Vickers E Mk B Light Tank

so since the Porsche is temporarily on the back burner til I can lay my hands on some paint I thought I would start this as I want to try a few things and don't want to do it to an expensive kit

Vickers E mk B light tank by Mirage Hobby who are a Polish company ive never tried before....picked the kit up at a show for a whopping 4 quid! ($US6.50!!) so I don't mind if it all goes a bit Pete Tong...the guy had quite a few different ones all at the same price, wish i had got more now

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vickers_6-Ton

I'm actually quite impressed with the quality....not quite Tamiya but comparable to Italerai or best that Revell can do
not sure what scheme I'm going to do.....the two schemes on the instructions are both Polish Army from mid to late 1930's....one is a very difficult one similar to WW2 Japanese type......the other is very similar to late WW2 German tri-colour, which I might do just for the practice, but it might also just go a dark green








since it dosnt come with any figures i might include one out of this lot, will decide when the time comes

Good project.

this is turning out to be a great little kit!

filled up the interior with some big nuts to add some mass to the whole thing, also added a small nut under all that central plasticine with a hole in the bottom of the hull so i can use some thread rod as a handle



ive put together Thomasz the Tank Commander



the kit comes with a modification the Poles did to their tanks,...they found the engines overheated due to lack of airflow so they made some ducting to force air into the engine compartment

Nice

so its pretty much together, primed and ready for painting




must admit it, Thomasz is an ugly bugger lol

i was toying with doing a three colour camo scheme but ive settled on just a plain green one

two reasons really, one is this was only ever meant to be a test mule to try a chipping/weathering technique ive never done before so i dont want to over complicate things
the second is, since its just going to be a plain colour i thought id try practicing pre-shading, its something ive never really got to work, mainly cos i think im too heavy handed

Any chance of taking pictures through the stages of pre shading Paul? Be interesting to see the progress as it's something I don't do as a rule as I brush paint.
Thinking of going to the dark side and getting an airbrush.

Looks a nice little kit, and yup he's an ugly so an so..... Like looking in a mirror to be honest.

Is good. Is Polish. These prewar subjects are very interesting.

Snake wrote:Any chance of taking pictures through the stages of pre shading Paul?  Be interesting to see the progress as it's something I don't do as a rule

Thinking of going to the dark side and getting an airbrush.

lol...im making this all up as i go along!

basically you spray black lines along edges so when you spray the top coat the black acts like an undercoat and makes it darker

ive never got it to work cos im too heavy handed and just obliterate the black with the top coat lol

to paraphrase a little green fellow when it comes to airbrushes....

do or do not...........there is no think  

seriously it really is worth the effort

I've seen some military model painting on the You Tube channel, and it can be fun and interesting. I agree on a one-color scheme. For the experiment it makes sense, and as a relatively small and stubby model, simple is better. Good luck, good price too!

i hope this is going to work lol

stage one of this process is to make what is essentially a enamel paint using matt enamel varnish, enamel thinners and rust pigments



it helps apparently to have different shades of rust

and it dosnt need to be too neat



this will now get a day or so to dry.....cant do anything til saturday afternoon anyway thanks to work getting in the way, i also need enough time to airbrush the three different colours for the camo in one day

im going back to the 3-colour camo as i dont think im going to be able to do the preshading as it will mess up the chipping/rusting technique so i may as well ahve a go at the camo as i do have the three shades needed

im dying to get on with this, things keep getting in the way....like work!

but ive done the adding the latex with a bit of a sponge........might get to put on the base coat of yellow tomorrow, and the brown and green on monday.....then the fun really begins

I'm curious to see what happens here, I'm new to this.

coyote wrote:I'm curious to see what happens here, I'm new to this.

thats two of us then!

Make that three. Never used Maskol on armour.

first time ever for me

Looking good so far !
I have used liquid mask and you can get some really nice chipped paint effects with it.
Looking forward to your success !

Liquid mask (frisket) does work well. I've seen the "hair spray chipping" technique on You Tube as well. Good luck!!

over here frisket is a adhesive film that can be cut to shape

done the hair spray technique a few times but im not just after a chipping effect with this

managed to get the camo on today

the instructions show either a Japanese style patchwork camo which looks incredibly difficult or a tri colour stripey one, which i have had a crack at

going to leave it til tomorrow to really dry before piggling off the Maskol

colours are a little bright at the moment but some wash and some matt varnish should tone it all down a bit

Looks good to me.

couldnt wait any longer lol

used a blob of blutac to rub over the surface to remove the maskol and ended up with this




now the interesting bit.............since i used an enamel varnish at the start i can use enamel thinners to reactivate the weathering powders
plan is to try and move the powders around a bit and make some streaks

need to do a bit more cos i think i got heavy handed, need to be more subtle, but then the whole thing was to try out the technique




going to try and clean up the streaks a little, then let it really dry off so i can give it a coat of Kleer, then i can add a wash

Very nice job done!

got to the point of adding the tracks

these are probably the weakest thing in the kit. they are about 10mm too long so had to do a little trimming

also wish i had given a dust wash before i attached them.....brain fade moment and cant take them off again cos i had to glue them on

That's looking good, think the tri colour works very well mate. Rusty areas look natural as well.

If it's any help I put the tracks on before their final weathering as a rule then use a fine paint brush with diluted pva painted over where you need the dust, then blow bicarb onto the tracks, tap the excess off and just soak a wash of the colour required into it when the pva has dried.

yeah but then you cant get it in the tracks thats covered by the mudguards

ive managed to get the tracks off without damaging anything else so i can do it how i like to. im not pnning on heavy weathering with lots of mud, just want the tracks to look dirty, not black