As the Warrior enters its final stages, the next item on my build list is the IDF M109 'Doher'.
I was going to base it on the Kinetic kit that I had just added to the stash BUT, after trying to get the twisted lower hull square in hot water, I gave it the elbow and plumped for the AFV Club M109. Later on I will return to the Kinetic one and revert this to either a British version or an American....
So.... out came the kit, the reference and the extras....
The extras include Black Dog resin interior, Voyager etch and AFV Club 'workable' tracks...
So the first job was to assemble the lower hull...
This consists of seven parts and needs to be square. I started with the rear panel and the floor, these were squared up on a sheet of thick glass rescued from someones discarded video/dvd recorder cupboard, Then came the sides, tops to the track sponsons and finally the sides and front of the hull.
As I am adding the interior I decided that all of the ejector pin marks and the holes that you have to drill out would all be filled, this prevents the rivet counters from their "Ooooohhhh!!! let's count the ejector pin holes (sniff)" factor...
First job was to add the floor and here because the hull sides are at a slight angle the floor has to be slid in from the front to the rear and then the front of the floor slightly bent to clear the final drive housing...
... As seen here, I also used the spare center torsion block to support the front of the floor. I decided to fit part of the drivers compartment which would then give me a reference for the other bulkheads to fit.
Now that beautiful clean bench that you saw earlier - well now they look like this....
The pliers are there to hold the resin blocks when sawing...
More later
Cheers
Mike.
I was going to base it on the Kinetic kit that I had just added to the stash BUT, after trying to get the twisted lower hull square in hot water, I gave it the elbow and plumped for the AFV Club M109. Later on I will return to the Kinetic one and revert this to either a British version or an American....
So.... out came the kit, the reference and the extras....
The extras include Black Dog resin interior, Voyager etch and AFV Club 'workable' tracks...
So the first job was to assemble the lower hull...
This consists of seven parts and needs to be square. I started with the rear panel and the floor, these were squared up on a sheet of thick glass rescued from someones discarded video/dvd recorder cupboard, Then came the sides, tops to the track sponsons and finally the sides and front of the hull.
As I am adding the interior I decided that all of the ejector pin marks and the holes that you have to drill out would all be filled, this prevents the rivet counters from their "Ooooohhhh!!! let's count the ejector pin holes (sniff)" factor...
First job was to add the floor and here because the hull sides are at a slight angle the floor has to be slid in from the front to the rear and then the front of the floor slightly bent to clear the final drive housing...
... As seen here, I also used the spare center torsion block to support the front of the floor. I decided to fit part of the drivers compartment which would then give me a reference for the other bulkheads to fit.
Now that beautiful clean bench that you saw earlier - well now they look like this....
The pliers are there to hold the resin blocks when sawing...
More later
Cheers
Mike.
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