Churchill Mk. IV AVRE with Small Box Girder Assault Bridge Mk. II

[Nicko]

I really fancy getting one of these Jakko, but I reckon that bridge will be a real nuisance to paint... it's certainly quite a size - I can see why you need all that weight in the hull.

Nick

[Guest]

I reckon that bridge will be a real nuisance to paint...

I was just thinking about that too ten minutes or so ago … you can’t really paint the parts before assembly, because how do you glue them then, but everything is hard to reach after assembly I’ve decided for now to stop construction at the point where the decks go on, and probably paint the insides first.

That gives another problem: the real thing was probably painted SCC 2 (brown) and then painted white over that, but I kind of doubt someone would have crawled inside it to paint everything there white too. However, I need to prime the model before I can apply any of the SCC 2 paints I have, as they’re all water-based acrylics that don’t like going over bare plastic. But that would mean spraying the bridge white, spraying the insides brown over that, and then somehow painting the outside (off)white again, somehow without covering the brown on the inside :rolling:

it's certainly quite a size - I can see why you need all that weight in the hull.

Yes, I doubt the tank will stay nicely on its tracks without. Hence building the bridge first, so I can figure out how much weight the hull needs

As for the actual build, I began by adding the parts the go between the bridge halves:

[ATTACH]477062[/ATTACH]

That’s the little brass thingies, which are actually a single piece, sort of a very shallow U, with a plastic part underneath the join. I tried glueing the brass and plastic together and then putting them between the halves, but it’s far easier to trap the brass between the halves, slide it down, glue the girders together and then add the plastic bit underneath. Beware which side is up when doing this.

Next, I added the fittings to the ends of each girder:

[ATTACH]477063[/ATTACH]

This is the tank end; the other end has only the smaller plates you can see on the second girder. (I also got the two girders the wrong way round here: the large hooks should be on the inside of the bridge, not the outside).

Those plates were awkward because each of them had a number of ejector pin marks, those large, half-round ones that are 2 to 3 mm long, on the inside that needed to be removed without accidentally cutting off their locating pins. (Luckily, if you do, there are spares of all of them as each of the four sprues has one of each, but you only need three of each of the small ones and one each of the large. Not that I needed them.)

Then add the crossbeams at the ends:

[ATTACH]477065[/ATTACH]

And for more perspective on size, here is the bridge with a tank model I happened to have available:

[ATTACH]477064[/ATTACH]

[Scratchbuilder]

Jakko,
Too late now but for your 'brown primer' try 'Mr Mahogany Surfacer 1000' and then add the white top coat - two jobs in one, primer brown and topcoat white...
Looked at the bridge consruction and although you have progressed to full assembly, can I say to anyone else (including myself) to assemble the bridge sections as 'L' shaped sections, paint and then assemble the sections to make the whole bridge up to where you are now and touch up later.
And very sensible to build the bridge first to gain an idea about the weight. My Churchill hull minus turret, track and winch weighs in at 298grammes, so if you can deduct the hull parts weight from the 298 then you will have your weight to counteract the bridge.
Looking forward to seeing more of this build for when I get my AFV Club one - must be a glutton for punishment....
Mike.

[adt70hk]

Jakko

That is coming on very nicely indeed. Kudos for the way the bridge parts have come out so far.

ATB.

Andrew

[Guest]

Too late now but for your 'brown primer' try 'Mr Mahogany Surfacer 1000' and then add the white top coat - two jobs in one, primer brown and topcoat white...

I was thinking of just spraying it with Tamiya dark earth acrylic, being alcohol-based that will work fine on bare plastic, unlike the Mig and AK water-based paints I have in the supposedly correct shade. The Tamiya paint isn’t a “warm” enough colour for SCC 2 (which seems to have been milk-chocolate brown) but will do for the inside, especially if I then go and shade it with a brown-tinted glaze.

Looked at the bridge consruction and although you have progressed to full assembly, can I say to anyone else (including myself) to assemble the bridge sections as 'L' shaped sections, paint and then assemble the sections to make the whole bridge up to where you are now and touch up later.

That’s what I realised would have probably been the better way too, after I was most of the way done. It would mean scraping some paint off where the zigzag struts fit, but that should be easy enough to do.

And very sensible to build the bridge first to gain an idea about the weight. My Churchill hull minus turret, track and winch weighs in at 298grammes, so if you can deduct the hull parts weight from the 298 then you will have your weight to counteract the bridge.

I find it slightly strange that AFV Club have you build the bridge last, and just say to add 100 g inside the hull, not even telling you where in the hull — it’ll make a big difference if you put it in the nose or under the transmission deck …

Looking forward to seeing more of this build for when I get my AFV Club one - must be a glutton for punishment....

It’s the painting of the bridge that I’m still looking forward to the least Back when the Matchbox 1:76 scale kit was fairly new, I build that but got very tired of trying to paint the inside of the bridge with it fully assembled — to the extent that I have the half-painted parts near my workbench now (I dug them out some years ago to measure them up as I wanted a 1:72 scale one for a wargaming AVRE, but though I mostly finished a 3D CAD drawing of it, I never did get it printed up.)

That is coming on very nicely indeed. Kudos for the way the bridge parts have come out so far.

Thanks, but TBH, building the bridge isn’t hard — it’s been engineered about as well as it could have been, given the intricate construction of the real thing.

[Lee Drennen]

not a kit you’ll put together in a weekend,

I’m in but I’m going to have to have refreshments. Wow Jakko lots of parts

[Guest]

They haven’t skimped on those, for sure

[Scratchbuilder]

Hi Jakko,
After looking through the instructions you posted to Scalemates, it does seem strange about the weight. This is how I sorted my weight problem, it may be a bit of overkill but should do the job.

This is the box I built for the weight...

And this is the weight (similar) obtained from evilbay, the thickness is 5mm and the box is there to keep it in place.
Cheers
Mike

[Guest]

That should be enough, yes What I intend to do is build the mail hull pieces, hang the bridge from the front with some string, put the roof and turret on, and just keep adding weight until the model stands correctly. I don’t entirely trust the suspension to take too much weight even after I glue it all down

[Guest]

[ATTACH]477297[/ATTACH]

Painting the bridge was not as much of a chore as I had dreaded. It’s not a simple job, but by spraying everything from all directions that you can see it from, it’s not too bad. Still, I would urge everyone else building this kit (or the separate, larger bridge kit AFV Club also released) to follow Mike’s advice and glue one zigzag to one side panel, paint the inside faces, and only then assemble them into girders.

I also sprayed the undersides of the decks, by the way, the areas that will be covered by the girders, anyway. If you forget to do that, you will have a much harder paint job there

[Guest]

The bridge itself is now just about done:

[ATTACH=CONFIG]n[/ATTACH]

To attach the decks, it works best if you put them on the girders a few centimetres away from the bridge’s centre, because the girders there are a bit too thick for the deck pieces to fit over them easily. Then just slide up to the middle and run glue into the joints.

There are some kind of grips/levers/thingies on the bridge, four to each deck, but one had gone missing from a sprue, so I had to fabricate a replacement:

[ATTACH=CONFIG]n[/ATTACH]

This is just two 1.6 mm discs punched out of 0.25 mm plastic card, with the top disc having its centre cut away so that there’s a groove down the middle. The handle itself is a piece of stretched plastic rod (like sprue, except I had reason to stretch some plastic rod the other day to obtain a cone, so I used the thin bit I had left over for this).

At the “tank end” of the bridge are two pedestals for the booms by which the bridge was winched up:

[ATTACH=CONFIG]n[/ATTACH]

The holes in them are for hinges for the booms, so they will fall away from the bridge deck when it’s laid.

However, AFV Club made a pretty major mistake here. Take a look at the instructions:

[ATTACH=CONFIG]n[/ATTACH]

Both of them are labelled as part U17, and the instructions clearly point out which way the holes should face. Unfortunately, you can’t make it like that because if you turn U17 through 90 degrees it won’t fit, and if you cut off its locating pin so you can turn it, it will still be wrong (the top plate is not square and the angle of the holes would be incorrect).

I solved this by cutting off the top, filing everything square and flat, adding some plastic card, and re-attaching the top upside-down:

[ATTACH=CONFIG]n[/ATTACH]

… and when writing this, of course, I discovered that the fix is far simpler … use part U6 :sleeping: So the instructions are wrong, the right part is on the sprue, but I had overlooked it because they’re a little confusing. Anyway, I’ll keep what I have, as it fits fine.

[adt70hk]

Looking good Jakko!

[Jim R]

That bridge looks good. Good fix on part U17 even if you didn't need a fix. :rolling:

[minitnkr]

Excellent result.

[scottie3158]

Jakko, lovely neat work.