Looking through my rack full of un- and half-built kits, for something that shouldn’t take too long to build, I came across a very old model of a Ferret Mk. 2 armoured car by Sovereign — not Sovereign 2000, but its predecessor:
[ATTACH]312920[/ATTACH]
I don’t know exactly how old the kit is, as I bought it second-hand from another modeller (and I don’t remember who, when, or what I paid for it
) but it must be at least 20 years, since I just read on Sovereign 2000’s web site that the “2000” in the name refers to the year the current owner took over the business. I didn’t buy it back then, though — more like in the last ten years or so. I also notice this Ferret is no longer in their current catalogue.
Anyway, when you open the box, what do you get?
[ATTACH]312921[/ATTACH]
Some plastic bags with parts, a piece of paper towel, and some sheets of paper. Let’s get them all out for a closer look …
[ATTACH]312922[/ATTACH]
It turns out the kit contains a ziplock bag with mostly metal and a few resin parts, a sealed plastic bag with five wheels (opened by the previous owner, who most likely also put the metal part in it), and a nearly full hull in resin (that was wrapped in the paper towel). Let’s lay it all out more neatly:
[ATTACH]312923[/ATTACH]
For some reason there are two hull tops, one for a Ferret Mk. 1 (with the large hole in it) and the other for a Mk. 2 (with the round hole), but I have no idea why, because for a Mk. 1 with the open top you’d expect there to be interior parts as well. There also seem to be only five smoke grenade discharger barrels instead of six, so either I lost one, or the previous owner did, or someone made a packing mistake. No big deal, a bit of tube will solve that easily later on. The L3 machine gun (M1919 to you and me) isn’t very good, but I don’t intend to use it, so not a problem either.
A quick look at the instructions:
[ATTACH]312924[/ATTACH][ATTACH]312925[/ATTACH]
One sheet with actual model instructions, the other with copies of the vehicle’s official stowage diagrams. This isn’t … well, it’s not inadequate, but not exactly adequate either, I have to say after comparing the parts to the instructions. This is a kit that requires you to find photos of the real vehicle. Luckily a little searching turned up a good walk-around of a Mk. 2 on display in Hong Kong.
I cleaned up all the metal parts by brushing all the gunk (oxides, mould release agent, etc.) off them with a copper-wire brush; I get the impression the metal is a lead alloy, as it’s quite soft and my fingertips were dark grey before I’d even done half the parts. That also points to the kit’s age, as today’s white metal parts aren’t allowed to contain lead anymore.
It’s probably best to begin by adding the suspension. This consists of five parts per wheel: upper and lower suspension arms, the wheel hub, a drive shaft, and a spring/shock absorber. A quick dry-fit showed it goes together much better than I thought at first, but there’s a lack of locating holes for the springs in the hull. You can see where they should go, but the holes had mostly or wholly filled in so I had to drill them out with a 1.5 mm bit. I also needed to shorten the long ends of the springs so the springs themselves would fit against the upper stops as shown in the walkaround photos.
[ATTACH]312926[/ATTACH]
That done, I mixed up some two-part epoxy glue and attached first the spring to the upper suspension arms, and then the arms to the hull:
[ATTACH]312927[/ATTACH]
[ATTACH]312928[/ATTACH]
The rest of the parts will go on when this is well and truly cured, because when you’re dealing with epoxy glue, you should never try to do too much at once — it has a distressing tendency to act as a lubricant before it sets, so you might just see everything you carefully put in place, slide slowly down and fall off the model. My reason for using epoxy here, by the way, is because it’s much stronger than superglue and so will almost certainly support the weight of the model without wheels breaking off later on.
Also interestingly, the suspension arms and hubs have dimples moulded into their sides where they pivot, so it should be possible to drill them all out and insert pins to have an adjustable suspension. I thought about doing this and decided not to, because all it takes is drilling one of the couple dozen wrong for everything to get messed up.
Note I didn’t clean up the hull bottom: the remains of the casting plug were already like this when I unpacked the kit, and I don’t think it will be visible when the model is on its wheels, so I’m not going to bother sanding this thing down any further.
[ATTACH]312920[/ATTACH]
I don’t know exactly how old the kit is, as I bought it second-hand from another modeller (and I don’t remember who, when, or what I paid for it
) but it must be at least 20 years, since I just read on Sovereign 2000’s web site that the “2000” in the name refers to the year the current owner took over the business. I didn’t buy it back then, though — more like in the last ten years or so. I also notice this Ferret is no longer in their current catalogue.Anyway, when you open the box, what do you get?
[ATTACH]312921[/ATTACH]
Some plastic bags with parts, a piece of paper towel, and some sheets of paper. Let’s get them all out for a closer look …
[ATTACH]312922[/ATTACH]
It turns out the kit contains a ziplock bag with mostly metal and a few resin parts, a sealed plastic bag with five wheels (opened by the previous owner, who most likely also put the metal part in it), and a nearly full hull in resin (that was wrapped in the paper towel). Let’s lay it all out more neatly:
[ATTACH]312923[/ATTACH]
For some reason there are two hull tops, one for a Ferret Mk. 1 (with the large hole in it) and the other for a Mk. 2 (with the round hole), but I have no idea why, because for a Mk. 1 with the open top you’d expect there to be interior parts as well. There also seem to be only five smoke grenade discharger barrels instead of six, so either I lost one, or the previous owner did, or someone made a packing mistake. No big deal, a bit of tube will solve that easily later on. The L3 machine gun (M1919 to you and me) isn’t very good, but I don’t intend to use it, so not a problem either.
A quick look at the instructions:
[ATTACH]312924[/ATTACH][ATTACH]312925[/ATTACH]
One sheet with actual model instructions, the other with copies of the vehicle’s official stowage diagrams. This isn’t … well, it’s not inadequate, but not exactly adequate either, I have to say after comparing the parts to the instructions. This is a kit that requires you to find photos of the real vehicle. Luckily a little searching turned up a good walk-around of a Mk. 2 on display in Hong Kong.
I cleaned up all the metal parts by brushing all the gunk (oxides, mould release agent, etc.) off them with a copper-wire brush; I get the impression the metal is a lead alloy, as it’s quite soft and my fingertips were dark grey before I’d even done half the parts. That also points to the kit’s age, as today’s white metal parts aren’t allowed to contain lead anymore.
It’s probably best to begin by adding the suspension. This consists of five parts per wheel: upper and lower suspension arms, the wheel hub, a drive shaft, and a spring/shock absorber. A quick dry-fit showed it goes together much better than I thought at first, but there’s a lack of locating holes for the springs in the hull. You can see where they should go, but the holes had mostly or wholly filled in so I had to drill them out with a 1.5 mm bit. I also needed to shorten the long ends of the springs so the springs themselves would fit against the upper stops as shown in the walkaround photos.
[ATTACH]312926[/ATTACH]
That done, I mixed up some two-part epoxy glue and attached first the spring to the upper suspension arms, and then the arms to the hull:
[ATTACH]312927[/ATTACH]
[ATTACH]312928[/ATTACH]
The rest of the parts will go on when this is well and truly cured, because when you’re dealing with epoxy glue, you should never try to do too much at once — it has a distressing tendency to act as a lubricant before it sets, so you might just see everything you carefully put in place, slide slowly down and fall off the model. My reason for using epoxy here, by the way, is because it’s much stronger than superglue and so will almost certainly support the weight of the model without wheels breaking off later on.
Also interestingly, the suspension arms and hubs have dimples moulded into their sides where they pivot, so it should be possible to drill them all out and insert pins to have an adjustable suspension. I thought about doing this and decided not to, because all it takes is drilling one of the couple dozen wrong for everything to get messed up.
Note I didn’t clean up the hull bottom: the remains of the casting plug were already like this when I unpacked the kit, and I don’t think it will be visible when the model is on its wheels, so I’m not going to bother sanding this thing down any further.
The right rear suspension is much too far up, but I’m not sure why and I also don’t think I can take it apart easily due to using the aforementioned epoxy glue. So perhaps this will be a Ferret with one wheel up in the air …
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