Scratchbuilding a US M2 Medium Tank in 28mm Part 3

Picture 8 Drivers Compartment:  Here we start fitting some of the skins for the driver’s compartment. The front section forms a pyramid structure. Two sets of drawings I had did not match and one showed a “cheater” plate to fill the driver’s compartment and the crew compartment. Notice how the back of angular plate, the side plate of the driver’s compartment, does not meet with the line on the crew compartment.

Picture 8A Drivers Compartment:  This becomes more apparent when skinning in the upper sides of the driver’s compartment and the purpose of the “cheater” plate becomes apparent.  Note the gap between the upper and lower plates of the driver’s compartment.   The lowest glacis plate is also installed and can be trimmed to size and edges filed to shape.

Picture 9 Cheater Plate:  The “cheater” in blue, fills this area.  This is not obvious in the drawings, but is clearly visible on photos of the real vehicle.  The pyramid structure of the driver’s compartment is not true pyramid.  In this case, as the model progresses, the model itself will direct how it is to be built.  Note too that overlapping plates can be installed on the inner edges, and the overlaps can later be trimmed to size.

Picture 10 Lower Rear:  The lower rear, showing the floor plate. Note the lower rear is actually two plates so the side plates and rear base plate need to be trimmed.

Picture 11 Trimming the Rear Deck:  Here a razor saw aligned with the trimmed lower side plates will be used to bob the vehicle’s rear end to the correct angle.

Picture 12 Filling in Rear Deck:  The upper rear decked in.  Note the use of thick and thin for structure and for sizing.  You sometimes have to recess one part to set in an additional panel or make a part out of thicker stock to come up to the correct measurements.  Generally structure is thicker than ‘skin’.  The rears of the upper and lower sections are now at the correct angle.  The lower side plates are yet to be trimmed to the correct angle for the lowest rear plate.

Picture 13 Basic Hulls:  The “basic” hulls.

Picture 14 Basic Hulls:  Side and rear of two basic hulls.

Picture 14A Basic Hulls:  Here I took my Dremel to the floor and up thru the base plate.  I had planned to add some weight to the models.  This also gave access to the interior structure if required later.  Ultimately neither the weight nor the access was used. 

Scratchbuilding a US M2 Medium Tank in 28mm Part 2

For the M2 model the plane just above the tracks is a good starting point.  I began with a rectangle of plastic the width of the model but longer than that required.  I will build the tank’s upper works on top of this plate, and the lower works on the bottom of this plate.  This plate forms the foundation of the model, so make it out of heavy stock, in this case, 40 thou sheet.

Picture 1 Starting Point:   Shows the base plate. It is probably as easy to build two models as to build one, so construction was started on two vehicles.  Also shown here is the upper deck.

The upper deck was scaled off the drawings and drawn out straight onto the plastic sheet. Since the turret will mount on this deck, it and the spacers supporting it, were cut from the heavier 40 thou sheet.

Picture 1A Turret Deck:  This shows the upper deck plate. Note the arrow and the correction in the upper right corner.   While the basic rule is measure twice, cut once, most things can be corrected as the project moves along.

Picture 2 Assembly One:    Shows a “front view” of the basic assembly.  I use Testors liquid Plastic Cement for the styrene parts.  The forward part of the base plate is much longer than required; it will be trimmed in following steps.

Picture 3 Plans on Materials:   Since we have scale drawings, parts can be measured on the drawings and transferred to your stock.  This is the left and right sides for the rear of the vehicles and since this is ‘skin’ and not structure, it is lighter 20 thou plastic card.  Two vehicles: so two lefts and two rights, two ups and two downs, as the depth of the rear structure is not half way!  Keep your left/right and up down spacing correct.  Laying them out as a group ensures equal measurements.  Note the double line where a measurement was checked and corrected.  The trick then is to remember which line to cut.  If a piece is miss cut, it is usually best to discard it and cut again, rather than fiddling to fix it.

Picture 4 Side Plates:  Here we start to “skin” in the upper structure.  The ‘octagonal’ crew compartment is skinned in and the side panels are mounted.  Note the reinforcement bit on the upper right.  Try to get a tight corner along the edge of the base plate.  Notice too, the side plate sits on top of the base plate but the top plate is inside the side bit.  Basically the purpose of the base plate is also to preserve the dimensions of the vehicle, providing a straight line from the front fenders to the side plates.

Picture 5 Lower Hull:  Here, side plates for the lower hull are sketched out.  These side plates will support the tracks so they are also heavy stock.

Picture 6 Lower Hull Two:  The model itself forms part of your building plans.  The underside of the base plate is marked for a centre line and the position of the lower side plates.  A line across the vehicle marks the rear edge of the crew compartment and references measurements front to back.

Picture 7 Lower Hull Three:  This photo shows the lower hull plates assembled with a rectangular lower plate.  Also installed is a lower glacis plate, and part of the “pyramid”.  Using a top view of the drawing the width of the pyramid plate at the upper glacis can be determined. The length of the angled plate can be taken from a side view of the vehicle. -At this point, you are into the world of ‘as-builts” if your model is not to the scale or size you want, it is probably best to start over before you do too much work.  Otherwise, use the model to determine the dimensions of the parts.  It is as you built it.  The width of the front glacis is the width measured on the model.  What I have done here is trim the front portion of the base plate to leave the front fenders sticking out. I then trim the plate to allow the front glacis to assume its natural angle.  It will be very close to the drawing and it’s up to you how close you need it to be.  For me, this is close enough.

Scratchbuilding a US M2 Medium Tank in 28mm Part 1

One of my wargaming buddies is deeply involved in gaming the Very British Civil War in 28s.  In order to participate I looked at potential foreign contingents.  I though possibly a US ‘Abraham Lincoln Brigade’ might be appropriate.  I began then to look into tanks for support and found some references to the M2 Medium.  It literally bristles with machine guns and has very VBCW flavour.  Built in 1939 it is just on the fringe of the time frame, but I felt it would be close enough.

Begin this (or any project) with some basic research.  A Google search for “M2 Medium Tank” or “M2 Medium Tank drawings” turns up a variety of photos and drawings.  Two useful sites are:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M2_Medium_Tank

http://ww2drawings.jexiste.fr/Files/1-Vehicles/Allies/1-USA/02-MediumTanks/M2/M2.htm

I downloaded some three- views and some detail photos.  Using the basic dimensions of the vehicle I was able to print out some scale plans.  Calculating to roughly 1/56 scale you may be able to use your home printer to print at a percentage reduction.  Alternately print out your drawings, measure and calculate a reduction or increase and have your local photo-copy store reduce or enlarge as needed. I usually print out a couple of sheets of the scale drawings to take measurements on and at times to cut up for full-size templates.

Some basic drafting skills may be required, but with the scaled drawing you can measure directly on the drawings to size up your stock.  (More as we continue.)

I used 40 thou Evergreen white styrene sheet for strength in the support structure, and generally “skinned” with thinner 20 thou stock.  The 20 thou is thin enough you usually do not have to account for the thickness.  Using thicker stock will make a stronger model, but remember to compensate for the thickness of the materials in your measurements.

My basic tools are a steel rule and a snap blade hobby knife.  The Evergreen styrene card is easily scored and snapped or can be trimmed with a sharp knife blade.  The steel rule provides a straight edge for cutting and is graduated down to 1/64^th of an inch for measuring.  I can’t see or mark out a measurement smaller than 1/64 and for a wargames’ model that is sufficient tolerance.  You only have to make yourself happy so work to whatever tolerances you prefer, add details and be as accurate as you wish.  The best advice I can give is to be patient, and let the glue dry.  When in doubt let an assembly dry thoroughly overnight before you try to proceed to the next step.

I also did some Alumilite castings in latex moulds and some “squash” moulding for complex parts.

Any structure is can generally be thought of as a series of boxes of various shapes and angles, tubes, and some complex shapes.  The M2 is mostly flat plates and I will demonstrate some methods to build complex looking shapes out of easily obtainable materials.  The driver’s compartment is an interesting pyramid shape, which is rather confusing in the drawings, but since the real vehicle was built out of flat plates, progressing with a model will reveal what the drawings do not.

Fun with foam

I started building up the works between the guns rather like the hills between the positions at Fort Fisher. Since I have three gun positiions, the left flank will have a hill attached and the right will have a small hill section that can be set next to one, two or three sections of the gun positions.

The transition between two sections is formed of two layers of the pink foam, and will be faced with card cut to an exact profile.  This will allow the sections to be placed next to each other in random order with a smooth transition from one to the next.  The foam here has been rough cut with a utility knife and hot glued in place.  Once the hills have been "bulked-out" in foam I will take my hot-wire cutter to do the basic contours, followed by a 'surform' tool and some filler.

((I am finding Blogger to be annoyingly un-coperative these days. I am due for a computer upgrade, and perhaps a new OS and and maybe Chrome will sort it out.))

Progress on the guns!

Finally have some progress on the HBG gun carriages and gun positions.  The barrels have been cast in Alumlite.  See the previous post or my flickr page for the details of the mould.  Not the best or highest tech mould making, but I got a couple guns out of it to use.  The brown spots are Tichy Train Group rivets, drilled and glued into place. I have a little do-dad for each gun for the elevating mechanism.

When I was building the carriages I made a flat out of art board to set the various elevations of the platform. The pivot was the highest and there are two steps for the runners and the wheels.  Here I began work on a gun position. There will be three gun platforms, with sand/turf hills between each rather like the land wall at Fort Fisher.

So lots of work to do yet!

Spanish Destroyer Furor in 1/600 scale

One of my other goals has always been to do a naval game. I have finally settled (well, for now...) on the Spanish American War, using the lovely 1/600 Age of Ironclads from Old Glory.

http://www.oldglory25s.com/index.php?cat_id=786&catname=Age+of+Ironclads

Old Glory does most of the major ships, but at Santiago de Cuba in 1898, the Spanish had two large "torpedo boat destroyers": Furor and Pluton. A third similar boat,Terror, was not up to the Atlantic crossing but would be available for a 'what-if ' encounter.  Furor and Terror were "Furor-class" and would be very similar. Pluton was apparently a newer "Audaz-class", but there seems to be some confusion as to the picture records of these ships. Google or Wikipedia the ships and you can find some side views, and I found some photos of a model of Furor. Since I was building in 1/600 scale the 220 foot boat comes out to just over four inches, so a 'general-arrangement' is good enough for my purposes. As always, feel free to research and include as much detail as you like.  But at some point your are going to have to start cutting some plastic!

This photo shows the basic structures of the ship. Behind is a downloaded profile, scanned and set to scale. I can measure directly off the drawing onto my stock to build up the model. I started with a wooden plug carved to the basic hull shape.  I then glued down a piece of Evergreen scribed stock for the decking and edged it with Evergreen strip for the sides.

Its not a big boat, just over four inches. The gun decks, cabins and stacks are bits of Evergreen detailed with scribed sheet and strip stock.

The torpedo tubes were a bit of suitable diameter sprue left over from a model kit.  The ships boats were carved from laminated 60-thou sheet.  A basic boat shape is easy to file out and I scalloped the topsides to similate tarps over the boats. The guns are bits of styrene rod. It appears the Furor did not have shields in front of the guns, but at this scale the little bit of plastic looks more gun-like with a small shield. The front gun here has a shield the back gun has yet to be completed.

Bay Area Yards makes ships boats and some guns in lead for its 1/600 ACW range. I have some of these but elected not to use them for this project.

http://bayareayards.virtualscratchbuilder.com/

I think this will be a fun period to game, and perhaps more importantly to build some model ships.  In reality a decrepid Spanish fleet was hammered, virtually annihilated, by the superior American navy.  On paper: if the Spanish could have mustered all their ships around Cuba; if the Spanish ships were outfitted like the specs said they were (some did not have their main guns fitted); if the Spanish navy was up to the task...

I am also not sure about the 1/600 scale.  Santiago de Cuba was a fairly limited engagement close to shore, but at 1/600 it will still require a lot of space. The ships however are lovely and great models from Old Glory.



Fortress Guns

I've hit the doldrums with the painting on the sling cart; first when deciding on colours; and then doing the actual painting.  Artillery and wagons are kind of finicky to do the wood work and then all the add-on metal bits.  I usually hit a a point where the lovely all-white styrene masterpiece is a mess of colour and sloppy details waiting to be cleaned up.  I often have projects sitting for days with little progress.  (To be honest projects usually sit for months or even years...)

So to fill in the time I finished up the 30-pounder Parrott gun. (Named for the inventor--Parrott--two T's.  Not a gun to shoot tropical birds, with or from!  As in Parrots--one T.)

This gun is based on historical photographs and is scaled to match the Perry 24Lbr on a heavy carriage.

I've also started on some work for three "metal" fortress carriages.  I'm thinking of a position similar to the two-gun emplacement at Fort Moultrie (Google is your friend!).  These are based on a variety of similar guns still extant at various east coast Civil War forts.  They are scaled for the  "Less so HBG".  And now as I look at the carriages in "the white" I may leave one empty to suggest a use for the HBG and the sling cart.  I will either have to mould and cast some additional gun tubes or if I decide I only need one more, may look at scratch building a second barrel. (Maybe a really big Parrott?)