Churchill IV AVRE finished

[afvfan]

AFV Club's AVRE pretty much out of the box. Comments welcome.

[Leon]

Nice finish on the Churchill Bob.

[afvfan]

Thanks Leon!

[deafpanzer]

WOW! STUNNING!!! AWESOME!!! Love the dirt build up around the tracks. You nailed it...

Was the tracks indies from the kit too? They look so good too!

[wbill76]

Nicely done Bob! Looks fresh off the beach.

[afvfan]

Andy - Thanks for the comment. The kit did come with indie links, but I chose not to use them. The bands were molded with some pretty nice detail that, once weathered and dusted up, served the purpose well enough. Besides, by the time I got to the tracks, I was so irritated with the rest of the kit, I just wanted to be done with it. The bands, even after a stretching session, were about 3/4" too short. The only way I could use them was with the liberal application of a stapler and thin wire ties. Thank goodness for the covered fenders!

Bill - Appreciate the words. I guess I did my job right, then. You description was exactly the look I needed to attain for this particular build.

[TRM]

Not much to add to the comments above other than fantastic job Bob!! The painting has really nice highlights and fading...the tracks looks spot on and the weathering looks great with regards to degrees of dried dirt!

Forgive me for asking as I have no clue about these beasts...the two pulley type rigs off the top back....what is their purpose actually? Would these have a bit of a shine with the steel pigs maybe? Please correct me if I am wrong on this...maybe not used or something?

Really a sweet looking piece my friend!!

[afvfan]

Hey T, nice of you to stop in. Really appreciate the comments. In answer to your question, those are spare suspension units. Rather than just change a broken road wheel, they changed the whole unit. Seems kind of silly to me, but I guess they had their reasons.

On a bit off topic subject, I finally have a piece in the works that I'll be able to finally use one of the paint sets I got off of you. I should have it done by mid January and will post pics then.

[TRM]

Thanks for the info Bob!! Good to learn new things! Looking forward to see your results of having some fun painting !!!

[afvfan]

Nov 30, 2014 23:18:34 GMT -5 TRM said:

Thanks for the info Bob!! Good to learn new things!

Makes me sound smart, doesn't it? To be honest before I started this build I was in the dark as much. I was thinking along the same lines as you, that they were part of the engineering equipment.

[Deano]

Looks great! nice job!!!!

[afvfan]

Thanks Deano.

[afvfan]

Thanks Rod. No, I rarely do bases, and never dioramas. I mainly do commission work and let the buyer worry about adding them if they want to. I'm just pure satisfied building the vehicles.

[wing_nut]

You've got yourself a real beauty there.

[dupes]

Indeed...great finish!

I take it the kit had some fiddly assembly quirks?

[afvfan]

Dec 4, 2014 8:32:18 GMT -5 dupes said:

Indeed...great finish!

I take it the kit had some fiddly assembly quirks?

That it did, Marc. It was a mixed bag of problems from murky instructions (you can build a couple different versions and sometimes it wasn't too clear which was which, sometimes you had to guess how a part fit), over engineered assemblies (unnecessary increase in the parts count with no visual benefits), some under engineered ones (tow cable mounts are virtually nonexistent), and fitting issues in some areas (the short tracks previously mentioned and the hull MG doesn't fit unless you enlarge the port - I left the MG off until after I did the paint, figuring I could easily slide it in place afterwards. That was when the issue came up - talk about a not too happy camper). I didn't list everything I ran into, but you get the picture.

This was actually my first AFV Club built. By reputation, I expected better.