What's on my desk? Part 45.

Good morning,

Not much to report this week, due to struggling with and being annoyed by the Tortoise...

I started attaching the casemate superstructure and it became clear that this part did not fit well. It's a big shell that goes over some raised lines. Somehow the lines were too long for the casemate, so I cut away the back locating lines. I then cemented the front first, and when this was dry I glued the back, using some clamps to hold everything down. But then disaster struck. One of the clamps shot out, taking with it the tracks and wheels. So, once again, I had to reconstruct the running gear... In the picture the wheels have been rebuilt, with the tracks still to be put back.

I've been carefully and steadily building the rest of the vehicle. The Voyager PE offers some parts for finer detail, but isn't a must. Here's a front view:

These days most kits offer transparant periscopes, but in this model they're molded on the green sprues. The instructions only say to paint 'clear blue'. Clear blue on dark green would not look good, so I primed them white first, then applied a layer of clear blue over the lens part and painted the rest in Ammo-Mig 112 (but any green will do). The effect looks pretty good, I think.

Moving over to the back, you see the back panel that was the only part separate from the casemate shell. Probably a limit to the plastic molding. When you look at the real thing, the entire casemate (except for the roof) was one big metal cast, so there's no seam lines in the back. I wonder if it wouldn't have been better to do the same in plastic? Anyway, I had to try and eliminate the seams, plus add some cast armour texture. I've read and seen people using Tamiya Putty, thinned with Tamiya Extra Thin Cement smeared over the area, then stippled with an old brush to create texture. So this is what I tried here. It's okayish, but you can still see the seam. I should have filled this first, and only then used the putty-cement mixture to create the texture.

You can also see some of the PE being used. The small brackets along the side were pretty easy. The box on the back right is a little more difficult to bend and glue together. You're supposed to solder these larger parts, but my soldering iron is at home and I'm not very keen on burning my fingers anyway... :-)

Lastly, the towing shackles. The Tortoise is a big, heavy vehicle and so needs quite substantial shackles to take that weight when it needs to be towed. The smaller (white) ones are pretty straightforward, and so is the big central one. Voyager provide extra chains for the central towing point, but these are flat PE. Might have been better to provide actual fine chain for these parts. I'll see if I can still bend them in a more realistic curve.

That's it for the Tortoise.

The Junkers is still at home, all yellow and accusing me of procrastinating. I'm honestly a bit intimidated by the masking job (if I botch it, I need to start over completely), but I'll try to get it done and painted this weekend.

See you next week!