Tamiya Char B1 bis COMPLETED 03-04-07

Modeling Subjects Armor
21

Ron,

Since they were infantry support tanks, they had speed governors to make sure that they didn’t surpass their bretheren on foot…which makes for a verrrrrrrry slooooooow drive at times! [;)]

I made a lot of progress today, completing all the major construction almost by accident since I hadn’t intended to get quite this far along.

Step 16 presents an option between two different types/styles of exhaust configuration. For “Marne” the correct type are the fish-tail straight exhausts with the longer protective shrouds, so I used parts A26 and A11 to construct mine. The exhausts have a fine seam line that was a little tricky to remove but no other difficulties were encountered.

Step 17 directs you to install the mufflers onto the rear deck, which is easily accomplished since there are locator holes in both fenders to insure a squared-up fit. The protective guard rail, B33 is also installed and this part requires some cleanup since all the posts/rail sections have a mold seam and the joints where the posts meet the top rail also have sink marks that need to be dealt with. Last but not least, the concertina antenna support is constructed from two part halves. This design produces a join seam that has to be trimmed/sanded down without damaging the ridges on the flexible housing, I cleaned mine up using the back edge of a #11 blade for the interior surfaces and a fine grit sanding twig for the ridges themselves. I also installed the antenna wire leading into and out of the protective guard housing. The wire is just that, steel wire, that I bent to shape and glued in place with CA. The tip where it meets up with the antenna base was filed down with a square needle file and the antenna base is dryfit for now and will be removed for separate painting later.

I also didn’t realize until writing this up that I neglected to install part B6 over the access door on the rear engine deck, fortunately it’s not too late to still do that!

Step 18 deals with the pioneer tools and the tow chain. The pioneer tools consist of a crowbar, sledgehammer, pick, and shovel that install together as a package of tools. The crowbar and pick are on the bottom with the sledge and shovel on top. The fit is very complex and I gave up trying to dryfit it, everything looks like it ought to fit properly so I’m not too worried about it and will install them later after painting is done.

I installed the rear hull tow swivels and did as the instructions directed by cutting the hook portion on each to accept the chain later on when that gets installed.

Step 19 begins the work on the turret by way of constructing the 47mm gun and mount along with the commander’s cupola. The Lion Marc barrel requres that the one-piece Tamiya gun part A12 be trimmed down to the two mounting pins and a hole drilled out to accept the aluminum barrel. Tamiya provides 2 barrels since it’s an A-sprue part, so I wasn’t too worried about doing this surgery and not having a “plan B” if needed. It wasn’t needed and the gun installed fairly easily, the barrel end did require a little bit of clean-up with a needle file but nothing serious.

The commander’s cupola is a two-part affair, which means that the join seam that goes right across the top in the middle needs attention. I used some liquid glue to get as tight a join as possible and then came along behind that and sanded the join down. I also chose to position the armored visor cover in the open position although the darn thing kept wanting to slip down into a semi-closed position until it set up…so I had to keep the handling to a minimum.

Step 20 constructs the turret and also presents the option to have the large rear hatch open or closed. There’s zero interior provided so since I wasn’t planning on doing the included figure, I chose the closed hatch option. While the instructions seem to indicate that you should install the hatch part C4 before you join the turret top to the bottom, I decided to join the turret halves first and then install the hatch later. The two parts have a good fit but this join also requires some sanding to get it to look even. The Char Francais site indicates that there’s a weld seam or a casting line around the base of the turret, however when I checked the photos on “Marne”, I didn’t see any evidence of this so kept the look smooth. The 47mm and coaxial machine gun mantlets were also installed as separate pieces and took a little bit of fiddling with to get them to sit properly since the gun mount has some play in its installation due to it being elevatable with the polycap mount from the previous step.

The final step is Step 21, it calls for the installation of the turret and the two smoke candles that are to go on either side on the fenders. The candles needed some cleanup due to the fact that their curved end faces are not molded flat, so a large seam/shift line is evident and needs to be taken care of.

That’s it for major construction, it’s now ready (once I install that part from the step I missed!) for painting.

22

Looking good Bill! That one offers a lot of details you will be able to work with in your weathering. Can’t wait to see it completed [:)]

23

Looking great! An interesting piece!

24

A whole week without Bill[BH] What the [censored] am I gonna read for the next seven days? Oh, well, s’pose I’ll have to work on my own model!

Safe travels, Bill.

Steve

25

Anthony, thanks for the comments!

GT, so many possibilities with this one from a weathering perspective, I’m looking forward to it!

Steve,

Thanks, going to be hard knowing that I won’t be able to do any work until I return on Thurs/Fri. [:D]

As a quick side note, here’s the correction from back in Step 17.

26

When my wife suggests a trip, vacation or even a long weekend to the coast, my brain starts calculating time missed at the bench. She knows it, I know it. The blank expression on my face reads like 72 point print. Am I wrong for this?

Steve

27

Not a chance. Just try convincing her of that.

28

Well done Bill, its nicely built up!

29

Steve,

I agree 100% with buff. [:D]

Fingers,

Thanks as always! Mind’s already working through the paint/finish/weathering approaches. [;)]

30

Had the chance to put in quite a bit of time today with the AB. Efforts started off by putting down a primer coat of Italian Dark Brown. I didn’t go with the usual Flat Black primer coat this time around because I 1) don’t know what kind of primer color the French used and 2) didn’t want the stark shadows that a Flat Black would produce for the two-tone camo. The Italian Dark Brown seemed like a good compromise, it was dark enough to insure none of the light-tan Tamiya plastic got overlooked and would provide some decent shadow/contrast for the camo so I ran with it. Just as I was finishing up, I managed to get a drop of thinner on the rear deck which produced a nice perfect round spot on the engine deck hatch. Thankfully, it was only the one drop and not a flood as it could’ve been!

One of the chief advantages of a primer coat, besides providing a surface for painting, is the opportunity it provides for checking seams and sanded areas to see if they really are as smooth as they looked before painting. This time around I found two areas that needed more attention. The first was the driver’s hood, the putty and sanding that I’d done earlier wasn’t quite even, so I stripped off the paint and sanded it back down again. I used a q-tip dampened with thinner to remove the paint vs. scraping it away so I had a nice large area to work with and not have to worry about fouling the sanding stick with paint in the process.

The second area that needed attention was the join on the turret on the right side. An ever so small step had been left behind and the paint showed it up crystal clear, so it too was stripped and sanded down.

Once those areas were taken care of, I laid down the first color of the 2-tone scheme. I chose MM’s Khaki since they have it listed as the French armor “green” and applied it with the general purpose nozzle on my Aztek at about 20 psi. I used it to sketch out the pattern instead of an overall coat, using the finishing guide supplied with the Echelon decals as a template. I figured this would give me more freedom with the second coat in terms of visualizing the overall pattern and also conserve some paint in the process. [;)]

For the second color, I mixed up some Dunkelgelb with Light Gray in about an 80-20 ratio more or less in a spare mixing bottle. I wanted a lighter shade vs. the standard dunkelgelb and was trying for more of a “stone” color with the combination.

This was applied with the same nozzle and psi as the Khaki and the rest of the pattern was filled in and adjusted. I did have to go back a couple of times with both colors to correct for overspray and fine tune things a bit, but all of it was done freehand and after a couple of hours, the pattern was completed to my liking.

I’ll let this set up overnight and work on the tracks and tools to round it out in terms of base finish tomorrow most likely.

31

very nice Bill that camo is the bees knees it looks awesome.

32

Thanks Ron, have to hand it to the French designers for coming up with interesting patterns. There seems to be a general pattern but each vehicle is slightly different depending on the crews I guess. I thought about doing the “puzzle piece” scheme but decided against it since all of the Echelon decals are for vehicles in the two-tone only.

33

Solid job on the camo’, Bill. It looks a nice scheme!

34

Thanks Paul, it’s going to cool its heels for a couple of weeks now due to the fact that I have to travel to Fiji for a week on Saturday for a customer visit and won’t be able to get back to it until then.

35

Camo looks clean Bill. Nice feathering effect between colors, not a true hard edge but nicely defined and subtle. Great work.

Steve

36

That looks really cool Bill. Very nicely applied.

37

Steve,

That’s what I was after since I’m not 100% convinced that the 2-tone scheme was indeed a hard-edged camo…so I split the difference. Took about 2-3 passes alternating between the colors, so many nooks and crannies that some overspray crept in unnoticed from time to time.

Tigerman,

Thanks for the comments. I think it’s interesting that the Echelon painting guide has a caveat that says to the effect that the two shades are so closely related in b/w photos that they could actually be reversed…such is life with period photos I guess. [:D]

38

welcome home, Bill – the char looks just great-- i am a little confused on how you got from the dark camo to the light-- was it a total repaint or like pre shading??-- in any case,[tup][tup]-- – tread[:D][:P]

39

Thanks for the welcome back tread! The dark brown was put down more as a primer coat than a pre-shade, but it does serve that purpose as well, at least for the lighter areas. Less so for the green.

40

Made some progress today on the details in order to get everything squared away for the Future coat and decals.

First up were the rubber mud flaps/skirts on the bottom of the hull sponsons. These were hand painted using Model Master enamel Gunmetal as a base color prior to the final weathering. I like to use it instead of Flat Black for these types of things because it’s got more of a bluish-gray look similar to synthetic rubber vs. the straight black color.

Next up was the antenna bellows and mast. I checked the references on “Marne” and it had one fitted, although not all pics of Chars show the mast in place even though the bellows are fitted. According to the Char Francais site, the bellows were leather and unpainted, so I painted it in a 50-50 mix of Leather and Military Brown and allowed some of the underlying tan styrene color to show through to provide some variation and the look of exposed/worn leather. I removed the molded on mast with sprue cutters and drilled out a hole in the top to take some brass rod which I lightly sanded, glued in place with CA gel, then painted with MM Metalizer Gunmetal.

Last but not least for the day’s efforts, I dealt with the pioneer tools and painted the metal surfaces with metalizer Gunmetal followed by some lightly drybrushed Steel. The wood handles were painted with my own special mix of “wood” color and then lightly brushed with Burnt Umber pastels after they’d been glued in place to give it the varnished look. I also detailed the exhausts, painting them first with metalizer Gunmetal and following that up with a light wash of Rust and some drybrushing of Burnt Umber.

Tomorrow morning I’ll give it the first coat of Future and start in on the numerous decal markings required for this vehicle.