Thanks again to Stevie and Alan! Here's a couple of the bits I completely forgot to stick in before taking the Finished Build photos! That's what comes of having everything in little plastic pots and not just a big pile on the work top!

Part Forty Four: The Last German Medic and the MG Loader

When this lousy war is over no more soldiering for me,
When I get my civvy clothes on, oh how happy I shall be.
No more church parades on Sunday, no more begging for a pass.
You can tell the sergeant-major to stick his passes up his arse.

More heart-felt comments from Tommy to the tune of ‘What a Friend we have in Jesus’

In this instalment we get to the last of the ‘fairly’ major figure conversions, namely the last of the German Medics who in this case is converted from one of the Flamethrower squad and also the other half of the MG08 machinegun team who is modelled not feeding the ammo belt this time, but trying to save the sledge mounting for the gun in the bunker.
The first diagram shows the two members of the ‘Flammenwerfer’ team as pictured on the back of the HaT WW1 German Heavy Weapons Set. Later Flamethrowers were a single man affair, but the earlier versions, as shown here were two man operated. On the left is the ‘mule’ who carries all the weight of the weapon on his back in the shape of a large pressurised cylinder containing the flammable mixture. This is fed to the other member of the team via a flexible hose to a long ‘Lance’ with an ignition device on the tip. It is this second man who actually aims and fires the thing, his team mate is simply a two legged fuel tank!
Photos 1 and 2 show the tank carrier still on the sprue, the conversion consisted of removing all signs of the flamethrower by cutting away the hose from in front and behind his right hand and then carving away the actual tank or cylinder from his back. The hose was pretty easy, the tank needed a lot more care, not so much in removing the soft polythene plastic as in not removing the human flesh being used to hold the diminuitive figure between thumb and forefinger!
Photo 3 shows the figure with all the relevant bits removed, unfortunately I neglected to photograph him from behind which is where all the actual hard work took place! (We’ll come back to him later.)
The next job was to scratch build a new sledge mount for the loader to be pulling back into the bunker. The mounting supplied in the set would have been a really nice piece is it wasn’t for all the nasty flash covering it. My first attempt was to simply slice off the two front legs from the kit part which of course, is moulded in the ‘standing’ position to allow the MG to be fired from the sitting position. This didn’t go too well though and resulted in the leg breaking up completely. With only one more flashy kit piece left I decided I’d use my reference photos for the details and the kit piece for the dimensions, and build a new one. The real thing is very much like a Black and Decker Workmate in operation as I’ll explain shortly. Diagram 4 illustrates the ‘exploded’ view of the component parts (26 in all). The majority of the parts were cut out from various thicknesses of plasticard sheet. The parts that weren’t are as follows:
a was a tiny strip of lead, curved into a ‘horseshoe’ shape to form part of the elevation mounting, b and c were two different diameters of stretched sprue left over from the wicker fencing, these made up the two levers which lock or release the front legs into different positions and the shaft for the elevation handle and d was a tiny length of the 1.1mm styrene rod made by Plastruct, which I had made the wicker fence uprights from, this formed the rotating handle for the elevation gear. The finished mount can be seen in Photo 5 in front of the kit part. The new one looks massive against the kit, but they are actually the same dimensions, its just the ‘stretched out’ position of those front legs (and being in the foreground) that makes it look so much bigger!
In operation, the curved front of the two side bars of the sledge are equipped with a series of rectangular cut outs running around the curve. The two sprung levers on the legs are pulled outwards which releases two spring clip ‘knobs’ from a pair of those cut outs and that allows the legs to rotate around the bolt which connects them to the chassis. When the mounting is angled correctly to suit the terrain the levers are released and the spring clips engage in the nearest cut out locking the mounting solid – a very simple and elegant mechanism. To fire from a prepared position the legs can be swung completely forward and to move the whole gun and mount the legs are rotated all the way back until the ‘feet’ are tight up under the cut outs at the rear of the side bars, the gunner and his loader then attach their leather straps to the mount and drag it like a sledge across the ground (an extremely heavy sledge that is!)
Anyway, Photo 6 illustrates the mounting after painting it with the Vallejo Green Grey 70.886 acrylic with some light drybrushing for the highlights. The loader himself was the same home cast white metal figure as used for the gunner cradling the machinegun, the only difference being, instead of his arms being bent into position to hold the gun, they were bent up and out until they were the same width apart as the ends of the mounting as shown in Photo 7.
Now quickly back to the Medic and Photos 8 and 9 show him painted up with his Red Crosses on the helmet and the typical German ‘braces’ painted across his back where the flamethrower tank used to be. I thought afterwards I could have given him a First Aid bag to be held in his now empty right hand!, oh well, can’t think of everything!
The final two Photos, 10 and 11, show the completed Loader and the new mounting, trying desperately to pull it back into the bunker. What it doesn’t show is the wooden ammo box and belt and the ammo belt laying across the sandbags which I forgot to add before taking the photos! (Again!)
In part Forty Five, beginning to fit the internals into the half a MkIV tank, beginning with the 6pdrs and the Sponsons.

Happy Modelling to you All!

Robin.

hi Robin

have just spent the time and gone through your build log. I must say that you have a truly amazing build there. The detail you have gone into is stunning and a real credit to your talent.

Look forward to your progress.

regards

Foz

Hi Robin, this build has certainly advertised your skills and techniques at their best... No matter what you decide to do next you will have to produce something extra special to beat this dio.... Fabulous work from a master....

Regards

Alan

My sincerest thanks to Nemesis, Foz, Stevie, Alan and Jase for those wonderful comments! It means so much to receive such praise from those whose own models and work are so skilled and talented!! .
Still catching up with the diary backlog of work that was actually completed months ago now! Some of it even needs careful thought as to How DID I do that? (Too many mercury fillings in my youth I think!)

Anyway, here's the beginning of one of the most fiddly and intricate parts of the diorama - the insides of the MkIV!

Part Forty Five: The MkIV Heavy Tank Internals: The Six Pounders.

One staff officer jumped right over another staff officer's back.
And another staff officer jumped right over that other staff officer's back,
A third staff officer jumped right over two other staff officers' backs,
And a fourth staff officer jumped right over all the other staff officers' backs.
They were only playing leapfrog,
They were only playing leapfrog,
They were only playing leapfrog,
When one staff officer jumped right over another staff
officer's back.

A cutting jibe by Tommy against his social climbing Top Brass, brought brilliantly to life by the Anzacs in the movie “Oh What a Lovely War!”
To the tune of ‘Mine Eyes have seen the Glory’

The ‘super-detailed’ cut-away tanks began with the two 6pdr armed side sponsons. Construction began with the two basic kit parts, the sponson side panel and the rear facing door section as shown in Photo 1. Once fixed together, the main access doors were again upgraded with the addition of the 6pdr spent shell ‘chute’ made from a shaped section of plasticard with self-adhesive copper tape, ‘riveted’ with a blunt needle as seen in Photo 2. (This is actually a re-use of the photos taken of Rumblebelly! The actual chutes weren’t fitted until after the guns were installed and I didn’t take any photos!) The next step was to make up the vertical gun shields to add on to the 6pdr barrel assemblies as in Photo 3.
So far, so good, the procedure here has been exactly the same as that for the first full hull version. Now it gets interesting!!
As you can see in Photo 3, the 6pdr QF Guns supplied in the kit have a rudimentary breech mechanism and two simple trunions or axles to glue it onto the curved gun shield. Since none of the breech end is visible on the finished model (as built out of the box) I’m quite grateful that Emhar included anything at all at the back! It certainly gave me a good basis for the upgrading into a more respectable looking cannon. The first task however was not on the gun barrels themselves but on those curved gun shields. These are designed to simply push into the gap in the sponson side and to be glued in position, and to give more area for the glue, the top and bottoms are moulded solid where in fact, the real thing is just a curved metal plate. I could have tried to fabricate a completely new one out of thin plasticard, but that really thin vision slot for the gun’s aiming telescope to the left of the ‘loophole’ was almost impossible to replicate down this small so I went for using the kit parts. As you can see in Photo 4, the solid roof and floor of the shield was ground away with the rotary tool and a diamond dust grinding ball. The resulting demolition work was then cleaned up with curved diamond dust files and wet and dry paper. One came out perfect but the other one actually cracked right in the middle due to holding it a little too tightly and had to be gently pulled back into shape and liquid poly applied along the crack to re-set the distortion.
At this point the guns themselves were also added to, using the line drawings and photos in the Haynes Great War Tank Manual, various bits and bobs were added. The right hand side has a two armed crank lever which opens and closes the breech, the left hand side has a diagonal plate, underneath of which is a pistol type butt and trigger which actually fires the thing and a curving brass wire arm with a leather padded end is fitted over the side of this panel. In use, the gunner grips the leather pad under his right armpit and uses it to swing the entire mounting up and down as well as traversing left and right. On the top of the breech and barrel is a styrene plastic rod mounted on two supports. This is a brass telescope with X2 power and a crude crosshair, engraved into the optics. This was the aiming sight, which peered through the aforementioned thin vertical vision slot in the gun shield. No red dot targeting lasers here! Photo 4 shows one of the cannon resting in the gun shield with the other laid out beside. Photos 5 and 6 show the same components after the primer coat of Poundland Car Spray whilst Photo 7 shows the two finished turrets painted up ready for final fitting. The breech end was Citadel Bolt Gun Metal, the barrel and outer shield was Vallejo Medium Olive. The inner shield walls were Admiralty White and the leather padding was Vallejo Red Leather. Finally the telescopes were Humbrol Brass acrylic.
Although the guns and their shields were simply glued into the rectangular cut outs in the sponsons, some major additions were required before that could be achieved. In the actual tanks, from the original MkI’s right through to the final MkVII’s, the male versions 6pdr cannon were mounted on a pedestal, which was bolted to the floor plates of the sponson. This must have placed a huge amount of weight on that one corner of the structure and a large shelf plate was fixed just below the gun shield which presumably spread some of that weight onto two of the sponson walls. The first tricky job therefore was to measure out a sheet of plasticard to serve as this shelf. I found the easiest way to get it to fit was to cut a former out of white card as close as I could to the fit required and then to just slice off tiny strips to compensate for any slight gaps until it fitted snugly on both sides against the walls. Once that was correct I then drew in the circular quadrant, transferred that final shape to the plasticard and cut out the finished piece. Luckily of course, one correct template provided both sides’ shelves; one was just turned upside down! The plastic shelf can be seen in Photos 8 to 10. The tubular pedestal was formed in two halves as it doesn’t actually hold the gun at all. The upper part, best seen in Photo 9 was made from two short lengths of aluminium tubing, one fitting snugly inside the other. After the rest of the sponson interior was done and the 6pdr was glued in place I fitted the smaller tube inside the bigger with a little showing at the top. The bigger tube was then placed in underneath the gun, close to the trunions with a drop of slower acting super glue on top of the shelf first. Once the tube was stuck fast I used a pair of thin tweezers to gently pull up the inner tubing until it appeared to be supporting the breech. This was then also secured in position with a drop of super glue on a cocktail stick. The lower pedestal was completely different (and much easier to put in place!) It was made from an off-cut of the same soft metal sheet from Mum’s eye ointment tubes as the corrugated sheets for the trenches. A rectangular piece was cut to size a tiny bit shorter than the distance from the floor to the bottom of the shelf and simply bent around a suitable drill bit shaft to form an open half cylinder. This was then just slid into place under the shelf, again giving the impression that it is connected to the cannon and shelf. The last two additions to the inside of the sponsons were an inner door of plasticard with it’s matching locking catch (I just cut a piece of the card to match the moulded doors on the outside) and finally, the inner parts of the spy-hole cum revolver ports which are found all over the tank. These were made from thin slices cut off the 1.1mm styrene rod and placing them in the correct position was one of the easier jobs. Just by holding the sponson up to the daylight, the moulded on outer sections of these ports were clearly visible through the slightly translucent plastic. I just had to put a dot on the inside with a softish pencil lead and then put a drop of super glue on the mark and then, using a licked cocktail stick, pick up one of the slices and carefully place it on the glued mark. Simples!
Before the guns were glued in place, the entire inside of the sponson was given a rough coat of brushed on Admiralty White. The many photos I've collected show the interior of these beasts with a finish that looks like it went on with a 12” wall paper brush. However, there’s a scale roughness and there’s a rough roughness. After due consideration I came to the conclusion that I really hated that rough roughness and eventually car white primered the insides instead! As you can see in these last three photos, the white still has an actual texture to it which at least was better than the obvious brush marks which came before!
The only thing still missing (apart from the crew figures) is the sponson Lewis Gun. That will be coming in the next instalment along with the main hull internal walls (and lots of holes and other bits I hadn’t banked on!)

Until then, Happy Modelling to All!


Robin

Superb attention to detail, this build is a master piece!!!

Absolutely amazing attention to detail and a fantastic build!!

More great work Robin and a real pleasure to see.... .. Very well done....

Regards

Alan

Sounds like you had a great time Robin and the dio looks fab in its case... Very well done...

Am a little perplexed about your pc problem especially when you say it was doing an automatic update on windows XP... Microsoft stopped supporting windows XP back in April of this year and no longer supply updates for XP.... I have an old XP system I still use but am cautiously aware the longer I use it the more vulnerable it will become to being hacked so am careful now what I store on the machine.... It has its uses but will need to be replaced quite soon.... Luckily I mainly use a laptop with windows 7 so its not too much of a problem as yet....

Hope you get the problem resolved soon....

Regards

Alan

Many thanks again to Alan and Nemesis for their kind words.
It is strange about the XP updates, I'd heard that MS had stopped providing anything more for XP too, but the updates had continued (albeit at a slower rate) right up until the problem one. I think I have narrowed down the cause however, it's still not running perfect but a lot better than it was! In fact the tower Expansion Bay door is now sitting slightly skewed as 'somebody' lost their temper and smacked the stupid box a little harder than anticipated! .
I noticed that at shut down the loading screen for the Napoleon Total War program flashed up for a split second. This is a part of the many times cursed Steam system which normally sits in the background waiting to be started up. I've now found that shutting it down completely at start up rather than simply minimising it to the bottom instantly returns the main computer to full speed. It does still freeze up or slow right down when on the internet but I know my browser is also in need of a complete udgrade to the newest version so I'll have to get that done soon.
Anyways, at least getting the diary going is much better now!

Part Fifty One: The Differential and Daimler Engine.

The first photograph Photo 1: shows the paper template cut out for the huge Differential Gearbox thingy which takes up nearly a quarter of the rear section of the MkIV. This thing takes the main drive shaft via the first gear box (coming later) and somehow transmits the power to the drive sprockets inside the rear walls of the hull through two axles, which pass through the inner hull walls. The template was taken from a scan of the Bovington MkIV plans, which I kept reducing on screen and printing off until they were just right. The lines which pass across the body of the Differential, mark the coolant pipe which passes back to the radiators. As you can see in the photo, the ends of the Differential are resting on a couple of plasticard platforms. The Differential itself needed to be raised above the level of the chassis on two curved supports which sit on top of these platforms.
Photos 2 and 3 show these supports under construction. Spare kit sprue was used to form them, in Photo 2 the round sprue has been filed down into a rectangular profile and the shape of the supports drawn on in pencil. The following Photo 3 shows the supports after they were carved and filed to shape. The sloped curves were done first whilst they were still joined to the sprue and then the step was filed down after cutting the body of the support off. They were then glued to the platforms and four tiny bolts from stretched sprue added front and back.
The next stage was the most frightening! All the work which had gone into making the chassis up to this point was now to be put at risk trying to slice the whole thing down the middle! I had intended trying to achieve this with the deep Exacto razor saw, but a few exploratory strokes of the saw soon proved that the structure was far too delicate to take the stresses involved. A trial with the rotary fine toothed saw blade also gave too much vibration so the final attempt involved using the same rotary with a very thin carbide-slitting disk. As you can see in Photo 4, it was successful, but was still nerve wracking during the process! In fact, I didn’t like the cut on one end of the engine bay covers, it hadn’t gone at a dead right angle so in the end I re-made the curved bulkheads at the front and also took the opportunity to re-do the covers in plasticard sheet as the thin aluminium I’d already put on also didn’t cut neatly either!
With the chassis finally separated down the middle, it was time to make up the two halves of the Differential itself. Of all the internal parts of the MKIV, apart from the engine that is, this was probably the most difficult bit to scratch build. Everything I’d made up before was basically ‘boxey’ in nature, from the chassis struts and girders to the rectangular radiators, this thing however was composed of more compound curves and unknown angles than the rest of the tank combined! After trying a few trials with shaping plasticard and even wood, I decided (or was forced, to be truthful) to try and make the thing up out of a variety of odds and ends with a liberal coating of Milliput thrown in for good measure. Photo 6 shows the basic design but first to Photo 5 for the ‘core’ onto which everything else was fixed! The two core sections were going to come from an old ‘Sky Crane’ helicopter made many decades ago (and sci-fi’d up a bit!), they were the engine air intakes I think but they were a little oversized unfortunately. I then found something else, which needed more work but at least had the correct diameter which you can see in Photo 5. These two objects are actually the wheel nuts from an old Lindberg unfinished kit of a naval cannon (like those on Victory in fact). It was probably about 1/12th scale. I have another of their kits, un-started and still in its box out in the old workroom, this one of a Civil War era Gatling Gun. I’ve had a project planned for that one lasting many (many) years, of using the kit parts to fashion the carriage in real wood and the gun itself in soldered brass – maybe one day!
Anyhow, the wheel nuts shown here first had their protruding locating pins on the rear filed away and then the flat face thereby created, was carefully drilled with a large drill bit to produce a counter sunk ‘depression’. Into this sunken dish would later go a drive sprocket wheel from a 1/72 Airfix German tank (1)(another never made kit, I assume its German due to the Afrika Korps sand yellow plastic, plus it looks more German than Allied!) Back to Photo 6 and here you can see the complex make up of the Differential. Into the centre of the altered wheel nut was fixed a shaped plasticard ‘platform’, (2) the real gizmo was cast in two halves and bolted together through the edge flange, this platform will eventually be that flange. On to the platform was glued two tapered sections of kit sprue cut in half lengthways to form the shaft of the machine (3). Once all was set hard, Silver Grey Milliput was mixed up to model the overall shape of the Differential body, encompassing the sprue and flaring out to meet the wheel nut disk. Once satisfied with the basic shape of the body, the Milliput was left to begin to harden off and once it was stiff enough, the edges of the putty were sliced back, removing a thin strip which forms the flange mentioned earlier. This was finished off with twenty tiny little bolts cut from a length of stretched sprue and super glued into place (5). Finally, the rectangular bits and pieces were cut from plasticard off-cuts and glued in position after gently filing a flat face into the Milliput where they had to fit (2). The Differential half shown here is the left hand side, the right hand one which is shown in the following photos, was not so detailed fortunately, it doesn’t have that curved bit with the hole in on the top! Apparently it’s a linkage to one of the levers up the front which locks the Differential for forward travel. Those links only feature in the left hand side – Yippee!
In Photo 7 you can see the left hand side before its final sanding and painting with the other side showing off that Tank Drive Sprocket.
Now came the damned engine!
I had gathered various pictures of the Daimler Knight 105hp engine but even with all of them to ponder, the overall shape of the thing was still uncertain in areas, especially the lower parts! Fortunately, in the case of cutting the thing in half as in this model, once the engine was in the casing you could hardly see any of the inside face of it anyway. It was just my passion for cramming in as much detail as possible which made this part seem so difficult. What I did find on Wiki however, which proved really useful were these two ‘free to use’ photos. Photo 8 was a semi cut a way view, which would have been perfect except that it wasn’t ‘side on’. But Photo 9 was an engineering drawing of the ‘guts’ of the motor, which gave me an idea of how to make the thing in miniature!
The first job was to save the photo of the section drawing as a jpeg and then, using the old faithful Corel Printhouse program, reduce the photo down, printing off plain paper copies until the size was just right to fit the engine bay at the forward end of the chassis. Once correct, the photo was duplicated and reversed to provide a left and right version and then the two photos were printed onto Inkjet Clear Decal sheet. The right hand side is shown in Photo 10, this was after giving it a couple of coats of matt acrylic varnish before cutting it out and applying it to a sheet of thick plasticard. Once fixed and dry, the plasticard was then cut and trimmed back to the decal leaving a flat face with the internal details of the engine. Also seen in this photo are four pieces of kit sprue which have been filed down into half rounds (before cutting into individual lengths), these will form the back edges of the four cylinders on the reverse side of the engine. This can be seen clearly in Photo 11 where the basic shape of the engine body has been built up with simple ‘slabs’ of plasticard glued at right angles to the back of the decaled face. The half circular part at the top left in this picture took a little working out until I arrived at a simple solution – one of those free ball point pens that come with charity letters was just the right size so I simply sawed off a short length of the barrel and then cut it in half. After gluing in place, the hollow interior was filled with a double thickness of plasticard cut to fit. The final engine body can be seen in Photo 13, painted first with Citadel Bolt Gun Metal and then dirtied up with a Citadel Skaven Brown Ink wash. It looks quite believable in this photo, it’s a real shame you can’t see any of it once it’s on the chassis!
In Photo 14 – it’s on the chassis! As you can see in this and the final two photos, the engine bay cover has been replaced, the old aluminium foil original having been changed for a stronger plasticard version. You can also see the ‘business’ end of the Differential, also given the Bolt Gun Metal and Ink wash treatment plus some subtle drybrushed silver highlights. Also visible is the brass rod starting crank which passes from beside the driver’s chair, back through the engine bay over the top of the Daimler and back to the front of the Differential where it is bent into the shape of the starting handle. The little red bits, which form the various pulleys and universal joints, are tiny slices of electrical wire insulation, threaded on from the front end and pushed back down the rod into position. More on the starting crank system in the next instalment!
Photo 15, from the other side, shows that plasticard engine cover again, this time with five stretched sprue pipes going down through the pre-drilled holes along the join of the two plastic sheets, which form the engine cover. These vertical pipes sit on top of the horizontal pipe work seen in Photo 11 (well most of them do!) These are the take offs for the cooling system which runs back through an overhead pipe to the rear radiators and the large connector pipe can be seen laying on the floor in the foreground. This was a length of aluminium tube with matching holes drilled through to take the sprues. In the final picture, Photo 16, the coolant connector is in place on top of the engine with an end cap from another bit of sprue glued in the front, the pipe back to the radiators will soon be seen out the back. Also visible at the front of the chassis are some of the driver’s controls, the main gear selector, the throttle, the ‘Advance and Retard’ and the starter motor selector. I’ll go into their construction in the next instalment.

Until then, Happy Modelling to you All!

Robin