Many thanks there Ian, the health ups and downs have been slowing me up lately but finally, here's the next part!
I’ve made countless model soldiers throughout the years from 1/72 scale through 1/35 to 1/24 scale. I’ve glued them together and painted them up but until now I’ve never really understood how the belts and straps moulded on them were actually fitted together. Now that I’m creating a scratch built figure in 1/6th scale I’m going to have to find out what all those bits and pieces actually do in order to re-create them in miniature. Photo 1 shows the excellent reference book I found on the web to help build my 1/6th scale webbing. This is British Web Equipment of the two World Wars by Martin J Brayley (like it says on the cover! ) I say excellent because if you want really detailed photos of every piece of British Military Web Equipment with details and descriptions, this is the one to get. Unfortunately, as with many great reference books on military things, when it comes to trying to make miniature representations there’s one thing missing – the actual ruddy dimensions of the stuff! So, over the last few months, piece by piece, I’ve been acquiring the real thing off ebay. All this stuff used to be as common as muck in all the old army surplus stores and could be picked up really cheaply. Not any more though, the Second World War is now a ‘Collector’s Era’ and the price has gone through the roof! Look long enough though and you can still pick up some good bargains at a reasonable price. So far I’ve got hold of a pair of braces, the main supporting belt, a great condition water bottle and straps, a bayonet frog and three basic ammo pouches (these were all RAF blue ones as they’re much cheaper!) All of these items can now be used to obtain the full measurements required to create the 1/6th versions required for the figure. Essentially, the webbing set is a harness, consisting of a waist belt to which are attached a pair of braces. Unlike normal braces however, they are only attached to the rear of the belt, they are not attached to the front, instead being attached to the rear of either small cartridge carriers (similar to the 1908 Pattern carriers used in the Great War) or either to the larger ‘Basic Ammunition Pouch’ so iconic of the WW2 Tommy, more on them later. It is the cartridge carriers or the basic pouch, which are actually attached to the belt at the front.
To begin the set I’ll be starting off with the pair of braces which carry the weight of the full set of equipment on poor Tommy’s shoulders.
Photo 2 illustrates one of those braces, I’ve had to photograph it ‘folded up’ unfortunately as it’s just too darned long to get it out straight and still be close enough to see the details! For those interested in the dimensions, they are as follows: the lengths in brackets are the 1/6th scale measurements:
Length of wide shoulder pad: 12” / 305mm (48.8mm)
Width of shoulder pad: 2 and 1/10” / 54mm (8.6mm)
Length of straps: 20” / 508mm (81.2mm)
Width of straps: 1” / 26mm (4.1mm)
Photo 3 shows the stitched on strap attached to both ends of the shoulder pad, in this example the ends of the pad are folded in and stitched down to produce the triangular end shape, other manufacturers used slightly different methods during the war. If you look again at Photo 2 you can see a ‘loop’ stitched onto the top strap, this is shown in close up in Photo 4. This is where the two braces cross over the back and, should only be found on one of the two braces. In actual fact my set has both braces with a loop so I’ve actually got two of the same side – still, it’s far better having two with loops than two without! Photo 5 is a close up of the two ends of the straps illustrating the brass strap ends. These are of high quality brass secured by rivets as shown here. The idea was that the brass should be allowed to tarnish, the verdigris oxidation layer turning it a camouflaged green. However, right up to the declaration of war, the Sgt. Majors insisted on having many hours spent polishing up the brass until it was gleaming (and a dead give-a-way under fire!) Photo 6 is a close up of the under side of the shoulder pad – strap joint. In all these photos, the one thing that stands out is the heavy weave appearance of the webbing. In order to reproduce this in 1/6th scale, how to get that effect in miniature would be the first thing to sort out.
After trying out various means of obtaining that woven effect I finally had a brainwave. Measuring the full sized weave I found that there were eleven stitches to the inch. Reducing this to 1/6th would give me sixty six stitches to the inch. As I was ordering a sheet of stainless steel mesh to repair our broken veg steamer I realised that the same small sheet of mesh was available in sixty mesh size (60 grids to the inch). That was close enough, in full size that was only one stitch short, Photo 7 shows that small sheet with the thin strip I subsequently cut off it to make it easier to handle. Photo 8 is a close up showing the individual strips in the mesh and Photo 9 is the first trial run to create the scaled down webbing. The webbing is made from 9mm wide DecraLed lead strip, folded to double thickness. The steel mesh strip was placed over the top of the lead and rolled down using an aluminium knife handle to imprint the mesh into the soft metal. This trial piece also has stitches down the sides using a pounce wheel. The shoulder pads are shown under way in Photo 10, the pads are 48mm in length and 8.6mm in width. The lower example has had it’s corners folded in as per the original and the centre of the folds are covered up by the addition of the straps, the first one having been super glued in place in Photo 11 (with sewing needle ‘stitches’ added afterwards). The knife handle ‘rolling pin’ worked ok, but I thought there must be a more efficient tool to do this with. I tried a plastic wallpaper edging roller but found the drum wasn’t hard enough to get a good impression with, but then, looking on ebay for rollers I found a solid aluminium alternative. This brilliant tool is shown in Photo 12 but be aware – whilst this one can be found for about £8 or so, there is another which looks very similar for a couple of pound less but has a much thinner arm attaching the roller to the handle – fine for wallpaper but I think a little too thin for the pressures needed here. Finally in Photo 13 we have the finished braces. One of the straps has stitching on the end but ignore that, the ends will be cut off when the braces are fitted to the figure and new ends will be made with the brass tips, which will be attached to the water bottle.
In the next instalment, working out the waist belt (which is a lot bigger and far more complicated!)

Until then, Happy Modelling to you All!

Robin.

Lovely work Robin, glad to hear you are feeling better.

Mark

Excellent build Robin The level of detail is only matched by the level of historical information supplied. Both top notch.
Regards Gray

As mentioned in the last posting, a slight change to the diary schedule. In this installment I’ll be starting the SMLE bayonet, which will be slung from the Chindit’s waist belt. Although for this model the bayonet is sheathed in its scabbard, I decided to go the whole way and model both the bayonet and a separate scabbard, that way, if and when I make any further busts equipped with the SMLE (like WW1 era for example) I’ll already have that little item made up!
Photo 1 illustrates the real thing – this is a one hundred and one year old Pattern 1907 Bayonet. This one was made by one of the lesser known manufacturers J. Chapman Ltd. The Pattern 1907, usually abbreviated to P’07 was made by companies in the UK, USA, India and Australia. Most of the WW1 examples were made by Sanderson (1,600,00) and Wilkinson (2,360,000 and yes, that’s the Wilkinson Blade company!)
Against those numbers, Chapman made 300,000. This particular one was manufactured in January 1917 although for some reason (possibly using up some older materials) the scabbard is earlier as it is equipped with the tear-drop retaining stud which was changed to a simpler round stud to speed up production during the war. The webbing ‘Frog’ which attaches the scabbard to the webbing belt is actually post war and dated 1951 but is identical to the later WW1 and throughout WW2 examples. I would have shown the scabbard without the frog but once it was fitted on its damned near impossible to get it off again! The webbing frog replaced the earlier leather version after the start of the Great War – again to speed up production. The black leather scabbard is equipped with steel ends – the Chape at the tip and the Locket up the top end. The bayonet is composed of twelve pieces – the tempered steel blade, the cross piece, the brazed on pommel with its spring loaded bolt and nut which secures the bayonet in place and finally the two wooden grips with their steel nuts and bolts (although the bolts are actually called screws in the manual!) The official designation of the P’07 is a Sword Bayonet as it is long enough to be used as a short sword in combat. Photos 2 to 6 show the bayonet in close up. Photo 2 shows the rear of the screws and nuts securing the wooden grips with the sprung bolt sticking up out of the pommel. The ring on the cross piece fits over the corresponding round lug on the front of the rifle’s muzzle. Photo 3 is from the other side and shows the other end of the sprung bolt sitting flush against the pommel – notice as well the deep groove running down the blade, this is the Fuller although many call it the Blood Groove. It doesn’t really have anything to do with blood however, it simply lightens the weight of the blade without reducing its strength. Photo 4 illustrates the end of the pommel with that bolt again and the groove which locates onto the bayonet lug at the rear of the muzzle cap. When the bayonet is fitted on the rifle, part of that flush side of the bolt protrudes out slightly as it moves over the locating lug and then drops back flush again. Photo 5 shows the tight fitting webbing frog fitted over the Locket and its stud whilst Photo 6 shows the rear of the Chape, again notice the raised strip up the centre – this fits over the stitched leather scabbard fold, the fold carries all the way up to the steel Locket at the top.
So, the first job was to decide how to make that deep Fuller groove along the blade of my 1/6th scale P’07. I had already decided that the majority of the miniature bayonet would be made from sheet plasticard so the first couple of attempts involved trying to file, sand or router the groove into a section of plasticard the correct thickness for the blade. Needless to say, those methods weren’t particularly successful. Without such a thing as a mini-router table or attachment, attempting to use the rotary tool as a handheld resulted in the diamond dust ball point going everywhere (except in the straight line I wanted) whilst the diamond dust rat tail files were a little straighter but not consistent enough. In the end, the solution was fairly obvious – I chose to construct the blade as a lamination instead of a single piece. Photo 7 shows the three sections of the blade – a thicker central section with two thinner outer parts. These were marked with a pencil dot where the fuller began and ended which were then drilled through with a drill bit the same diameter as the width of the fuller (middle piece in the photo). Then, carefully using the very sharp pointed knife I used with the paper Pups last year, I slowly scribed along the plastic blade joining the top of one hole to the other followed by the bottom, eventually removing the plastic from between them (bottom example). Photo 8 shows the same pieces with the first outer skin glued in place and the waste strip below. In Photo 9 both the outer laminations have been glued down and left to harden off overnight (I’m using standard Liquid Poly type glue here). The following day the full thickness blade was sanded down to create the pointed tip and the sharpened ‘cutting edge’. You can see the tiny size of the miniature version up against the original here! The next task was to shape the tang of the blade which followed the wooden grip profile and to shape another section of plasticard to create the cross piece as shown in Photo 10. Note the small hole on the cross piece, I’ve left this small although it should be much bigger to form a ring which fits over the muzzle cap lug. I’ll have to create a silicone mould for this later and I can’t see any way to have that ring without the liquid rubber flowing through it and locking the original prototype in the mould! It’ll have to be cast with a small hole which is simply a marker to drill out the larger one afterwards.
In the second part of the Bayonet instalment, finishing the wooden grips (with wood), adding the pommel and then starting the scabbard and frog (Oh Joy!) Note to self: on the next one, try to remember to add the cross piece BEFORE gluing on the pommel!

Until then, Happy Modelling to you All!

Robin.

great work Robin, looking excellent.

Mark

Now let me see could it be the hilt is the wrong way round
Stunning work as always Robin
Martyn

Lovely work Robin.

Mark

Looking Fantastic robin. really enjoying seeing this on come together.
Ian