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

[Guest]

I mentioned before I wanted the inside of the bridge to be SCC 2 brown, but spraying the white had ruined that My tip if you want to paint the bridge a different colour inside than out too, is to paint the insides first (as I recommended before, I think) and then put some tape on the inside of the zigzags before glueing the parts together. This so you avoid having to do what I did, and laboriously repaint the insides with a brush:

[ATTACH]482522[/ATTACH][ATTACH]482523[/ATTACH]

That done, I could refit the booms (and fix one of the hinges, that broke off when I tried doing that) and finally install the cables:

[ATTACH]482524[/ATTACH]

That was fairly tricky, but doable. After putting the clasp through the eye at the end of the cable, I found it best to insert a pin but don’t push it through yet. You can then put the clasp into position, push the pin through and apply a tiny bit of liquid cement to both ends, being careful to keep it away from the cable eyes and the hole or ring the clasp locks into.

Close-ups:

[ATTACH]482526[/ATTACH][ATTACH]482525[/ATTACH]

I glued the tops of the booms together with X31 in place, but there is no glue anywhere except to glue the pins O6 to clasps O11, and between the tops of the booms, X31 is also still loose, but trapped between the booms.

When I tested the whole thing before glueing the booms, it turns out that if you pull on X31 (and prevent the lower end of the bridge from sliding away) far enough that the bridge pivots upwards, X31 keeps the booms together perfectly well without glue. Still, I glued the booms because again, better safe than sorry

Oh, and the tank now has a raincoat on:

[ATTACH]482527[/ATTACH]

This so I can sculpt the waterproofing between the hull and the turret without it sticking to the hull.

[Scratchbuilder]

Aha! TBH, I was wondering what kind of couplings you meant, as I was having a hard time figuring out how something like this:

[ATTACH=CONFIG]n[/ATTACH]

… relates to part O11 :smiling3:

The ones you mean seem a bit long, but I imagine something shorter would be available too by looking around a bit.


At the moment, my thinking is that O11/O6 are probably OK: they’re not likely to be the weakest link in the chain, which looks to me to be the X31 followed by the eyes on parts O10 (of which there are at least six) and their glue joint with the thread that makes up the cable. If I had to guess, it’s probably the eye on X31, as that takes the whole weight of the bridge, while each O10 only takes half.

I think the best thing to do is see if there are any spares, and if so, use one of them to see how much weight it can take. If it will hold the bridge’s weight without deforming or snapping, all should be well.

Morning tea now all over the screen.....:tears-of-joy:

[Guest]

Good thing the model is protected, then

[Jim R]

Really interesting to read through the thoughts and processes needed to get to this stage. Everything looking good.

[Guest]

This is what the raincoat was for:

[ATTACH]482728[/ATTACH][ATTACH]482729[/ATTACH]

A good hour’s worth of work with Magic Sculp produced the waterproofing between hull and turret, and though it will still need more work once it’s hardened, I’d say the part I don’t much like is done now

There is nothing on the rear wall, by the way, because that will be covered by the stowage bin.

[JR]

Your attention to "getting it right " is praiseworthy.

[Guest]

I just don’t like doing half a job

The need to make all this is one of my two complaints about this kit, BTW: why include the deep-wading trunks but not all the other bits that were also installed to make the tank waterproof? (The other complaint is that AFV Club could easily have included parts to make the suspension sit correctly when carrying a bridge.)

[Guest]

The clingfilm worked very well. Now the putty has hardened, I could just take the turret off the hull:

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And because I forgot to post it earlier, here’s a photo of the real waterproofing for the turret ring, taken from the British Army’s manual:

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You may notice that the waterproofing for the gun aperture isn’t on yet here, while I did that first for my model. The reason is that on the real tank, the turret ring was waterproofed first, followed by the gun aperture; for my model, I did it the other way round because I initially intended to glue the turret to the hull before adding the waterproofing, and that would make it very hard to sculpt the cloth around the mortar. Only after I had done that part, did I realise that clingfilm would prevent the putty from sticking to the hull …

My advice to anyone else wanting to also model the waterproofing on a Churchill, would be to do it in the order the manual says: hull-to-turret first, then the gun (or mortar). This because I found it a little difficult to get the putty into place at the front of the turret due to the mortar being in the way, which you would avoid by leaving the whole thing off until after you’ve sculpted the cloth between hull and turret.

[Jim R]

Glad that worked so well.

[Guest]

So am I — it could be done better, by a better sculptor than I am

Once the putty had hardened, I scraped and carved it to improve the shape and remove defects, then added most of the kit’s turret details:

[ATTACH]482983[/ATTACH]

The kit also supplies the “cage” type of sight that sits in front of the commander’s cupola, but from photos it looks like my subject didn’t have that, so I left it off. I did make a mistake in using the tall aerial base (the one with the ring around it). There were tall and short ones, and photos seem to show the real tank I’m building had the short one. Luckily, the kit supplies both, though it keeps quiet about the short one, so I pulled the wrong one off and fitted the other. I drilled out all of the aerial bases with an 0.4 mm drill, BTW, to later easily install the aerials themselves.

Then I added eight spare track links with strips and punched nuts to retain them:

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On the real tank, lengths of steel rod were welded to the turret that went through the holes in the links, then the strip and nuts retained them, so I also added 0.5 mm plastic rod where the rods might be seen.

[Richard48]

Hi Jakko.
Thought id pop by.I went to our local.Ipms meeting last night and one of the guys brought in the same model you are doing.I told him to check your build out.Lack of mojo has stopped me dead in my tracks.I just watch you guys creating for now.
Keep going dude.
Richard

[Guest]

I went to our local.Ipms meeting last night and one of the guys brought in the same model you are doing.I told him to check your build out.

Nice, it’ll be interesting (for you, anyway, I suppose ) to see the difference in how the two come out. And thanks for pointing people to my efforts

Lack of mojo has stopped me dead in my tracks.

Happens to all of us, you’ll get past it and be eager to build things again soon

I just watch you guys creating for now.
Keep going dude.

I certainly intend to — I have an LCA I want to build, that I won’t let myself start until this one is done …

[Jack L]

Looking good @Jakko. Just building the fascine version…your tips along the way, especially the running gear have been a massive help.

[Mickc1440]

More superb work Jakko your attention to detail is inspirational

[Guest]

Just building the fascine version…

I also want to build that one at some point, as two were sent to Walcheren too. Only one made it ashore, though, and then promptly got stuck when trying to maneuvre off the side of an SBG bridge:

[ATTACH]483077[/ATTACH]

Not the bridge from the tank I’m modelling, BTW — that was to the left of this photo. The winch frame of the tank that carried the bridge that this tank got stuck on, is visible at the lower right of the photo. The man is standing on its track guard.

This particular fascine-carrying AVRE is interesting (for a given value of …) in that it not only has the later type of track, which only two AVREs in the operation appear to have had, but one track is on backwards at that.

your tips along the way, especially the running gear have been a massive help.

Cool I always hope somebody finds it useful when I explain things, so glad it helped

More superb work Jakko your attention to detail is inspirational

Thanks