Char B1 Bis on the roll again (tools)

[Teabone]

Jun 11, 2013 14:50:08 GMT -5 armorguy said:

Thanks for the comments gents !

Bones, I'll keep your tip in mind mate !

ArmorGuy

The below pictures show the MEK method that I use that I said I'd post.

Bones









Pictures do not show it perfect but you should be able to get the idea of what I did.

[bigjohn]

Sweet looking paint work Guy!!

[wbill76]

We have color! Woohoo!

[Deleted]

nice build love it!

[armorguy]

Thanks friends, today I expected to do more but there's always a new tomorrow !



Not a revolutionary what if night camo...

Best regards ! AG.

[Deleted]

Hmmm , this is an interesting start on the paint !

[armorguy]

More Dark yellow today fellas.

After spraying on the Dark Yellow I added a bit of White X2 and Laquer Thinner to the prepared paint, to lighten the horizontal parts.



Probably I start airbrushing the brown tomorrow.

Best regards ! AG.

[406 Silverado]

oops, wrong tank,builder and camo. Still, nice camo AFV.

Guy, I use the MEK for gluing all my kits, and also for texturing too. I sometimes use a stiff toothbrush. Will be doing this on the KV II cast mantlet.

Paint looks good so far. Wish I could be painting right now.

[armorguy]

Thanks Rob, a friend of mine MEK-glues too. I'll have to give it a try especially for texturing.

This photo inspires me a lot.



I try to add a soft, almost semi transparent camo.

BTW : some of the Channel Island Chars were coated with a product looking like tar. Particularly the turrets show this. I think it was an experiment ?

AG.

[406 Silverado]

yeah I love that pic too. Looks very worn and dirty.....fun with weathering. I will be getting this kit very soon I hope. Looks like a simple build and lots of fun to paint and weather.

[armorguy]

Jun 15, 2013 12:02:44 GMT -5 406 Silverado said:

yeah I love that pic too. Looks very worn and dirty.....fun with weathering. I will be getting this kit very soon I hope. Looks like a simple build and lots of fun to paint and weather.

I will be getting another one of these too Rob, I can't wait to start building a French Char version, and picking an interesting camo scheme.

[afvfan]

AG - the 2 tone yellow looks good. That'll give you a great base for the other colors. I wish I had taken the time to texture the cast parts. Your turret looks good.

Rob - sorry for the confusion....but thanks for the compliment.

I just posted a question on the guards over on another forum. Maybe someone there can give us a semi-definitive answer about them. If someone does, I'll post it here. Between letting the clear dry, decaling, and recoating them, I figure I have a few days yet before I'll be ready to proceed.

[deafpanzer]

GREAT PROCESS!! Can't wait to see more...

[Teabone]

ArmorGuy

My experience, I tried using MEK for glue and in the right situations it works well, places where you can assemble a part and use a capillary applicator along the seams leaves no residue and gives you a nice tight joint.  There are other places where Extra Thin is better so rather than switch back and forth between the two I stayed with Extra Thin just for ease of use and for me the MEK applicator was a little fiddly to load at times.

Bones

[wbill76]

Nice paint update AG! The thick coating you're referring to wasn't tar, it was actually zimmerit if you can believe it or not! Field applied for sure and very rough, but that's what you see on the surviving examples from the Channel Islands. For the hull sides they didn't use zimmerit but had some kind of screen or hanging 'drape' type of arrangement IIRC (can't find the link I had about it but will post it if I dig it up again). It was a make-shift anti-magnetic experiment that was done only with these handful of vehicles in an attempt to bring them up to standard with other Pz vehicles as best as possible at the time.

[Leon]

Great progress Guy.Looking forward to more updated.

[afvfan]

Alright! I just got confirmation from a couple guys on the other forum. Seems Mr. Bill wins the magical no-prize this time with his correct answer of rubber. Here's a corroborating pic posted by one of them:



It was also brought up that there was an inner flap that's missing from the kit (but can't really be seen anyway).

Here's a link to an old thread on ML. Unfortunately, all the pics are gone.

www.network54.com/Forum/47208/thread/1151543507/B1+track+skirt+material-+(warning-++%26quot%3Bbootleg%26quot%3B+photo+inside)

[armorguy]

This prooves it is a rubber skirt indeed ! Thanks Bob, and it's a great pic to have in my thread !

Bill, thanks mate, so it was zimmerite, amateuristically added to the Chars ! Nice to know.

[Teabone]

Great find on the picture, another lesson learned, also may be the reason so many were missing when dragged over a hard edge.

Bones

[danb.]

Great progress fella

Dan B

[armorguy]

Guys...guys...guys...something kinda bad luck happened this afternoon, but please keep smiling just like me please.

I had finished my brown camo job, and I filled my airbrush with green. I cleaned the airbrush and appearantly I forgot to screw on the nozzle entirely. The airbrush pulled air from the nose and the green paint in my cup got blown out and spead out in a green Goblin rain, guess where it came down...on my Char.

I immediately tried to clean it up but as I use Laquer thinner, it was already eating its way to the plastic.

My own mistake, no man overboard, it's only a model.

The paint was removed entirely and I will start again friends.

Give me a couple of days for this recovery overation please.

But we keep smiling, in fact this is about modelling too, falling and rising.

Lesson learned : screw the nozzle on boyz.

Best regards ! AG.

[wouter]

yeah, big bummer, but I'm pretty sure you're not the first and probably not the last to encounter that stuff

well, it looked great so far, a repaint can only mean it will only look even better!

Cheers

[afvfan]

Sad news, AG. Thankfully, it is a recoverable mistake, but I feel your frustration!

[bbd468]

Jun 14, 2013 13:40:23 GMT -5 armorguy said:

Thanks friends, today I expected to do more but there's always a new tomorrow !



Not a revolutionary what if night camo...

Best regards ! AG.

I rather like the Night camo look. Stealthy!

Lookin nice my man!

[406 Silverado]

Bummer G. I am sure it'll look even better second time around.

[bigjohn]

Hang in there brother! I know you can fix it!

[Leon]

Glad your spirits are still up AG .You'll get her fixed right.

[Teabone]

ArmorGuy

Know the feeling, had to remove a paint job myself once and hope it never happens again.  Only one solution and that is to rise up and go again.

Bones.




           PHOENIX

[wbill76]

Sorry to hear about that AG but I'm sure you'll recover in a couple of days and it will be better than ever the second time around. You're not alone for sure...there's an area on the wall and ceiling next to my spray booth that's got a nice splattering of enamel Burnt Umber...Mr. Genius here decided it would be a good idea to ensure there was sufficient airflow getting to the needle by putting my finger over the end of the nozzle and lightly depressing the trigger...forgetting that I'd screwed the needle down tight when I'd swapped out paint colors just a couple of minutes prior. The top cap on the paint cup blow out like Old Faithful!

[armorguy]

Well guys, I have already ordered another Char B1 BIS for the near future, coz' I want a couple of these in my collection, showing different camo patterns.

This one however will be finished, Mr Murphy in the house or not. And it wont be a camo version, nor a grey one.

The unlucky kit was cleaned yesterday and painted again today.

I went for an easy solution after my airbrush protest.

So it's still in progress... as a captured 'Beute' Char, a green one, with the white star decals, and named "Vercors".

Decals are planned for tomorrow, here's the change of plan on photo :





Best regards ! AG.