue attachment is on the shoulder!
For the next instalment I’ve just realised that I never actually finished the two Spitfires so I’ll get them completed and also admit to something that went very wrong doing it! (Seemed a good idea at the time though!)

Happy Modelling to you All ‘till then!


Robin.

The Accu-mulator Trolley was an important piece of ground crew apparatus used to literally ‘jump start’ aero engines. (Sorry about the spelling, its the only way around the rude word filter! ) The old biplane fighters were usually started up by some poor chap swinging the propeller (or airscrew) around, until the cylinders fired up. Some larger engines could be started by a built in device, which fired something similar to a shotgun cartridge to ‘kick start’ the motor. By the late 1930’s, most modern fighters could be started up using their own on board batteries but the starting process would quickly drain these flat and so the starting trolley or accu-mulator trolley was designed to provide the ‘umph!’ required. These trolleys varied in size and design from dinky little things running around on bicycle wheels up to the largest versions, which were towed around by tractors. This particular one, modelled on the Airfix original was a medium type capable of being dragged around by hand or towed behind a vehicle. From the design I think this one was basically a huge battery on wheels but some of them were equipped with a little petrol engine on top to charge up their internal battery (accu-mulator is an old name for the early batteries). In Photo 1 we have the accu-mulator trolley as supplied with the old Airfix RAF Personnel set (two of them actually). This little piece of equipment comes in four pieces, as you can see a little clearer in Photo 3 – the under chassis complete with the axle, front castor wheel and towing handle, the box shaped body and the two wheels which just push fit onto the axles. To be honest, this little chap has stood the test of time quite well and built ‘as is’ still produces a nice little addition to any airfield diorama. As you have probably realised by now, ‘as is’ isn’t the way this diorama was going! In Photo 2 we have the new and improved scratch built replacement now increased to around thirty five parts! About 90% of the model is made from sheet plasticard and styrene rod and strip, with a little bit of lead strip and lead solder, a tiny piece of wood and two other plastic items thrown in as well (more on them later!)
The first section was the framework of the chassis underside. I have no idea if they really were like this but since I couldn’t find any photos of the bottom of these things I went with the Airfix version. Onto the chassis the basic box shape of the body was put together, sanding everything smooth after it had dried. One thing missing from the simpler Airfix model are the two side guards which are part protection from the wheels and part stowage areas for the long HT lead or cable which can be seen in Photos 4 and 5. The axle glued to the chassis was a section of thick plasticard cut into a square section with the ends rounded off to take the wheels which were, originally going to be from the Airfix model but ended up a little different! The grey box with the power dials and meters on the front was a filed down length of grey sprue from the MkIV tank kits with slivers of styrene rod for the dials. The hole drilled in on the left is for the electric cable, which was made out of the soft lead solder. The horseshoe shaped enclosure on the lid was formed from that lead strip and forms the little stowage enclosure where the end of the cable clips into in normal use, as you’ll see in the final photo, on this occasion the trolley in NOT in normal use! On the rear of the trolley is another part of the cable stowage, an ‘L’ shaped bracket into which the cable slots.
Now as I mentioned earlier, these trolleys come in all shapes and sizes, as also do their wheels. The standard sort is as modelled on the Airfix one, a solid wheel hub with quite pronounced tyres. Another very common variation which I preferred as it gave a little more of interest to look at was the ‘Holy Hub’ (Batman!) This was your basic solid hub with the addition of a circle of lightening holes around the axle. I tried to achieve this using the kit wheels (of which I had six, four dark grey ones from the RAF set I purchased for this diorama and two cream coloured ones shown in the photos here, on the trolley from my old original set bought decades ago. I duly drilled out one wheel to achieve a not to bad effect at all, however, when I drilled out the second one from the same set and using the same drill bit, I ended up with a set of nasty ‘furred up’ holes – and no idea why! The only way I could attempt to remedy the situation was to try and remove the furring (or burring I suppose it is really) using heat via my mini gas jet, which I was also using to remove the moulding rim around the tyres. The problem is the modern polythene plastic appears to be even softer than the old variety and instead of removing the untidy looking burrs, I ended up with what appeared to be two wheels with decidedly punctured flat tyres! After searching desperately through my spares box and even thinking of raiding any unstarted aircraft kits (or cannibalising an old childhood one) I couldn’t find anything suitable so some drastic scheming was called for! That scheming paid off the following Saturday when I was making my way through the Plymouth Pannier Market and I passed by the old traditional button stall. That gave me a sneaky idea which had to wait until the following Saturday when I took the little Airfix trolley in with me and managed to find a button of almost the exact same diameter and width. At 5p each I bought four just to be safe! Photo 6 illustrates the main steps to turn a plastic button into a pneumatic tyre wheel. On the left is the basic untouched button, the first step is to sand down the rear face of the button (the domed part upper most in the left hand one) until it is flat. I used quite a course sandpaper to begin with as you can probably tell from the scratch marks, finishing off with progressively finer grades. The underside of the button (which is actually the front face when worn) already has a slight depression, which forms the ‘tyre’ but this needed to be enlarged or deepened, as shown in the right hand example. This was achieved by clamping the button in the jaws of my Mantua Mini Lathe and then with the lathe running, using the wood carving knives to router out the existing dip as seen here. Once the centre had been carved down it was fitted with a plasticard disc into which the ring of holes could be drilled and countersunk. With them complete, the disc or hub was glued into place on the button and once completely dry, a small hole was drilled in the very centre with a corresponding hole drilled into the plasticard axle to accept a brass pin from Victory to hold it in place as shown in Photo 7 after the wheel had been primed ready for the Revell RAF Blue for the hub and Citadel Chaos Black for the rubber tyre. The only wooden piece on the trolley also came from the ship spares box, this was the little front wheel which was formed from the round top section of a wooden balustrade. You can just make out the wheel underneath the completed model in Photo 8 alongside the Airfix original for comparison. The last part to construct was the HT cable which runs from the box on the front. This was made from a length of thin solder with a slightly thicker bit of stretched sprue super glued on the end for the connector which plugs into the starter jack on the nose of the aircraft. As you can see in the final Photo 9, the trolley is not in its ‘normal’ configuration! The cable should be wound around the body of the trolley a second time with the connector plugged into the receptor on the top. This though is an emergency scramble, and the lone operator is dragging the trolley away from the Spitfire as fast as he can! (dragging the unplugged cable behind him). The figure itself is the Airfix ground crewman used straight from the box, there is another man in the set who is pushing the trolley from behind but he is now the chap up on the wing waiting to strap Skipper into his seat. (It’s all go on this airfield!)
In the next instalment, making up the figure of Skipper himself, another Preiser conversion!

Until then, Happy Modelling to you all!


Robin.

I just realised, its actually 39 parts to the trolley, I forgot the cable, connector and two brass pins!