GOING TO TOWN WITH A TIGER PART 2 - FITTING OUT THE TURRET JOHN PRIGENT This month I'll show you some upgrades for the turret interior, but I'll kick off with the remaining work on the hull interior. There isn't much to scratchbuild now, just a couple of "Atemschlauch" breathing tubes and some small bins. I made the bins from thick plastic card and fixed them as shown in my photos: one at the rear of the starboard sponson ammo bin, one on the port aft side of the roof support arch and one on its forward starboard side. A fourth one, actually a removable box, goes in the starboard sponson beside the hull gunner with three MG ammo boxes from my spares box. Note how the ammo bags fit behind these; you can't fit in as many bags as were actually carried because those in the kit are a bit large. A piece of aluminium tube beside the radio operator's seat represents the spare MG barrel carrier, with a gasmask above it and a spare vision block (thick plastic card again) block beside that. On the forward centre of the roof support arch are two "Atemschlauch" breathing tubes, made from 2mm aluminium tube 15.5mm long, and in the starboard corner is a single MG ammo bag. On its back , on the starboard side, goes an MG barrel tube like the one I fitted to the hull beside the radio operator. Behind the driver there's a gasmask on the hull wall and a waterbottle on the roof arch. To allow access to the ammo bin there was no stowage in his sponson, and in fact you need to move the gyrocompass a bit further forward than given in the kit: You should be able to see in my photo where I scraped away its location and how far I moved it. The front plate gets the radio operator's waterbottle and two more ammo bags, and a bit of work on his machine gun. This is a nice piece of moulding, though the head pad on it support needs to be cut off and reattached with the pad to port. The work comes in because the Korean designers have confused the gun support with its telescope sight, which needs to be added. This is a simple job, just an 11.5mm length of aluminium tube with a brow-rest carved from thick plastic card. The final bits are two circles of thin plastic card on the fuel fillers to represent the caps which the designers forgot. All this work should be visible in my photographs, so refer to them for guidance. Now we can get on with the turret - fit in the work above while you wait for cement to dry on turret parts! Start by assembling the two turret halves and the mantlet interior, and when they're thoroughly set, cut its ring down to the level of the locating lugs. The clearance needed for the lugs was the reason for the sponson ammo bin sides being too far outboard as provided in the kit, and the turret ring shouldn't protrude below the hull top when in place anyway. Clean up and fit the turret floor and its port and rear supports - the front one will need surgery in a little while but you can dry fit it to help get the floor level - and make sure the turret turns freely when you drop it into place. Now build and fit the turret traverse motor and the commander's hand traverse gear. Wait to fit the connecting column J50 until the hand gear is in place - it must be vertical in its location on the motor, so get this right and then cement its top offset from the hand gear housing. This unit is semi-gloss black. Leave the gunner's seat and support out for now, as correction is needed but can't be done at this stage. Turn next to the gun breech assembly. This has one real blooper - the elevation arc has its supports on the wrong side! Cut them off and refix them on its port side, then fix the arc under the port recoil cylinder. Remove the location on the turret ring for the loader's seat, and then prepare yourself for some old-fashioned scratchbuilding fun! The kit designers have managed to omit the actual elevation gearbox and its mount, which you need to create for yourself. I haven't got measurements for these parts and no plans or photographs show them completely, so a bit of cut-and-try is needed. Cut a piece of plastic card about 10mm by 13mm and shape like a kind of "triangular L" to fit over the turret ring in line with the rear of the location for the starboard vision port On top of this goes a plate about 8mm by 10mm, with a plate 13mm by 10mm covering the open inboard side. The lower aft corner of this should be cut away to match the angle of the "triangular L", then a narrow strip inside it from the bottom of the "L" completes the mount assembly. For the gearbox you'll need to telescope together several sizes of tube, as close as you can get to 6mm, 2mm and 5mm. Cut the 2mm tube to run from the mount to just behind the elevation arc - dryfit the breech assembly to measure this. On the outboard end goes 4mm of the wide tube, with 3mm of the middle-size at the arc's end. Cut one side off the 3mm length and pose this at an angle to fit close to the arc. Now you need a second length of the middle-size tube with a recess filed into it to fit against the widest part of the gearbox, long enough to fit sloping down from the front of the mount to just short of the turret ring. Blank off its ends and fix a 2mm block to the lower one before fitting it in place. Now cut apart the gunner's seat support J31 and extend its arm by 5mm with a plastic card insert filed to shape. Drill the end of the arm to accept some brass rod, which you'll shape in a minute. Glue the other end to the 2mmblock on the gearbox, keeping it horizontal, and fix the third floor support under it after cutting it to the new length. Bend and cut brass rod to fit from the drilled hole to the turret ring in front of the port floor support, and the job's done. This is a lot easier to do than it is to describe, and my photos should show you what you're aiming at. Don't be afraid to chuck out any failures if you don't get the new parts right first time, I threw out several tries! Note, by the way, that I had to fudge a bit to get everything to fit with the turret still able to fit onto the hull. The shortened floor support should bend outward, not back, but my sloping tube was a bit short and there wasn't time to rebuild it before press date. The whole assembly is grey. With the elevation mechanism complete you can add the seats to it. Cut the locating tab off part J32 and add J25 and J6 to it to build the loader's seat, which fits on the back of the elevation gearbox mount, facing aft. The gunner's seat which you removed from J31 can now go back on its arm, but first fix the commander's footrest under it. This is a simple flattened oval of brass rod, fixed to a scrap of plastic card under the rear of the seat cushion. The next job is to build the barrel balance mechanism, which is missing from the kit apart from its conspicuous balance cylinder. This is another area where dimensions and exact layout aren't available, so I had to aim for a close approximation of its appearance - you'll have to judge all sizes by eye, and check my photos to see how it fits together.. Start by cementing the cylinder in place and work from that Start with a 3mm piece of 1mm plastic rod as a pivot, attaching a plastic card pivot point at each end and a mount at the top (the real thing pivoted from the turret roof, but since that's detachable in this model you need something else to hang the mechanism from). Trim the mount to fit up against the turret side just under the locating rib for the roof, but don't fix it in place yet. A plastic card arm 7mm long hangs vertically to rest against the end of the counterbalance cylinder part J49, and a second one 6mm long inboard of it points aft at about 80 degrees to the first. At the end of this two curved pieces 4mm long hang straight down, with a small spacer between them, and an arm 12mm long runs forward to the inside of the mantlet - this has two bends in it as my photo should show. Finally add what seems to be a relieving spring housing, vertically under the inboard arm, from tube and rod cut to fit the space. Paint the whole thing semi-gloss black and fix it in place, but don't cement the 12mm arm to the mantlet. A warning here - do not fix the outer mantlet parts before the gun is installed. I did, and it was fiendishly hard to get the completed gun breech and its guard into place afterwards because the outer mantlet parts stop you tilting the mantlet far enough to make insertion easy! The MG and its mount can be made up too. The headpad and its arm, which weren't fitted to the turret MG, need to be cut off the mount as do the trigger and handgrip, then the MG can be fixed to it. The instructions have you fixing this assembly to the misplaced ribs on the elevation quadrant, but the real mount seems to have only been fixed to the mantlet so you can just plug the MG in place after painting it. The gunsight is a plug fit too. The turret stowage can be fitted next. Note that it will not fit unless you start from the electrical junction box beside the escape hatch and work round from there, and check my photos for the correct positions of the various boxes. You'll also see in my photo that the MG ammo bags and water bottle stowed beside the loader need to be cut down a bit to fit over the balance cylinder. Build two bins on the turret ring beside the commander and gunner, from plastic card cut to fit the space. The gun handwheels all need handles, simply made with plastic rod and painted as dark wood. The traverse indicator, J18, should fit at a sharp angle on top of the gunner's manual traverse mechanism and don't forget to fit the two connecting rods between these and the Main traverse gear housing J43/44. The next modification is to the commander's seat. Cut its locating arm away and make a new bracket from plastic card as shown in my photograph. Under it goes a stowage bin with a solid back and bottom and square mesh front - I used Airwaves etched brass mesh. The back is 15mm high and 10mm wide at the top, tapering to 7mm at the bottom. Add a semi-circular solid bottom, then cut a piece of mesh to bend round it. I found it best to anneal my mesh - just hold an over-size piece with pliers and heat it over a candle flame till it glow red hot, then let it cool naturally. This softens the metal and makes it easier to get the required even curve. Superglue it in place and trim with scissors, then add the edging from thin plastic strip. Two plastic strip bearers run up its back, projecting above and below to fix it to the turret ring and the edge of the turret floor. Now you can build and fit the gun - it would have been very much in the way until the fittings round the turret had been dealt with. Academy has left out the gun covering plate; this is simply duplicated with a piece of 1/5mm plastic card cut to fit across the ribs moulded on top of the barrel, but you'll need to cut the forward one down a bit first or the finished assembly won't fit into the mantlet. The inside of the breech is, as usual with kits, unrealistically hollow. Pack the barrel end with filler putty and smooth it off to clear the breechblock, then do the same with the open end - use the end of a paintbrush handle to keep the opening clear for the shells! The breech is green, for which I used Humbrol 149, with polished steel interior and block. Cut the two locating ribs off the breech guard parts, then replace them with four squares of plastic card spaced to fit the raised areas each side of the rim of the empty case bag. Paint the guard and fix it to the gun, then add the bag under it, painted khaki with a black leather rim all round. The gunner had a footguard which Academy hasn't provided. Since it's both curved and tapered this gave me pause for thought, until I noticed that the disposable plastic cup from a hot drink vending machine had exactly the right curvature and taper. Find one of these and cut a section from near its bottom, 12mm high, 22mm round the curve of the top and 20mm round the curve of the bottom. Fix curved lengths of plastic strip 1.5mm high to its top and 3mm high to its bottom, then add the exterior ribs 1.5mm wide - the inside was flat. The guard simply fixes under the turret ring, with its port end in line with the power traverse pedal J48. It doesn't connect to the floor, so use superglue for a firm joint to the ring. The only essential addition to the turret roof is the internal gun travel lock. This is a 4mm piece of 1mm plastic rod with 7.5mm long "hooks" cut from plastic card and added to its ends. Pivot points from plastic card go outboard of the hooks. It fits between the roof's ribs, the hooks pointing forward with their rears in line with the ends of the breathing tubes F9. Before fixing the F9 in front of the loader's hatch, drill out the end of the inboard one to take a length of plastic rod - this one was actually not a breathing tube but the housing for the spring which helped open the hatch. Fix a scrap of plastic card to the other end of the rod as the bearing surface for an arm, which goes on the hatch as part of the exterior detailing which I'll show you next month. PHOTO CAPTIONS 1. This is where the small bin fits at the rear of the starboard sponson. Also in this photo is the bin on the back of the roof support arch. 2. Here's the radio operator's sponson stowage. The MG barrel tube should be visible by his seat, with the gasmask and vision block above it. Note that the forward sponson floors seem to have been grey, not cream. 3. The driver's gasmask is under the toolbox. The relocated gyrocompass can be seen as well. 4. This shot shows the front of the roof support arch and the altered hull MG with the stowage on the front plate beside it. 5. The boxtop for this super kit. 6. The general arrangement of the elevation gearbox. 7. From the other side of the turret you can see how the seat support should fit. 8. The front of the elevation gearbox... 9. ..and a rear view. 10. Here's how it all fits against the elevation arc. 11. The counterbalance arms fit here in the turret. Note that the arm to the mantlet is left loose to allow elevation. 12. This is the gun counterbalance mechanism. Part sizes need to be judged by eye! 13. Here are the commander's and gunner's bins, built onto the turret ring, and the inside of the pistol port. Note how the handle almost completely conceals the port opening - you could just about get away without cutting the turret wall to make it. 14. The loader's seat should go here, not in the kit location. The gun counterbalance gear is painted and fitted. 15. The modified commander's seat mount. 16. The water cans in their altered rack. 17 & 18. The flag bin under the commander's seat is made from Airwaves square mesh with a plastic card base and back. 19. The boxes on the turret rear wall should line up like this. Note which way up the grey electrical junction box fits. 20. Here's the finished gunner's area. It's worth fitting the drive shafts for the hand traverse mechanism. 21. This is the loader's area. There should be ammo bags and a water bottle here as well, but they won't fit the model so I left them out. 22. the spent case bag is khaki with a black leather rim all round. 23 & 24. A couple of views of the finished turret. 25. The gunner's foot guard in place. The unpainted front shows up the spacing of its ribs. 26. Inside the turret roof, with the unpainted travel lock showing its shape.