Little Willie ~ Accurate Armour

[Jamie Tainton]

Here I have glued the lower front armour part in place but was not happy with how it all looked as far as sharpness etc. so I sanded the top angle smooth and will replace the rivet heads later with Model Kasten parts.


Here you can see I've glued the turret boarding (this is miss numbered as 9 or 8 in the instruction) in place as well as the rear part (#3)


There was some issues with the small triangle armour plate on the sides, needing some flash cleaning up. also you may notice the small triangle bit missing from the vision pot opening where the doors mount. This will easily be repaired with some plastic cut to size and glued in place.


The join between the main body and the rear part (#3) was a bit ugly. Sanding is required to get everything just so. I lost some of the rivets here but these will be added again later.


The upper surfaces of the body. Two blemishes here but easily repaired.


The etch screens that will go in the spaces provided up top.


A rear view


The floor part (#2) dry fit. The instruction are really not clear as to how this should go in place for sure but this makes sense to me. I have had to drill out two holes in the metal beams for the axle parts.


A test fit. You can see I have applied some filler to the inner lower faces on the sponsons. There is some big discussion about weighting the front end because of balancing issues, the back end being rather heavy, - but I think this is a bit of a red herring as the axle will be glued in place anyways- so any movement up or done is not a requirement?

[Jamie Tainton]

The left assembly is sanded and blended as compared to the raw one on the right.


The front one after one round of filler and sanding.

[Jamie Tainton]

So some more pictures from today's activities.
This picture was taken to show the smoothness achieved within the sponson inner floor.


Here is a shot of the real thing. You can see that it is smooth.


The ModelKasten rivets in place. I think they are a better size than the kit's when I look at pics of the real thing.


On the sides as well were they were sanded smooth.




The curved corners were too sharp after the sanding on these floors and I needed to add some plastic and filed the corners round.










The chain was primed in flat black with the one being dry brushed with a metallic colour afterwards

[Jamie Tainton]

The location for the outside bolt is wrong so I cut it off and I was going to replace it


The resin fins attached, I ended up not liking the way these looked- a bit warped, so I made others from a stiffer white plastic card


as seen below.




Also there was a nut/bolt fitting missing on this piece so I sanded these off flush and drilled holes and replaced the corner bolts with some from an aftermarket company.


primed in black

[Jamie Tainton]

Okay here is a long delayed update- haven't worked on this one for a few months but it is now in the rotation again. I am determined to finish this one soon. I have sprayed it with some Humbrol #160, and then, before adding the suspension permanently airbrushed on low pressure some earth and dirt colours to the lower areas. I also have added some of the last bits such as the photoetch ribs on the upper area. This was then painted again with some black and the gray. You may also notice on the rear bulkhead I replaced the replacement plastic card fins with metal one- for more rigidity.
The metal parts added...

[Jamie Tainton]

[Roy Schlicht]

Wow, nice work. Interesting model. How heavy is she?

Roy

[Jamie Tainton]

[Roy Schlicht]

[Jamie Tainton]

Yes Roy, that was on my mind to make use of that technique at some point with this.
For now here is the latest efforts. I managed to finally get the resin treads in place and well- I would not recommend the kit for beginners!
I decided to do a little creative change up in that the metal cover over the opening were the turret was meant to go would be raw unpainted metal. I started with making a stencil, to paint the circle with different hues of rusty red as a starting point. Onto this a thick oil paint wash of different browns was added, and before the wash is dry a brown rusty pigment (Vallejo Burnt Umber) is added to it. This is allowed to dry and is then sealed with some Tamiya thinner. This will have more things done to it but I moved onto doing some vertical stains.This was done with Artist's oils. A dot of paint is placed followed with a solvent soaked brush which pulls the paint down . It looks heavier in the photos than in real life but there is more work to be done with this before I will call it done. It's about many layers, not one or two steps.


















the tracks being fitted. This was really a pain but I managed to pull it off.