M47 Patton at Suez |
| By Paul Roberts |
| Started: | Jan 28, 2005 | | Updated: | Oct 23, 2005 |
|
My local club is having its yearly club contest in January and, in typical fashion, as of December 26th, 2004, I didn't have anything built. Again. I was determined to have something this year for the "Cold War" armour theme and as Korea was specifically excluded, I went huinting through the kit stash for something that I could build out of the box and still be happy with, rivet counter that I am.
My eyes settled on the old Italeri M47 which I had always heard was a great kit. Good choice, I thought, but what scheme other than European OD Green??? Who used these puppies in the mid 50's?
France!
At Suez!
And thus started the 4 week build for the contest.
|
|
|
|
| Chapter 20 - All Done | Oct 23, 2005 |
Well, there she is. What was supposed to take just 4 weeks took almost a year to finally finish off. Thanks for taking an interest and I hope it was interesting enugh to be worth the wait.
If you have any questions about the kit, the techniques or Operation Musketeer, I will be happy to try and answer... more |
| Chapter 19 - Finished! | Oct 21, 2005 |
An overall shot of the right side of the Patton. I must say I am happy with how the weathering turned out.
The basic lightened sand colour was given a gloss coat for the decals (as could be seen in earlier chapters) and then an oil paint wash of yellow ochre darkened with a touch of van dyke brown.... more |
| Chapter 18 - Hull Front | Apr 30, 2005 |
| Here is the front of the hull. The headlight guards have been thinned down about 50% from their inital size and it was the devil's own job not to break them. Getting the headlights to sit on the brackets was a very fiddly job as well. The headlights also had sizeable sink holes in them and had to... more |
| Chapter 16 - Turret - 2 | Apr 29, 2005 |
| In this shot, you can see the difference between the casting effects on the "more stippled" parts of the main turret and on the "less stippled" plate over the range finder. The aerial ID marking of the white "H" was masked and painted. It is purposefully uneven as these were painted on by hand just before... more |
| Chapter 17 - Mantlet Cover | Apr 29, 2005 |
| Here you can see the mantlet cover I made from A+B epoxy putty. Not my best attempt at this, but you can still see how the tie downs are simulated by dragging the flexible putty towards the moulded clips on the turret. A little fussing with a damp finger and a plastic spatula and you get a pretty good... more |
| Chapter 15 - Turret close-up -01 | Apr 28, 2005 |
| Here's a nice tight shot of the right side of the turret. You can see the effects of the file simulating the grinding marks on the casting seam as well as the texture effect. The black ID stripe is a piece of decal. |
| Chapter 14 - Painted and decalled | Apr 27, 2005 |
| This is pretty much how she went to the club contest. I did have tracks on, of course, but as soon as the contest was over I started to fix the things that weren't good enough. Still you can get a good idea of the finished product. |
| Chapter 13 - Ready for Painting - 2 | Apr 26, 2005 |
| Another look. |
| Chapter 12 - Ready for Painting - 1 | Apr 24, 2005 |
| A quick shot of the tank just before painting. |
| Chapter 11 - Ready for the Fiddly Bits | Mar 3, 2005 |
| The hull and turret ready for all the other bits that turn them into a tank. |
| Chapter 10 - Texture Variations | Feb 22, 2005 |
| Here is a good shot of the variations in texture you can get. The main hull area got the "major stipple" treatment and is quite rough (hasn't been sanded yet in the photo). The call box casting and the access hatches got the "less texture" treatment yet still have surface variations that will be... more |
| Chapter 9 - Hull Texture II | Feb 19, 2005 |
The upper hull textured areas.
When stippling a fair amount gets on to neighbouring areas, like the fenders in this case, a gentle scraping with a #11 blade will clear this up, even in very tight corners, and will be invisible after painting. |
| Chapter 8 - Hull Texture I | Feb 12, 2005 |
A general shot showing the textured area of the lower hull.
The belly plate was left untextured and the access hatches and torsion bar mounts got the "less texture" treatment. |
| Chapter 7 - Turret Texture III | Feb 9, 2005 |
| The starboard side, this time. The main thing here is to see the different effect I got on the cupola and gun mount cover versus the rest of the turret. On these parts, I added a bit more Surfacer but stippled it much less. You get a smoother finish but there are variations that indicate the parts are... more |
| Chapter 6 - Turret Texture II | Feb 6, 2005 |
| This is a close-up of the area near the front of the port side. You can see the texture has been toned down a bit and the effect of the putty casting seam. After I had sanded the texture I scraped a coarse file over the very edge of the seam to simulate the ridges left when these seams were torched off... more |
| Chapter 5 - Turret Texture | Jan 31, 2005 |
| Once the numbers had dried, I added casting texture in my favourite method, which is to locally brush on a layer of Mr Surface 500 and then stipple it as is dries. I use a really cheap plastic brush for this as the stippling will destroy any nice brush you use. Once the stippling has dried, you can tone... more |
| Chapter 3 - Casting Numbers | Jan 30, 2005 |
Trying to keep this as OOB as possible, I couldn't use the real casting numbers and symbols I have in other details sets, however, I could scrape numbers from the kit sprues to give some interest to the top of the turret.
Here there are some numbers in a typical pattern shown glued to a small... more |
| Chapter 4 - Casting Numbers II | Jan 30, 2005 |
This is a slightly different approach for the cover over the gun mount. Here I just glued the numbers directly to the kit. Just another way of doing the same job.
I wish the kit had different sized numbers on the sprues as it limited my ability to add these little details, but there you go, you can't... more |
| Chapter 2 - Texture II | Jan 29, 2005 |
This is a close-up of how I was building up the various textrues on the turret. The white is, again, the casting seam and you can see how I scraped away at the surface with mu #10 curved blade to indicate the trowel marks in the sand casting.
M47s weren't terribly rough, but you could frequently... more |
| Chapter 1 - Its all about the texture... | Jan 28, 2005 |
| The M47 is really turning out to be a sweet kit to build and I don't think I could have picked anything easier to build out of the box. Still, the old AMS kicked in and the "baby's bum" smooth hull and turret really needed something to spice it up so I spent a fair ammount of time putting on... more |
