LVT(4) Buffalo in Zoutelande, Netherlands, 2 November 1944

[Richard48]

Hi Jakko.
A great subject matter.I believe Tiger models has some stuff for this kit.Im sure i read that british Lvs had different top hatch configurations and side applique armour.
Great stuff.
Rich.

[Guest]

The cab hatches on all British LVT(4)s I remember seeing were all at the front of the roof, not staggered as here, so that will require a bit of remedial surgery. The kit provides the late style of side armour, panels that cover the whole of the pontoons, but many (most?) LVTs on Walcheren appear to have used the earlier style of smaller plates at front and rear. The photos above don’t show which type this one had, but I’ll add the smaller ones to this model — I’ve already cut the plates but not put them on yet. The build is mainly being held up by the need to wait for paint to dry

[Mickc1440]

Great introduction to your build, I'm in with the rest to follow this one.

[Guest]

[ATTACH]325467[/ATTACH]

This photo shows the armour plates, though they’re not yet glued on, and the etched screens in the front sponsons.

The armour plate is 0.25 mm plastic sheet, cut based on the drawings in one of Bruce Crosby’s MilMod articles and the dimensions of the AFV Club pontoons. After I glue them on, they’ll still need clips to hold them.

I’ve pictured the screen mainly to show the way I attached them: they sit in a recess in the plastic part, from the inside (they’re on the underside of the sponsons), and rather than glue them in place with superglue, I cut two lengths of plastic strip that I glued above the screens using normal plastic cement, trapping the screen between them and the kit part. Note that the recess in the plastic part is slightly shorter than the screen, so scraping out the front and back a little is necessary to make the screens sit nice and flat.

Also, I’m keeping the sponsons separate until after I’ve assembled the hull sides and bottom and the engine compartment inside. This mainly because I think it will be harder to get them square if you put them on like AFV Club suggests, namely, glue the sponsons to the side walls first and only then put the hull parts together.

[Guest]

The corrected cab roof:

[ATTACH]325591[/ATTACH]

It now has both hatches equally far forward instead of the right one further back than the left. This was easy enough to do with a saw and a mitre box: I first cut front to back on both sides of the hatch, taking care to do so between the bolt heads along the rear edge of the top plate. Next, I cut from side to side just in front of the ridge around the hatch, leaving about half a millimetre of roof, and finally, I made a third cut behind the hatch.

Note that I sawed this with the plate lying flat in the mitre box — I didn’t saw through from front to back, but from top to bottom. It would be rather too easy to get the angles really wrong if you saw from end to end

Then it was just a matter of gluing some plastic card to the inside of the roof and putting the pieces I cut out onto them:

[ATTACH]325592[/ATTACH]

All that remains here is to wait for the glue to dry, apply some filler, and sand that down tomorrow.

The cab interior is now also mostly complete:

[ATTACH]325593[/ATTACH]

Most of this will be out of sight, unfortunately. There should also be a crossbar with instrument panel above the transmission, but when I put that in and set the cab roof in place, it’s almost invisible so chances are that I’ll leave it off entirely.

[Richard48]

Superb Jakko.Some really great decals such as Shite hawk.I saw one at Bovington museum couple years ago.My wife said she liked the look of it better than tanks.
Richard.

[Guest]

This one will have the name ESQUAY on the side, which is just sort of visible in one of the photos I posted, and that I managed to decipher with help from a thread on another forum about the names of British Buffalos.

I just remembered that a museum not far from where I live (but that I’ve never actually visited yet) has an LVT(4), and apparently, it’s in working order:

This one is marked as SPIDER, which was photographed in Middelburg in front of the (temporary) headquarters of the German general Daser, who was in charge of the defence of Walcheren and surrendered on 8 November 1944.

[Guest]

We’re making progress: the cab and front deck are now on, as are the pontoons and suspension, so it’s starting to look like an LVT.

[ATTACH]326094[/ATTACH]

The white paint on the front is because I sprayed the area around the altered hatch (twice) so I could tell if I had sanded the filler down enough. I then sanded some of that away again where the Polsten gun will be added later, so it won’t be glued to paint instead of plastic.

On looking closely at the photos at the start of this thread, I discovered that my choice of armour was most likely correct. On the photo with the people on the front deck, you can just see the armour plate on the bow, and because that doesn’t extend above the nose, it probably means the vehicle had the small armour plates on the pontoons, instead of the larger, single plate AFV Club provides. I had to cut the upper part of the bow armour off, though, just below the gap in the upper curved bit:

[ATTACH]326096[/ATTACH]

And then attach it to the model,

[ATTACH]326097[/ATTACH]

Also note the filled holes for the armour’s supports on top of the nose, and for the two cleats (the things a rope can be tied to on a vessel). On the kit, these are lengthwise just inboard of the mudguards, but on the real vehicle I’m building this model of, they were transverse at the front edge of those same mudguards. I also tried denting the pipe that forms the edge of the nose, as it was on the real thing.

And a picture of one of the rear vane assemblies. I had been debating whether to use the Eduard parts for this, but the plastic ones look good to me. It needs ejector pin marks filled on about half the parts, though.

[ATTACH]326095[/ATTACH]

[scottie3158]

Jakko,
looking good keep it coming.

[col68]

Jakko I will follow your build if you don't mind. I've been thinking of getting one of these.

[Guest]

looking good keep it coming.

Thanks. Now I’m getting to the dull stage, fitting all the little details

I've been thinking of getting one of these.

It’s a good kit, way better than the Italeri alternative. There are a couple of things to look out for, but nothing that should be a problem for a moderately experienced modeller.

[Guest]

The rear ramp is now finished and added to the model.

[ATTACH]326403[/ATTACH]

The basic ramp is simple enough, though the pulleys for the cable are irritating: they’re really just too small to thread the cable through correctly, as it needs to turn a 90 degree corner around the pulley, but it’s very difficult to actually do that with the kit parts. Still, I managed reasonably well in the end.

One thing I did differently, was to cut the cable in two and add one length to each side of the ramp, instead of threading it through like AFV Club recommends. I doubt it will actually run through the pulleys, so it’s simpler to do it this way, if you ask me.

I also replaced the kit-provided plastic hooks with copper wire ones glued into holes drilled in the ramp, for durability.

Here’s the ramp down, with the cable tied in place:

[ATTACH]326401[/ATTACH]

I built a cleat in both of the rear storage compartments and tied the cable around them, as I’m not good at getting knots in ropes exactly where they should be, so this way gave me some ability to adjust the tension. Once I was happy with that, I superglued the rope together, so it will hopefully never come loose

I still need to scratchbuild one of the eight hinge brackets for the ramp, as I managed to lose one when it flew from my fingers Despite searching for over a quarter of an hour, I didn’t manage to locate it.

On to the Polsten gun:

[ATTACH]326404[/ATTACH]

These are the basic gun and mounting from the Scale Line kit. I replaced the barrel by a length of 1.6 mm aluminium tube, rather than use the flimsy resin one provided. The mounting shown here is only three parts, and though one of the fore-and-aft strips is broken, it needs to be covered in a tarp so I’m not going to fix it.

What remains to be done is add the gun to the mounting, then add the sights and traverse handle, and somehow make a 60-round drum magazine. The kit only has a ten-round box, but the real vehicle had the drum. Luckily it will mostly be covered by the tarp too, so I can probably just add the basic shape from some scrap material instead of having to build a detailed magazine.

Here’s the base mounting it goes onto:

[ATTACH]326402[/ATTACH]

The kit provided the front strip too, but it was broken in two and not straight, so it was simpler to replace it by a bit of brass L-profile.

I had also added the boat hooks on the cab roof, but realised these interfered with the mounting, and then couldn’t see the hooks in photos of other Buffalos, so I removed them again.

[Guest]

More weapons: the vehicle also carried at least two M1919A4 Brownings, both on the left side. I can’t make out from the two photos if it also had any on the right, but four of those guns plus a 20 mm seems excessive compared to photos of other Buffalos, so I suppose both guns were put on the left side for some reason.

Anyway, the kit includes very nice guns and four-part mountings. When I had put that together, though, I spotted an unexpected problem:

[ATTACH]326629[/ATTACH]

The bracket for the ammunition box (the squarish thing behind the pivot point) is too far back and the gun sits too low in the mounting to be able to feed from a box installed there, if you ask me.

My first thought was that the gun was wrongly dimensioned, but after looking up the overall length and barrel length of the M1919A4, I found it’s spot on (taking into account that the chamber of this weapon ends at the rear end of the feed tray, not in front of it). I next spent half an hour or more scouring the Internet and several reference books for pictures, but couldn’t find any good ones of this particular type of mounting All of them either showed a different mount, or this mount with an early type of ammo box, or (in just one or two) the mount without a bracket.

In the end I decided to cut away the bracket entirely:

[ATTACH]326630[/ATTACH]

Then I just stuck the box to the side of the mount and pretend there’s something there to hold it on

[ATTACH]326631[/ATTACH]

The boxes are from Tamiya’s Allied Vehicles Accessory Set (see my jerrycan correction post elsewhere on this forum) and the ammo belt is from their nearly ancient U.S. Infantry Weapons Set, of which I have a couple tucked away. I left off the lid on one of the boxes to have a little variety, though I suspect, given the November weather, that it would have been left on on the real vehicle.

[Guest]

Bolt heads added to the clips that hold on the side armour:

[ATTACH]327730[/ATTACH]

These were made with my new 0.7 mm hex punch and die, and I must say it’s almost surprising to see (just) in this photo that it actually is hexagonal I’m quite near-sighted, but still can’t really make out that it isn’t round with my naked eye.

Then onto what could be considered part of the finishing stage, but better done at this point, I think. On the photos of the real thing, you can just make out a heap of sand on the upper surfaces of the pontoons, deposited there by the tracks. These vehicles had been driving along the foot of a row of sand dunes for the better part of 5 km, and so would have picked up plenty of sand with their tracks. That, of course, needs to be replicated on the model:

[ATTACH]327728[/ATTACH]
[ATTACH]327729[/ATTACH]

This is two-part epoxy putty (Sylmasta A+B, to be precise — I still have most of a packet ) that I rolled out into a sausage shape and pressed onto the pontoon tops with a steel spatula-type sculpting tool. The rough texture was also created with that, as I discovered by accident that it resulted in this if I scraped its front edge over the putty. It was exactly the look I was after for loose but probably somewhat wet sand.

I didn’t put any on the covers over the rear of the pontoons, because those seem to have the kind of angle that sand would just slide off of. I’ll probably suggest some sand on them with paint, but not a thick build-up like further forward.

[Steve Jones]

Wow Jakko!! Its all been happening here.Terrific work mate. Wonderful attention to historical accuracy as always. I use filler at the building stage to simulate mud. The epoxy "sand" looks spot on. Keep up the great work