"It's not a toy! It's a model." Yeah, right.

I recently built Atlantis Models' repop of Aurora's 1/48th scale 8 inch howitzer. I thought it would be a walk down memory lane, as I thought I remembered that about 50 years ago I built Aurora's Long Tom, which is the same kit except for the gun tube. Now I think the kit I built back then was probably Hasegawa's 1/72 Long Tom. Either kit is very play-worthy and fun for kids (and for modelers who can still remember being kids). One of these toys - I mean models (wink!) - can be just the thing to get the modeling mojo going again!

The instructions tell you how to assemble the kit in travel mode, but let you know when not to use cement so the play features all work. The upper carriage elevates and traverses, the gun tube recoils, the breech opens (though it doesn't represent the breech block at all accurately). The lower carriage has separate chock plates and trail plates which can be stowed for travel or mounted for firing (more on this below, since there are problems, mainly with the clarity of the instructions). The split trails swing and can be joined to the limber plate and mounted on the limber, and the lower carriage can be dropped out of the tandem wheel assembly that supports it in travel mode (more on this below, as well). And of course, the wheels all turn.

The kit originally came out in 1958, and although it purported to be a WWII howitzer, it's got features that were only seen later. Notably, the tires have gnarly off-road tread, and I think the mount on the limber where the trails are attached is a later version as well. So I decided that my howitzer lives in 1958. I painted the figures so their uniforms are Olive Green, not Olive Drab – mostly. Old stocks of Olive Drab were used up after the war, and from what I've read may still have been in use in 1958. Boots were now polished black, and enlisted rank insignia were no longer buff over blue. They look like olive green over blue, but I don't know if Olive Green was the specified color. President Truman had integrated the armed forces a decade before, so I painted the soldier holding the wrench to be a black man. I chose to paint his uniform Olive Drab, to represent the old stock being used up, though it's hard to see the difference.

The kit has some assembly problems, and I'll refer to the parts by name since that's how they're listed in the instructions. In Step 25, the springs are cemented to the forward and rear tandem axles, but the mating surfaces are shaped differently: flat on the springs but round on the axles. This means there is very little contact area. This problem is exacerbated in Step 36, when the ends of the cross beam axle are to be snapped into the holes in the springs on the tandem wheel assembly. The snap fit requires a fairly tight tolerance for the distance between the springs – too far apart, and the carriage just falls out; too close together and it pries the springs apart, breaking them off the axles. If I build another, I'll be sure to engineer the spring/tandem axle assembly at the outset to get the springs firmly attached with the correct spacing. The four small airbrake diaphragms (Steps 26 and 29) are also easily knocked off when attaching the cross beam axle, and I'm not sure if there is any way they can go on straight and not get in the way of the cross beam axle.

Minor assembly problems occur with the trail ground support plates and chock plates. The instructions don't give very clear indications on where the former go when stowed (Step 40), and the inset photo of the completed models shows them glued to the underside of the trails. Correctly assembled, they slide into the trail plate hangers on the inside faces of the trails. Care must be taken to attach the trail plate hangers properly in Step 33 so the support plates will slide in and out. The notches in the lower gun carriage and bottom plate to allow for the deployed chock plates need filing out, as you'll find out when test fitting them. The instructions don't tell how to attach these or the trail support plates when deployed for firing mode, but you can see the notches on the underside of the carriage and the ends of the trails. Both types of plates form a right angle with welded gussets on the inside of the angle, and are deployed with the gussets facing forward so the recoil doesn't pry the welds apart.

The sector gear (Step 9) is supposed to hold the upper carriage at various angles of elevation, snapping over the stepped shaft (Step 13) as the elevation angle is adjusted. This movement is very sensitive to any alignment error in Step 9, so I found I had to file the sector gear teeth until it went between minimum and maximum elevation with a light click. Step 42 is also a little confusing if you trust the photo in the instructions. The hitch lock should be oriented as shown in the diagram.

Some filler is needed for the inevitable ejector pin marks and to eliminate the seam in the assembled gun tube. Yes, kits of this vintage lack slide molded barrels! Back in the good old days before slide molding, instead of wailing and gnashing our teeth, we'd roll up our sleeves and we'd putty, sand, and primer the gun tube for as many go-arounds as it took to get a smooth barrel with a precisely centered round bore. So that's what I did, and frankly it wasn't that much trouble. The vinyl tires were the worst molded parts. All the way around the tire was a weird hump across the tread, affecting some tires more than others. It took a lot of sanding until none of the ten tires looked noticeably like factory rejects.

Paint is mainly rattlecan Krylon camo olive with light weathering except where the rubber literally meets the road, or the lack of a road (and takes some with it). The decals are a new addition by Atlantis and appropriate for postwar howitzers, and though I doubt they represent any actual markings, pictures can be found of howitzers bearing stars, the words "U. S. ARMY," and nicknames, all of which are on the decal sheet. It wasn't easy to find room for them all, but I managed. They went down nicely over a coat of Future and coated with MicroSol. I had no trouble keeping them from silvering (some decals just seem to suck air in under them, so they'll silver no matter what you do). They are not the thinnest decals and glossy to boot, but brushing on some flat coat knocked down the gloss and all but completely hid the edge of the carrier film.

One particular mistake I made (and I always make mistakes!) was with the piston rods in the elevating cylinders. I painted them with Model Master Chrome Silver enamel and found they were a tight fit, so I added a drop of 3-in-1 oil to each so the elevation mechanism would work. As a result, the oil softened the paint so that it will probably never be completely dry, and I kept getting silver fingerprints on the howitzer during assembly. The piston rods don't look so great now, either.

I wanted to display the completed model on a simple diorama base to keep all the partsand figures together. I glued two seven by nine inch pieces of corrugated cardboard together with their corrugations at right angles to each other, clamped under the weight of a small anvil. The resulting base is very stiff. I applied MDF sawdust, brown spray paint, and Woodland Scenics foliage. To support the figures, I heated a straight pin and shoved it into one foot of each figure. After painting the figures, I cut the pins so only about 1/8" stuck out, then I stuck the figures to the diorama base like thumbtacks.

 

Round 2 Klingon Bird of Prey WIP, Part 3

There's just a bit of progress to report on both fronts since the last post. First the model kit.

Dremel with carbide bit (left),
pin vises, files, knives, pin vise.

I was hollowing out the windows and the slots around the photon torpedo launcher (and navigational deflector?). I started with drilling a series of holes using bits from my #61-80 set in my pin vise. Fine work like this (for someone at my age with presbyopia) is best done with a jeweler's loupe. Since this lets me focus about three inches away from my eye, it works pretty well to steady the end of the pin vise against my forehead or chin. Then I milled out the holes using the dremel at its lowest speed with micro size carbide bits that have a 1/8" shank, so they fit in a collet. (No mini chuck! Those things aren't totally useless, I guess, but they always have a bit of wobble, no good with tiny drill bits.) Square and triangular files and a #11
blade were useful for cleaning up the holes. The windows come in pairs, with a narrow bar between them, and I ruined the bar between the pair of windows on the port side of the bridge. No matter, it can be fixed with sheet styrene.

Bridge, port side.

Starboard side

The filigree around the torpedo launcher/main deflector.

Round 2 Klingon Bird of Prey WIP, Part 2

Not a lot of progress since last time, but here's a more detailed drawing of the landing pad drawn in AutoCAD. It's tiled, so to speak, and the cross-hatched areas will be grates over storm drains. (The weather is crappy on Qo'noS.) The triangular "tiles" are not quite forty feet on a side, if this is 1:350 scale.

Speaking of the kit's scale, it is given as 1:350. Nilo Rodis originally stated the length as 110m (about 360 ft). That would make assembled kit come out to a little over a foot long. Instead, it's a little over 10". Eh, close enough. This scale is the part of a long-running debate over with the problem of the KBoP's size. This debate is pretty thoroughly discussed at Ex Astris Scientia. To me, the original BoP in ST3 seemed like it should be smaller than that (it is a scout ship after all), and maybe  about the same length as a B-52, around 160 ft. Since it's fictional, there's no right answer, but I prefer fiction to make sense. There are windows in both the forward and rear hulls, so it's unlikely the crew can't move between them. It also seems unlikely the crew couldn't walk through the neck standing up. This makes the inside height of the neck a bare minimum of six feet. I measured the height of the kit's neck at a little under 3/8". At 1:350 scale, this is a little over 10 feet. Allowing up to 2 feet between the inner and outer walls, this works perfectly. To me the matter is settled: this kit is 1:350 scale and the Klingon Bird of Prey is about 110m long.* 


I printed the landing pad drawing out actual size and set the BoP on it in its state of temporary partial assembly to show the general idea of what it'll look like on the platform.












That's all till next time.


* This doesn't deal with the KBoPs of varying size problem. Here's my view on that: the various Star Trek production crews were under budget and scheduling pressure, and some of them didn't care a whit what the size was, so the same model shows up in a bunch of different sizes. End of story.
Because the KBoP appears in different sizes, some fans (and canon authorities) have concluded that there are several KBoP classes (which may include B'rel, K'vort, and Rotarran) of all different sizes but exactly the same shape. This is preposterous! It totally violates the principle, "Form follows function." It is nothing but a rear-guard attempt to force the special effects to make sense, but at the expense of the ships themselves making any sense.You may disagree, but if you do you are wrong!

Round 2 Klingon Bird of Prey WIP, Part 1

I am taking a little break from the Martian War Machine. I've been thinking about the new Klingon Bird of Prey I got a couple months ago--the new one with landing gear released last year by Round 2. I want to get some work done on this before my muse deserts me.

A vision came to me of the KBoP landed on a Klingon planet, maybe in the First City of Qo'noS. The place is pretty built up, so it would have to land on a raised landing pad. Otherwise, the blast from any reaction thrusters sends Klingons flying as they try to walk down the street. Here's a rough sketch I did in AutoCAD. It's just a plan view, but it shows the shape of the landing pad and its relative size to the BoP. It could be larger, but I thought it would be cool for the ship to overhang. Theoretically, a landing pad just slightly larger than the footprint of the landing gear is sufficient, but that seems silly. On the other hand, it seems like shuttles and smaller craft would use the same pad, and that no ships larger than the BoP would ever land. Hence a landing pad that seems a tad snug for the BoP. The shape is a truncated equilateral triangle, though I might add blast deflectors extending from the edges. There must also be supports (I was thinking three hexagonal columns in the corners) and all kinds of machinery, lifts, tankage, etc., since any maintenance, refuelling, and resupply must take place here. Now that I've got a sketch started in AutoCAD, I'll be fleshing out the drawing of the landing pad. Then scratchbuilding it out of styrene, and voilà, a diorama base!

Tholian Web Diorama (Planning Stage)

I like tangerines. Probably you do, too. They're sweet and delicious.

But one thing you may never have noticed about them is that the plastic mesh on one of those little crates of tangerines looks exactly like the Tholian Web! The spacing in the mesh is about a quarter inch, which makes it about right for those game-scale Star Trek ships (1/3788 scale).

Here are some glimpses of the mesh, along with my handpainted NCC-1701. As you can see, the idea was pretty much unavoidable.

So I started drawing up plans for the diorama. Here's what I've got so far.

I took a couple of extra beauty shots of this miniature, which are posted over at my other blog.[Link disabled for now.]

Check back soon for more progress.