Hi All!

I thought you might like this 'unusual' pic of the diorama! Way back at the Millenium when I bought my first PC from Time Computers (anyone remember them?) it was run by Windows 95 and one of the bundled software programs that came with it was a certain "Professor Franklin's Instant Photo Effects". I suddenly wondered today whether that old program would load onto my (now also outdated) Windows XP - and it did!!
I had lots of fun with this program way back then and its still fun to play around with today.
I liked the result so much I think I might put an antique album version of the finished build together later on. Until next time, hope you like this one!

Robin

Just looking again & even more amazed, I reckon you could publish this build, better than I have seen in many a book or magazine.

Excellent!

Wilfy

Many grateful thanks to all those above for their wonderful comments!
I might have to make some enquiries about the 'publishing' avenue!
I'm really glad you like the 'antique' look as much as I did, I'm currently putting together a first series of trench end photos from the diary collection and sepia-rising (is that a word?) them to form an album of postcard-like pics complete with contemporary captions as they would have had 'back in the day'. I now have to re-size them all to fit in the 800 x 600 format like the rest of the photos. Afterwards I'll try and do the same from the Allied end of the diorama. There were two 'antique' settings in the Professor Franklin program, the one you've already seen and another complete with scratches and edge tears, unfortunately you can't move the scratches around and one of them went right across the faces of the line of German soldiers! I've used both formats in the album though! With luck you'll be able to see them posted in the Finished Build section in a couple of days.
So Kev, I remain Sir, your most Obediant Servant!

Robin

Unbelievable detail on that split tank, love the antique pic too, could almost be real

Steve

Thanks again to Kev, Stevie and Alan! I was really pleased with those sepia pics, like you said, it gives such a 'period' feel to the diorama!

The 'catch up' on the MkIV is nearly done, one more instalment after this one (which Stevie should enjoy!! )

Part Fifty Two: The Gearbox, Gear stick and Pedals

Of all my photographic reference, I only came up with one photo of the main gearbox, (page 39, top right hand photo in the Haines Great War Tank Mark IV Manual). In all other photos, the gearbox was safely hidden beneath the wooden planked platform which hides everything from view! The version I scratch built to fit under the Differential is ‘sort of’ ‘close to’ that photo! It’s a funny looking irregular shaped ‘box’ with what looks like camshafts or cogs or something similar. Fortunately, the ‘undercut’ wing shaped bit is on the other side of the centre line (the bit that’s missing on the cut a way) so I got away with that – at least until “Revenge” gets built one day!
In Photo 1, you can see the basic ‘slab’ shape of the gearbox housing which was built up in layers of plasticard with the main drive shaft from Plastruct 1.1mm styrene rod. Also seen here is the first layer of coggy looking things made from the good old wire insulation cut off in thin slices and then sliced down the middle. These were super glued into place and were later joined by a second lower set made from slices of stretched sprue. The drive shaft protrudes back to the rear slightly in order to add on a small drum of sprue. The only reason for that was that I could see a drum shaped shadow on the wall behind the gearbox in the photo so there must have been something down there!
Photo 2 illustrates a larger drum, again fashioned from a length of rounded sprue with a central hole drilled out for the drive shaft and a series of eight bolt heads from stretched sprue again. I’m not sure what this thing actually is, the photo shows it partly disassembled, its hollow with a disc at each end joined by cylinders where those bolts go through (there should actually be six of them each side though, not four!).
In Photo 3, the main (Primary that is), gearbox is assembled prior to receiving a coat of Citadel Bolt Gun Metal followed by a Skaven Brown Ink Wash. The unit was then held under the Differential where the cogs ‘appeared’ to mesh with the sprocket teeth and the end of the drive shaft, which made a convenient handle up till now, was marked where it would have gone into the Daimler engine. After cutting to size, the end of the shaft was filed down to half the diameter where it went over the engine decal and the whole unit was carefully super glued into position as can be seen in Photo 4.
Diagram 5 shows the components of the main gear selector lever, operated by the driver’s left hand, these pieces were cut out of a selection of plasticard for the pivot, strip styrene for the main shaft and stretched sprue for the hand lever, return spring and connecting rods. The connecting rod simply passes through a hole drilled through the engine bay bulkhead where it thankfully passes out of sight behind the engine block! This can be seen in Photo 6 along with a couple of extra additions to the engine set up.
At the bottom forward end of the engine cut a way you can see an extra shaft sticking out. This is the forward end of the cam shaft which is also connected to the main driveshaft out the back. This shaft is simply a brass planking pin, drilled and glued into the engine body and is itself attached to the main crankshaft via a chain drive. The chain is formed from a length of the barbed wire twin core wound up a little tighter and glued around both the brass pin and the crankshaft above. Where the ends overlapped, the twisted wire was snipped through and the two ends super glued together before the whole lot got a coat of the Bolt Gun Metal.
Also, where the crankshaft terminates at the driver’s seat girder, it is held in a triangular housing with a lever-handle, also seen in Photo 7 from the other side. The connecting rod from the gear stick can be seen under the seat passing back into the engine bay. In Photo 7, on the right hand side of the driver’s seat are two tiny levers connected to the engine by a pair of flexible cables. These are the throttle and retard controls and were fabricated from two diameters of stretched sprue, a thicker one for the rotating hinge and thinner ones for the levers. The cables were from single strands of the electrical wire.
The last two control mechanisms were the pair of foot-operated pedals, which were fixed to the main girder at the forefront of the chassis. In Photo 8, the main pedal shafts can be seen, one put together, the other still in bits. These were made from thin plasticard strip with a series of holes drilled into the length. The tiny ‘D’ brackets were from the same strip, having sanded rounded ends with a piece of 0.5mm brass wire for the ‘axle’. They were glued into a suitable angle with a drop of super glue whilst being held in a pair of tweezers. One of them was at slightly too steep an angle, so once dry, the ends of the ‘D’ were gently rubbed against fine sandpaper until they ‘sat’ better against the chassis. Once glued in place, a tiny hole was drilled below each bracket and a stretched sprue cable/rod was glued in place passing back through to the engine and gearbox. The left hand pedal is the brake and was purely foot operated but the right hand one was the clutch and was also equipped with a hand operated auxiliary lever, which came next. (Must have been very sticky clutches on these things!)
The body of the lever shaft came from the same plasticard strip, gently chamfered with the rotary tool and a medium sized sanding drum as shown in Photo 9. Also seen is an off cut of stretched sprue (the fat part is the original size of the sprue of course). With the curved lever cut to size, the handle came from the thinnest part of the stretched sprue with a tiny thin disk joining the two sections together, this came from a position just below the fat part. Finally, two black foot pedals were cut from an offcut of black plasticard sheet. To be completely accurate, the brake pedal should have a big red ‘B’ incised into the surface and the clutch should have a big red ‘C’. “Big” in this context is an extremely relative term! The completed and painted controls can all be seen together in Photo 10.
As mentioned earlier, the gearbox is normally covered up by the protective wooden slats, so the last task was to put in those very slats! There is a small steel side panel made from plasticard again and the wooden top was from two pieces of wooden coffee spill with each one getting a pencil line down the middle to simulate individual slats. Also seen here is the little stepped red box set into the end of the engine bay. This is the oil tank for the Daimler complete with a tiny stretched sprue filler cap. You can also see the main body of the Differential much better in this shot!

In Part Fifty Three we come to the final instalment of the MkIV showing how the completed chassis went inside the hull. And just for good measure, an illustrated guide showing how to start up a MkIV Heavy Battle Tank – well, half of one anyway!

Bye ‘till then and Happy Modelling to All!


Robin

Many thanks indeed for those kind words Kev, greatly appreciated!
And also many congratulations to Andy for his well deserved Gold Medal too!
There will probably be two more instalments after this one to complete the Messines Diary but I do have a few projects lined up for next year, all of which came about after discovering long forgotten kits out in my old workroom! All will involve as much 'adding on' of details etc. as I can manage. (No. I still haven't learnt my lesson! And one is also a WW1 topic!)
Talking of lost kits, there's two others that I do remember and just cant't find yet. The first is a 1/400 Heller kit of a German Battle Cruiser, its either the Graff Spee or something similar which I'd love to give the scratch build extras treatment to, and the other is a now very valuable and scarce kit: the Konami UFO Shado Interceptor which I bought many years ago in Sydney. It's over £100 on ebay now!!

Anyway, I was keeping this verse for the final instalment but its coming up to Christmas and perhaps "When this Lousy War is Over" might be more apt for the final!

It was Christmas day in the harem,
The eunuchs were standing round,
And hundreds of beautiful women
Were stretched out on the ground,
When in strode the Bold Bad Sultan,
And gazed at his marble halls,
Saying, 'What do you want for Christmas, boys?'
And the eunuchs answered... B..

Tidings of comfort and joy, comfort and joy,
Oh, tidings of comfort and joy!

One of the funnier Trench ditties


Part Fifty Three: Sticking it all together and Starting ‘er up!

Before the chassis and all went in to the empty hull, it was time to give Iron Rations her teeth! Just like Rumblebelly and (eventually) Revenge, Iron Rations was a Male MkIV with a pair of 6pdr cannon and three .303 Lewis Light Machine Guns. As a little ‘historical aside’, the German Infantry loved the Lewis Gun! Obviously NOT when it was firing at them of course but they preferred it over their own MG08/15 (the machine gun being fired back at the tanks in the corner of the trench). Any captured Lewis’s were used against their former owners until the Germans ran out of .303 ammo when the Lewis would be sent back to either a German factory or a captured Belgian industrial town where they were repaired if necessary and re-bored to fire the standard German 7.92mm rifle cartridge.
Anyhow, that’s nothing to do with Iron Rations! In Photo 1 we can see the evolution of a 1/72 scale 6pdr shell case. These were positioned in a great number of horizontal tube magazines set into the thickness of the double hull in the early MkIV. As time went on, the storage capacity nearly doubled with further stowage tubes positioned under the 6pdr mountings and anywhere else the designers could think of. When the MkV came into production with a new greatly improved gear system, the huge Differential (which caused me so many problems) was done away with, freeing up even more of the rear inner walls for ammunition tubes. The basic raw material for the shells was simply model ship brass pins, the rounded head was first filed down flat and then the pin shaft was snipped off leaving just enough to enable the flattened pin to slip down the aluminium tubing already set into the walls of the hull as can be seen in Photo 2. I made a slight ‘Boo-boo’ in the arrangement of those shells. That neat grouping at the back of the tank looked really good when I glued them in. I forgot though that the big box radiator was going to obscure the entire back of that part when it went in – I should have placed the shells further forward where they could still be seen. That was lazy logic I’m afraid, I reasoned that the loader would be grabbing shells from the most convenient tubes first so left those empty instead!
That was her big teeth taken care of, next came her sharp claws in the form of the forward firing Lewis Gun. This one is seen in Photo 3 and was formed by slicing one of the Lewis’s away from a machine gunner in the Canadian Infantry set. Just like the first Lewis in the Sponson, this one was also cut off part way along the barrel with a glass bead and the outer barrel section from copper tube inserted onto the polythene rear section with a 0.5mm brass rod. One difference with this gun however is that it doesn’t possess a wooden stock. Because of the tight limitations of available space at the driver’s end, the wooden stock was often removed with just the wooden pistol grip being used to aim the weapon. The original pistol grip was a little too thin after the gun was cut away from the figure, so it was sliced off completely and this one was added from a tiny piece of plasticard. What I haven’t added on, again due to the lack of space in there (though I may try later) is the canvas bags attached to the Lewis’s which caught all the expended brass cartridges.
The final little ‘extras’ to be made up were a pair of wooden tool boxes, which were kept under the wooden slat platform on the original vehicle. The plans I have simply say “Tool Boxes”, I don’t know for sure if they were wooden or steel but with so much metal around the inside, the wooden ones stand out more! These were very easy to make up, just a square section of hard wood strip from Victory, sanded smooth and cut to length with a single strand of wire bent around a small drill bit shaft to produce a tiny metal handle up one end, (even I didn’t bother making up the other side’s handles this time!) They can be seen in Photo 4 with a penny coin beside them.
It was then that the chassis assembly was finally inserted and glued into position inside the hull. This was a finicky operation as the various gear sticks and pedals had to be carefully inserted around the front Lewis Gun before the rear end with the radiator could then slide into place. Yes, I know it would have been easier to glue the Lewis in afterwards but you know what it’s like – once you’ve made up a machine gun, you’ve just GOT to stick it in!
With the chassis securely super glued in, the final piece of the MkIV puzzle was added. This was the water pipe, which carries the engine coolant from the top of the Daimler back to the twin radiators at the rear. This was constructed from 1.5mm aluminium tubing, gently bent into shape by hand over a jeweller’s anvil. There are two simple curves at the rear, the first brings the pipe down from the roof of the hull whilst the second angles it towards the left hand side of the tank. The pipe actually goes into the left hand radiator in the missing half of the tank so the tube just comes to the centre line and stops! (As you can see in Photo 5 after the other end was inserted into the collector pipe on the left.)
The last components to go in after the pipe work were those two tool boxes mentioned earlier which were slid in under the gearbox with a drop of super glue to hold them in place. (Photo 6)
And finally, in Photo 7 old Iron Rations is seen in all her complicated glory! It was a close thing to finish her in time for the Centenary itself and proved a little more complicated than I’d anticipated which is why I decided to concentrate on her alone and not to try and finish poor old Revenge alongside her. In this photo, she is perched on a temporary foam base and you might just see two wooden ‘things’ under her tracks. These are cocktail sticks, which were inserted into two holes drilled through the polythene tracks. Rumblebelly had two rear sticks (being a full hull version) and the rear sticks pass right up through the gap between the inner and outer hulls to the underside of the track at the top. Iron Rations, being a half hull was actually built up with just the rear stick in place but towards the end I decided to add a front one as well. This was a shorter version which only came up to the wooden flooring where the Sponson joins the hull. This proved to be a huge mistake! It gave her more grip into the foam groundwork all right, but the fact that I’d placed the shorter stick in the only location that it could go, failed to take into account that on the ground under Iron Rations is a damned great crater in exactly the same place! So after discovering that my little ‘Heavy’ MkIV was in fact balancing daintily on what appeared to be a fence post – out it came and she made do with just the one!
What is really strange now, is that although all this was done and dusted a good four months ago now, it’s only with finally getting the photos up here with the diary text, it seems like I’m saying a fond goodbye to an old friend! Ah well, (sniff, sniff!) it’s time to start her up and head for Messines Ridge!

Starting Up the MkIV Heavy Battle Tank.

Picture 1: The first task for the driver was to reach behind him to the front of the engine bay and operate the small switch arrowed to turn on the Magneto and Ignition circuit.
Picture 2: Next, by his right knee were two levers; the outer one being the Advance / Retard Selector (linked to the Magneto) and the inner one being the Throttle linked to the Carburettor (by cables). The Advance / Retard was brought to Full Retard with the Throttle being opened up slightly (Picture 3)
Picture 4: With his left hand, the driver then gripped the Starting Handle Drive Lever and pulled it up to engage the Drive Chain.
Picture 5: At the same time, up to four of the crew would grasp the Starting Crank and turn it clockwise as fast as they could. As they turned the crank, the drive chain at the front of the engine bay turned the crankshaft. As soon as the Daimler engine spluttered into life the crew let the Starting Crank fall whilst the driver released the Starting Handle Drive Lever and slowly advanced the Advance / Retard Lever.

There would now be a ten minute delay, as the engine was allowed to idle as it warmed up and circulated the oil from the rear red tank. (Possibly not if you were being shelled though!)

Picture 6: By the time the engine had warmed up the driver would have slid the Advance / Retard Lever to the halfway point and the lumbering beast was ready to move off.
Picture(s) 7: Using his right foot and right hand lever, the driver would depress the Clutch Pedal and use his left hand to select First Gear with the Main Gear Stick. By now the noise inside the hull was unbelievable and no verbal commands could be given but in a well trained crew the two secondary Gearsmen would be ready and as soon as the driver went into First Gear they would both select First Gear themselves using the small levers inside the rear Sponson access wall (arrowed)
Picture 8: With all First Gear positions engaged the tank would pull away with just the slightest jolt. In fact, apart from toppling headfirst into a German trench (or ‘Ditching’ as it was known) only the driver and Commander, peering out through the vision slits and periscopes could actually tell if the tank was moving. There was so much noise and vibration inside the hull, it felt exactly the same for the rest of the crew whether it was moving or not!
So there we are! The long catch up for Iron Rations is done at last with probably just a couple of further instalments to complete the whole diary. In the next one, a shorty to illustrate how the ground work was completed with a re-introduction of the ‘Flying Panjandrum’ looking thingy, and in the final instalment, the wooden edging and the Perspex cover.

Until then, Happy Modelling and a Merry Christmas to you All!


Robin

And I've just realised I forgot to use the photos of her on the diorama - they'll be along soon!

Thanks again to Alan! I've got a few projects lined up for 2015 which I hope to at least start even if not completed to run alongside the Victory and I'll be posting their details up in a day or so!

So here's the penultimate instalment (and the last one in 2014! )


Whiter than the whitewash on the wall!
Whiter than the whitewash on the wall!
Oh wash me in the water that you wash your dirty daughter in,
So that I can be whiter than the whitewash on the wall!
On the wall, on the wall, On the wall, on the wall,
Oh wash me in the water that you wash your dirty daughter in,
So that I can be whiter than the whitewash on the wall!

Possibly a complaint about washing facilities in the trenches!

Part Fifty Four: Basic Terrain Modelling for the Western Front.

Some parts of this section have already been covered in earlier sections but I thought it might be an idea to bring the main techniques together again in the closing stages of the diary.
In the first photo, the main components of the groundwork have been grouped together (apart from the foam putty which is shown later) and I’ll refer back to the identification letters within this write up.

A. A couple of representative brushes used to create the stippled effect on the groundwork. These are part of a set of about ten brushes available from ‘The Works’ stores for a couple of pounds.
B. This is the track maker which featured much earlier on as a ‘mystery item’ and is seen here complete with its tracks glued on.
C. Earth Undercoat by Woodland Scenics. A water soluble paint which comes in an 8 fluid ounce bottle. Highly concentrated and goes a very long way!
D. A set of Carrs Weathering Powders. Set No. C1101 ‘Shades of Mud’, four different browns from ‘Poop’ to ‘Brick Red’! The only one I didn’t use was the brick red.
E. Dead Fall by Woodland Scenics. A dried and preserved 5 ounce pack of logs and branches. Not pictured is a five pound lump hammer!
F. Scenic Cement by Woodland Scenics. A 16 fluid ounce bottle of high quality PVA solution which can be either brushed or sprayed onto the ground to fix foliage and other small parts in place.
G. Realistic Water, again by Woodland Scenics, expensive initially but the 16 fluid ounce bottle will last a very long time.
H. The result of mixing a little pinch of Carrs mud powder with a small quantity of Realistic Water – instant muddy puddle!

OK then, to serve as an example for the whole diorama ground work, I’ve mainly used existing photos of the individual ‘island’ section just over from the bunker with a couple of other examples where I hadn’t got any photos of that section. In Photo 1, we have the very basic shape of the island carved out of the thick green foam board. In this shot the edges of the section have been cut to shape and a rudimentary crater cut out in the surface above. All the slicing and shaping was carried out with cheapie ‘snap off’ bladed knives from the Pound shop. The green foam had already been PVA’d to the white base sheet before the centre line of the underground drainage ditch was used to separate the section away from the main board.
Photo 2 illustrates the opened tub of the Woodland Scenics Sub-terrain Foam Putty. This wonderful concoction has the consistency of a slightly gritty cold cream but dries out into what is basically polystyrene foam. It can be applied with a variety of tools like plastic or metal paint scrapers for large areas or, as I did on the diorama, with your fingers alone.
In Photo 3 you can see the same foam block after a single skin of the foam putty. This layer is deliberately rough as it is intended simply as a keying layer for the second coat applied after the first is dry. The foam block, especially where it is smooth doesn’t take kindly to the putty. Both the foam and the putty are pretty dry and trying to apply just a single coat will often result in the putty coming away if you try to stipple or model it too soon. One word of advice with this putty, if you do get a tub of this and it goes hard due to the lid not being snapped back on tight, don’t give up, just keep adding clean water a couple of teaspoons at a time, letting it soak in for an hour or so and eventually it will go back to a useable cream again!
In Photo 4, we have the block with the second coat of putty applied. As you can see, the ground now has a stippled texture to it, the result of gentle ‘dabbing’ at the surface with the paint brushes, shown at A. You’ll need to press the second layer of foam into the first with some pressure to form the surface but only lightly stipple with the tips of the brushes, too hard and the brush will pull the soft putty away again and you’ll have to re-apply it.
A special mention regarding the crater rims here. In the first layer, the crater is simply covered by a thin skin of putty, it’s with the second layer that the actual shape and definition of the craters are created. There are two ways to create the rim effect, the first involves using a square knife blade or something similar to scrape a layer of foam putty off the surface in the tub. This is almost like scooping soft ice cream and results in a thin strip of putty which is then very gently rolled out in the palm of the hand to end up with a ‘sausage’. The problem with this method is that the heat from the hand dries out the putty so fast that it can break up into segments instead of one uniform length. The other method is to just take out a dollop of putty and using a shiny flat surface (a piece of glass is ideal) simply work the putty out with finger and thumb into a long triangular section. Whichever method is used, the resulting sausage or long strip is placed around the lip of the crater to form a raised collar. Then, again just using a finger tip, smooth the inside of the collar down into the sides and bottom of the crater. If you find the putty is sticking to your finger, keep a jam jar of clean water beside you and dip the finger in now and again to keep it moist. Once the inner sides are blended in, do the same with the outer edges but don’t bother to smooth them right in to the surrounding surface, leave the outer rim fairly rough. Finally, use the stipple brushes again to lightly roughen up the rims, down to ground level on the outside and just around the top of the crater on the inside (as seen in Photo 4)
At this point, whilst the putty was still fairly soft, the twin wheels with the tracks mounted on (B) were placed in the positions where the tanks were to stand and trundled backwards right over or through any craters which happened to be in the path to create the effect of the heavy tank’s progress through the soft earth. You’ll notice the axle of the ‘tracker’ is just a coach bolt and the two UPVC wheels are kept in place by a series of tightened nuts. Should I be stupid enough to make another 1/72 diorama with tanks in it, the nuts holding the right hand wheel can be loosened off and the wheel re-set to any width of track-base required. (I hate re-making tools!!)
With the ground work, craters and tracks ‘texturised’ the putty was allowed to dry out completely overnight before the next stage, painting with the Woodland Scenics Earth Undercoat (C). This was applied with a soft haired brush from ¼ to ½ inch in size. Although the Woodland Scenics instructions describe the undercoat as ‘extremely concentrated’ it is actually designed to create highlights and shadows when applied to the putty foam and plaster mouldings. This effect can be seen in Photo 5 (the mortar pit) which had only had a single coat in that shot. This would be ideal in many situations, but as I needed to get a more ‘orangey’ look to the soil, I needed to apply two thick coats to cover up all the white putty.
I had thought long and hard about how to achieve the correct colour for the Messines soil, mixing up a poster paint mix, dry brushing over the Earth undercoat, air-brushing etc etc. In the end, the solution was far simpler than I’d imagined – Carrs Mud Powders shown at D. Although I purchased the weathering powders just to weather the tanks, a little experimenting on a couple of scrap sections of foam block (as seen later) proved that this stuff was perfect for giving the surface a really natural looking mud effect. Once the undercoat was completely dry, again mostly given a full 24 hours, a little of the mid brown pigment (the centre packet in the group of three) was picked up on a cotton bud and rubbed into the surface of the ground work. This was, I must admit, a very slow and labourious technique. Each end of the cotton bud would only last for an area of about a couple of square inches before it gave up the ghost and I went through nearly a pack of them (Pound shop again!). I found it was best to work in small areas, centred around a single crater and then moving out to the next crater or gully along. It was also best to complete each small area as well, so rather than doing the whole base in the medium brown powder I would cover that small region in the medium brown, apply shadows inside the crater and surrounding the outer rim with the darkest brown pigment and finally apply a very small quantity of the orangey powder as a highlighter and to give indistinct patches of colour in places. The results of that process can be seen in Photo 6.
The last surface feature before the water effects could go on was to liberally sprinkle the entire area with shattered wood, the results of the incessant shelling and bombardment. The archive photos of Messines show the entire battlefield, especially near the trenches was absolutely covered in splintered trees, branches, planks and other assorted wooden debris. To create this detritus you can use any type of wood, the closer it is to scale the better of course, I used some dried twigs from the garden (next door’s garden actually! ) but the majority of the bits and pieces seen here came from the Woodland Scenics Dead Fall pack (E). Every pack of Dead Fall is different, no surprise since it is a natural product of course, but when purchasing it you need to have visualised what it is you are constructing. Some of the packs contain mostly big logs and branches, some have a load of tiny spindly bits and some have a mixture. The one I chose had a mixture, as I wanted smaller ‘blasted’ splinters and also possibly barbed wire fence posts. In actual fact the fence posts came from a different source in the end but I didn’t know that back then!
On first inspection, the Dead Fall appears to be dried out as if it had been through an oven or kiln. I had thought that this would have made the wood very brittle and easy to splinter up but in fact the stuff is as tough as old nick! Enter the 5lb lump hammer! Taking the wooden selection outside I introduced it to the aforementioned lump hammer and a concrete slab – repeatedly. Even then I was surprised that it still didn’t break up into little pieces but seemed to split along the length of the fibres. After that however I could just roll the bits between the finger and thumb and it would disintegrate into the splintered effect I wanted. In Photo 7 you can see about half of the pack of Dead Fall before the hammering began, whilst in Photo 8 a couple pieces of the splintered wood are being fixed to one of the scrap trial sections of foam board using the Woodland Scenic Cement (F). This cement is designed to fix the foliage scatter and other vegetation to the base. It would glue the smaller sections of shattered wood down but I did notice that the larger bits would often come loose if they were knocked or touched during later work (barbed wire placement or figures being stuck in etc, these pieces needed individual sticking down with standard PVA glue instead.
With the wooden scatter down in place (although minor additions and re-gluing took place later) it was time to add the final terrain effect – the partially flooded craters and gullies.
The Carrs Weathering Powder are actually “finely ground industrial pigments” as described on the instruction card and I wondered if they were water soluble pigments as well. As it happened, yes they were! Taking a teaspoon or so of the Realistic Water and placing it into a cheapo plastic eggcup, I sprinkled a merest pinch of the medium brown and orange pigment into it and stirred it in, producing a nice muddy looking liquid. This was sucked up into a small glass pipette and dripped into some of the craters, not too much, unlike the Somme and many other battlefields, Messines was on a very drainable ridge and it was only the remains of the heavy overnight thunderstorm that I wanted to depict here. The brown disk shown in Photo 9 is the dried up remains of one of the mixes which I later dug out from the bottom of the egg cup. Some of the water effect tended to soak away into the ground work as it dried so the craters had about three applications of the tinted water with a fourth one of plain clear Water Effect to give a clearer varnish over the top. After the water effects, all that remained to finish off the terrain was to stick in the fence posts and to apply the yards (and yards) of miniature pre-painted barbed wire as can be seen in the last two Photos 10 and 11. The wooden rectangles in the far right of the island represent the sawn off ends of the duckboards, cut to size as the floor of the trench was laid by the troops.
So that was that for the ground work. Other dioramas would have featured grass or other vegetation of course, but for Messines that had been blasted to nothing months before. I hope you have enjoyed this instalment and it gives you some ideas for displaying your own WW1 projects. None of the techniques shown here are in the least bit difficult and many other materials from the garden could have been used instead of the Woodland Scenics range. Their products can be pricey to begin with but in almost all cases, they last a very long time so work out quite reasonable in the long run.
In the next and final instalment of this diary, the completed diorama gets fitted out with a decorative wooden frame and surround to finish it off and the Perspex cover (the Mk1 version anyway) gets put together too.

Until then, Happy Modelling and a Happy New Year to you All!


Robin

Many thanks indeed to Alan yet again!!

Hi to All, and a very warm welcome to this, the very last instalment of what was my most intricate diorama ever! (I mean ‘was’ as in the diary is coming to an end, NOT that I’ve got an even more intricate one on the way!!)
Before beginning the description of the final display base construction, here’s a couple of photos as promised of the completed Iron Rations on the terrain base from back at the museum event day. The little figure in the inset box was supposed to be the first of her crew figures. After much humming and hah-ing I managed to produce one by adding the head from one of the Canadian Infantry to a body taken from my old ‘toy soldier’ box, namely, one of the WW2 RAF ground crew which was the closest I could find to the one piece boiler suits favoured by the WW1 tank crews. The problem was, even with cutting a wedge out of the body at the waist and bending him into a more crouched position, he simply wouldn’t fit inside the damned tank. It’s one thing to have full sized squishy bendable humans inside a full size MkIV Tank, it’s quite another to fit a scale sized plastic man inside one of these! So Iron Rations has become the second autonomous war machine on the Western Front. Second? Well during one of the later tank assaults after Messines, one MkIV became so hot and fume filled under fire during the drive across No-Man’s Land that the crew abandoned her after the driver set the throttle to low and into first gear, and the entire eight man crew walked behind the tank in the shelter of the rear horns until she was ventilated out to a safe level and they could re-enter the vehicle, all the while with the tank trundling forward all by herself with German bullets bouncing off!
Anyway, as you can see in Photo 1, the main block of terrain foam sits on a plank of B&Q pine shelving board about 18mm in depth. The pine board was made 5mm wider than the foam base, this would then allow for the 2mm Birch wood edging and the 2mm Perspex cover to fit around the foam block. Also from B&Q was the decorative wooden edging strip also seen in this photo. This strip was 20mm in depth which produced a short inner wall against the pine as can be seen in Photo 2. As you can also see, one section of the decorative strip has had a couple of coats of Ronseal Quick Drying Teak gloss varnish. This is a nice quality water based varnish which is touch dry in just 20 minutes (and it “Does exactly what it says on the tin”)! The decorative strips were given a couple of coats of this varnish before they were cut to size using a small ‘Rolson’ aluminium mitre box and Exacto Razor Saw, once cut they then only needed a light sanding down on the edges before being PVA’d into place. You might just be able to make out a single brass pin in each corner of the strip about a half of an inch back, this was to ensure the strips stuck tightly up to the corners. I’d purchased them way back at the start of the project and they’d acquired a very slight ‘arc’ over the intervening months!
With the outer frame edging in position, the next task was to ‘box in’ the whole of the foam base block with a cladding of 2mm birchwood, (2.60 per metre plank from the local Antics store). The shot in Photo 3 shows the two appearances of this wood; the smooth sanded and varnished finished piece glued onto the base work and the untouched raw timber ‘other half’ that it was cut from.
In order to get the shape of the ground work it was necessary to make a series of templates. Many years ago, (and from where I haven’t a clue!) I got hold of a box of overhead projector, clear acetate A4 sheets. For those of you who have grown up in the computerised age and don’t know what an overhead projector is – you haven’t lived!! (It’s like a huge slide projector with a periscope!) By placing a cut-down strip of this acetate along the edges of the diorama and using a permanent medium marker pen I could draw the contours of the terrain, as well as the cut outs for the end of the bunker. Then, using a sharp knife I cut along those lines to produce the first thin template. Carefully, with a felt tip pen I then transferred the shape onto a thicker white card before cutting the card to the same shape as well. I then had a thick enough set of templates to draw the outline of the terrain onto the strips of birchwood using a fairly soft pencil. The actual cutting out of the contours was achieved with my mini jigsaw, one of the three power tools in the Rotacraft set from Maplins (Dremel type drill, mini orbital sander and the jigsaw.) Even at just 2mm thick, I had to take it nice and easy to avoid over-taxing the motor!
With the edging planks cut to shape there was one more job to do before they could be glued in to place, which you can see in Photo 4. I needed a way to secure the Perspex cover in place and the best way I have found over the years is by the use of the captive nut system. This is essentially a nut and bolt fixing in which the nut is immovable and permanently fixed to the model. With the side plank temporarily clamped in position, I drilled two holes through the wood and into the foam behind it. The holes were just large enough to allow the brass M4 x 20 Panhead bolts to be screwed down through. (£1.00 for a packet of 6 in the “Toolshed”) With the bolt sticking through the wood, the nut was threaded on and tightened up to finger-tight and then a dollop of epoxy ‘steel’ glue was mixed up and applied around the nut with a cocktail stick to securely fix it to the inside face of the wooden plank (making sure no glue got anywhere near the bolt!) The epoxy is supposed to be of the quick drying variety but I gave it overnight just to be safe before I carefully unscrewed the bolt back out from the wood. The final task for this section was to cut out a countersink with a pointed craft knife around the bolt's hole in the foam block to allow the captive nut to sit in position without forcing the wooden plank out from the foam.
The two side pieces were done first and were allowed to stick out beyond the ends by about 3 – 4mm as you can just make out down the far left side of Photo 5. When the side panels were securely fixed in position the front and back sections were then cut to fit in between the sides (neatly chamfered corners has never been my strongpoint!) As you can see in this photo, the back side-piece by the bunker is in already with its first coat of varnish, the long side panel has just been glued in place (trying to get a G-Clamp wide enough to go across the already populated diorama was a nightmare!) The bare strip in the foreground is the front section waiting to be trimmed down and fitted in.
The same side panel can be seen with at least four coats of Teak stain in Photos 6 and 7 (note the M4 brass bolts in place too) Photos 8 to 10 show the other three sides at the same point in time. The only real problem encountered was the rear section shown in Photo 8 which, it turned out, had a fault running along the grain which caused the raised right hand corner to break off during clamping and the back of the ‘island’ to crack at the same point. That section was removed, the PVA wiped off, and the defective sections glued back straight and level before the panel was re-attached the following day.
With a couple of final coats of varnish, that brought the wooden part of the base to an end, the final section being all plastic!
Photo 11 illustrates the building of the protective Perspex cover. Unfortunately, this cover will not be the final one! The sheet of Perspex which I used for this had been safely stacked in the garage for years and, I thought, was perfectly OK. What I didn’t realise however was that it only had one of the two polythene protective sheets still stuck to it. These are supposed to be left in place until the material is to be used but obviously I had used the main part of the sheet a long time ago and had removed ALL of one side of the polythene! The result was, only after I had cut the pieces of the cover to size did I notice a lot of bad marks and scratches. On the other hand, since I also didn’t allow quite enough expansion room for the cover to ‘breathe’ getting the thing on and off is extremely difficult to put it mildly. In due course I’ll be getting a new sheet of Perspex to make the proper display version – this one does keep the dust off nicely though (and probably viruses and bacteria too, it’s that tight!)
In Photo 11 the four sides are being bonded together whilst being held in place by my picture frame clamping kit. It’s not meant for Perspex of course and the small wooden bits you can see are offcuts placed in the sprung jaws, allowing them to grip the sheets in place. These were glued by simply ‘dribbling’ superglue down the inside of the joins. Once dry, the box sides were removed carefully from the clamps and the top panel bonded to the sides. I’m pretty sure I did this with the cover upside down on the worktop as the top panel rested on the tops of the shorter sides but laid inside of the longer ones – in other words it tended to sag in the middle!
The completed cover is shown in Photos 12 to 14. Apologies for any ‘fuzziness’ on the diorama itself, my camera auto focuses on the Perspex no matter what I tell it to do!

So there we have it. The most detailed diorama I’ve ever worked on (so far!) Getting her done by the Centenary was a real challenge but at the same time a real honour, (despite losing a tank along the way! I’m sorry the diary took so long to catch up with it, but towards the end I was frantically building, taking loads of photos and notes without getting the diary put together alongside it.
I hope you have all enjoyed seeing this tribute to the heroes of both sides of the "War to end All Wars" come together as much as I have enjoyed building it. I’ve learned and discovered so much along the way from weathering wood on the cheap to making ‘wriggly tin’ on the even cheaper and it was a pleasure to return to the plastic kits and ‘toy soldiers’ of my youth again. And so, as I carry on with the ‘Ol Vic and this year’s planned projects beckon, there’s only one very apt ditty I can leave you with …. (And I hope you enjoyed all these contemporary songs too!)

To the tune of "What a friend we have in Jesus"

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.


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 NCOs to curse me, no more rotten army stew.
You can tell the old cook-sergeant, to stick his stew right up his flue.


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 sergeants bawling, 'Pick it up' and 'Put it down'
If I meet the ugly barstool, I'll kick his arse all over town


Robin

Absolutely amazing finish Robin. The most intricate and complete build diary I have ever seen, well done

Steve