Model Armour

After two house moves within 6 months, I was slowly getting back into modelling.

I had begun to construct an IDF Fitter.  Work had progressed on building an interior to the point shown below...

There was slow progress on this for a while. Mainly due to having no spare time and also waiting for a paint shipment.  I had managed to add some wiring and details to the engine compartment though.   I also built the shelves and radio/electrical power units and wired them up. The resin crane base I'm going to be using is from Verlinden, and I'm going to plumb the crane hydraulic lines on the plastic card shown as they run from the crane forward to the controls near the driver (had to figure out how to build the controls). The kit part shown below with the pencil for scale leaves a lot to be desired! I can install the whole wall this way and not have to try to plumb the inside of the kit wall.

There are a lot of very good interior reference pictures on the net, which I took full advantage of.

The Academy Fitter kit this build is based on, includes many parts...most good...but many have ejector pin holes in very visible and are awkward to fill and sand.  The ramp which I hadn't even started yet had about eight of these all in bad places. I know Eduard makes a 2 PE sets for the Fitter but I didn't have them and really didn't want to get involved with a lot of PE parts!  Instead,  I used parts and bits from the spares box.

One set I did use was the Verlinden update set with its limited PE for this build.  I don't know which kit specifically this set was designed for but I don't think it's this one!

It turned into a major project to be sure.   Once I get involved in detailing I feel I have to include almost everything if possible!

I added more details to the engine compartment, driver's area, and interior, and I also finished the wiring and hydraulic lines for the crane.  I built the controls for the crane (sorry about the quality of that particular pic) using a PE angled bracket with some plastic card, and the four control handles are Grandtline bolts, (I doubt at this size the hex heads will be very noticeable!)  At first I used copper wire for the hydraulic lines, which went into drilled holes in the plastic card block, but this was no good.  I ended up replacing the copper with fine black rubber line, eight lines coming out of the controls.  Four lines on the bottom will go to the pump and four lines on the back to the block pictured on the roof which is under the crane base.

At this point I found the build was becoming tedious and time consuming!  The Verlinden update set I was using was of an older issue, the castings are clean but out of square somewhat and there are many small bits involved.  The PE that comes with it is the thick older style brass that has to be annealed before bending, just a general pain in the neck to work with it, but has some great PE brackets and such. I am glad at this point however that I didn't get the Eduard PE also, it would have turned a project as it is into a real project !

Some of the details I have added might not be exactly correct but its detail and no one can really prove it wrong, little do-dads and bits of hardware here and there from the spares box, especially in the interior add life to the model.

There is a cable and pulley system for the rear ramp, had to fabricate one of those too.

The Verlinden resin parts took ages to make square and clean up. The crane was a real project - 4 hours non-stop work and fiddling!  Some parts were extremely fragile and I was missing a few and using kit parts and PE bits to make my own.  It's worth the work I think, the kit crane does not compare. I could see I was going to have some hatch fit problems especially the upper engine hatch as some parts were bowed.  I just needed to clamp it and Tenax it, and hope it would sit level and square when I was done.  I used punch and die discs to cover the undersized pins in the crane. At this point I may have ended up removing the front most crane cable pulley assembly for the third time, as the resin pulley didn't have the cable groove all the way  around it.  I thought I had the good side out, but it's too narrow to file a groove which I tried.

I had to remove the assembly from the tip of the crane and scratch build it again, this time making a wheel from discs, maybe using PE for the pulley bracket instead of resin or plastic. I made added the cable pulley (PE and plastic) bottom left of the opening for the rear ramp. The PE set from Verlinden is pretty extensive but as I said hard to work with without being annealed to make it softer. This was far from going smooth, but not terrible either just the crane was a major headache

I hate dealing with wheels of any kind so did little work on these!  I really hadn't decided how many and which hatches will be left open either at this point.

Finally I had the main parts ready for interior colour, small parts for exterior colour, and I'll give the hull a light quick coat of colour so I have something other than plastic to paint the final coat on later. I HATE painting, I always think I will ruin a lot of work in one fell swoop. Lot's of work left to do at this point, I had to go in and pick out all the parts inside, and the engine compartment, then mount and plumb the crane controls, mask then paint the exterior colour on the hatches that will be open and glue up the hull parts and running gear before final painting.  I also had to buy the tracks get them done.  Painted and weathered tracks will go on last just before final weathering.