Wheels fitted!

With the wheels painted up its time to mount them on the hull of the A39 Tortoise.

I had masked up the various mounting points before painting so I removed the tape from the hull...

...and the Maskol from the wheels. The Maskol did what it was supposed and just peels off.

With the glue faces clear of paint the attachment process began and before too long all eight sets of wheels were on the hull.

I test fitted one of the side skirts which shows just how much of the wheel structures are covered.  Once the drive sprockets and rear wheels are fitted I can get on with the tracks.

Time for a bit of highlighting!

Time for a bit of highlighting of the running wheels of the A39 Tortoise and that involves my usual dilute wash of black paint.

With eight sets of wheels to do this will keep me amused for an hour or so!

Hindsight!

Well, things do move on as the running wheel sets to the MENG A39 Tortoise now have all their rubber tyres painted in a grey which I prefer to the 'bright' black that people think rubber looks like. It may do, fresh out of the factory, but stuck on a wheel as a tyre and put out on the road or ground it soon weathers!

I have touched in parts of the green as well With hindsight (what a wonderful thing that is!) I would have painted the wheel centres before assembling them. As they stand, there are still unpainted parts but once the tracks and side skirts are on it will be mostly be covered - I hope!

This should keep me amused for a while!

Having now found myself having an additional week before the next go at having a hip operation I have taken advantage of the time to complete the top coat paint application on the A39 Tortoise.

I have even started to paint up the running wheel rubber tyres which is one of the most boring jobs to do and there is also going to be some green to touch in to.

This should keep me amused for a while!

Progress with the A39 Tortoise is even more glacial than usual!

There is a lot going on at WMD at the moment so progress with the A39 Tortoise is even more glacial than usual! However, some top coat paint has been applied.

There is certainly more to apply but a start has been made and for reasons that I will talk about in a day or so it is going to have a long time to dry and harden before anymore gets applied!

On the right and dwarfing the T34 track links is one A39 link!

144 track links cut from their sprue, cleaned of their mounting points and stored in a jar ready for the day that I get round to building these tracks for the A39 Tortoise.

Just like the vehicle being big, these tracks are big!

On the left, two links from a T34 tank which is no small vehicle. On the right and dwarfing the T34 track links is one A39 link!

I will need to be patient which is not something that comes naturally!

I finally got round to finishing the priming of the A39 Tortoise so it is all in a grey primer that should be a good base for the darkish green that the tank will eventually be top coated in.

The primer needs 24 hours to dry so I will need to be patient which is not something that comes naturally! 

It is big!

I have mentioned the sheer size of the A39 Tortoise both in reality and in 1.35 scale on several occasions. So just out of interest I got my same scale Tiger down from the dust shelf where I tell Mrs. Woody that models weather naturally when she points out the accumulated dust and cobwebs and put it at the side the A39 hull.

Now the Tiger was a large tank but compared to the A39 you can see the that there is a bit of a difference which manifests itself even more if you take a look from above...

Either way, if I were facing up to either of these I think that I would be look for a big hole to get into!

It is just a case of getting on with it!

Well my thoughts that the track links to the MENG A39 Tortoise kit would swallow up a lot of time were correct!

So far I have managed to detach and clean up 36 of the 144 links. That has taken a couple of hours and I am not even going to do the maths to determine how much time these will take as I think it would be depressing! It is just a case of getting on with it!

To try and remain positive I have actually started to glue together some of the links. I cannot do them all as I need to have the running gear on the hull so that I can drape semi glued tracks over it to take the necessary shape. The joys of model making!

Three sprues of 48 track links means a total of 144 links to cut out, clean up and assemble!

 Whilst I wait for primer to dry on the Meng A39 Tortoise kit I decided to look at the tracks.

Three sprues of 48 track links means a total of 144 links to cut out, clean up and assemble! 

I managed to cut out and clean up 6 links and just from that I can tell that I will be spending a lot of time on these! That will certainly fill in the time I am waiting for the primer to dry. 

That means cleaning the airbrush will be a regular occurrence too!

 The painting process on the Meng A39 Tortoise kit has started with a start being made on applying a Vallejo grey primer.

The cooler weather, the nature of the primer and the complexity of the parts to be painted means this will be a process spread over several days! That means cleaning the airbrush will be a regular occurrence too! Oh joy! 

I recalled that the WMD Stores also had some Maskol in stock!

It is now time to think a bit more about the painting stages of the A39 Tortoise and it will be stages as there are complexities in being able to get to what will be difficult to access areas if the whole kit is put together and then painted. As I highlighted in previous posts the running wheels, drive wheels and tracks need to be painted separately. I cannot make the tracks until the wheels are in place and they need to be painted first so I think that makes the 'stages' process a bit clearer!

To ensure that the wheel mounts can be attached to the hull after painting I need to mask the gluing areas as paint will not stick once glue is applied! The WMD Stores had some nice Tamiya 2mm masking tape in stock - handy!

Careful application was slow and then I recalled that the WMD Stores also had some Maskol in stock - even more handy! Maskol is a rubberised paint that is applied to mask surfaces and once painted it can be stripped off just like masking tape.

It was certainly a quicker process! Now I can think about the paint!

Maybe I should not be surprised that there is still much to do!

Well, I surprised myself in that the main parts of the A39 Tortoise are now together!

It is now at a stage where there are some parts that still need to be added such as the side skirts, towing cables, spare track links and fire extinguishers but these are best left off to paint separately. As I posted earlier in the build, the running gear still needs adding but again it needs to be painted separately before being put in place. And then of course there are the tracks which are individual links that need cutting off the sprue, cleaning and gluing together! Maybe I should not be surprised that there is still much to do! 

More parts added to the Tortoise!

 More parts added to this beast of a machine! 

The rear end is getting towards being finished with the final towing arrangement fitted in the middle. There were 13 parts to this and yes it does move and rotate as MENG intended it to which caused me some headaches to achieve though! The exhaust which is to the left on the cutting mat, need a bit more work as I literally sanded parts of it so thin to get rid of a joint that it almost collapsed! However, once done, that should really add to the rear end.

A few other parts to the sides and front have also been fitted but those 6 large holes are for the spare track links which were carried on the side of the body. To make painting easier I will be adding those after the painting is done.

Right! back to the slow slog of adding all those small parts!

Slowly this kit comes together!

 Slowly this kit comes together. 

The various holes in the body are being filled in by hatches and other parts. Still more to go - ibn fact surprisingly more than I though when I first opened the kit box!

That is where the machine gun turret that I posted about yesterday fits. It looks tiny in comparison to its surroundings.

The towing points are massive in relation to any other I have dealt with on a model but I guess with a weight of 78 tons for the real tanks they had to be massive. The three on the front are finished.

The two on the back however do need to be finished and there are still more holes to be filled with parts! They will eventually!

Almost a kit on its own!

For an assault gun, the A39 Tortoise had a fair amount of defensive armament including a small, rotating secondary machine gun turret mounted on the roof of its casemate superstructure, alongside a third machine gun mounted in the front hull plate. The crew of seven included two machine gunners to operate them. Unusual but the turret does make a nice model in its own right! There are about 30 parts to make this!

The turret also features a 6-barrel smoke discharger cluster (or smoke bomb launcher bank) directly attached to its side.  Alongside this smoke grenade unit, the secondary turret houses twin 7.92mm BESA machine guns. Because this small turret is capable of 360-degree rotation, the attached smoke discharger unit could pop smoke screen cover in any direction the machine gunner or commander faced, adding vital tactical flexibility to an otherwise slow, 78-ton vehicle!

It should look good once added to the main part of the body!

Why, as modellers do we do this?

Why, as modellers do we do this? What's that Woody, you may ask, or maybe not! However, the answer is to put ourselves through all sorts of tiny manipulations involving magnification aids that then result in parts flying off over the floor requiring on the knee searching or failing to fit as planned as the glue melts the wrong part of the piece gluing it to your finger and all of this then adds significant quantities to the swear jar! The end result is this in the case of the MENG A39 Tortoise!

Great, Woody! What's so hard about that? Well maybe look at this...

Yes! This travel support for the gun barrel can be opened or closed and the locking bolt works!

It may have taken two hours to get this together and it will probably lie on the model unused until the landfill site takes delivery in years to come but I know it is constructed and works like the tool maker envisaged!

Aat the moment it feels a bit....well tortoise in progress!

More small parts added to the A39 Tortoise although on a model like this the details seem to fade into the enormity of the vehicle!

Todays progress has seen various periscopes fitted to the upper part of the body along with various parts of towing eyes to the rear of the body as well as a few other unknown parts to the upper side of the main body.

It will eventually all go together ti make a great overall model but at the moment it feels a bit....well tortoise in progress!

Open the hatch! But why?

 

This is the commanders hatch to the A39 Tortoise Assault Gun. It may look fairly simple in nature but it took me two hours to build the 17, many tiny, parts that go together to form this simplistic looking part! I am not even sure why it is designed to open as there is no interior detail to this kit and more over, with reflection, why I took so much time and effort to ensure that it would open? Probably best not to ponder on that thought!

Adding it to the upper body does feel good as it brings the model that bit closer to being finished although there are still a number of large holes that will need something building to fill them! No doubt more multi part assemblies that will take hours to build. Tortoise by name, tortoise speed of build!

The gun is fitted!

 Like the tortoise this beast of a machine is named after my progress building the kit of it is slow! I have to admit that upon opening the box I did not think there were too many parts but there are more than I first thought! However, with the running gear constructed I can begin the perhaps speedier in terms of visual changes, build of the upper hull. With respect to the running gear, I have decided to leave it unattached to the lower hull for the moment which will make painting the eight running and return wheel structures along with the drive and idle wheels a much easier task. Careful masking of the lower hull where the running gear structures attach should mean a strong paint free gluing surface as I intend to paint that too before any gluing takes place. The irony is that most of the detail will be covered by the side skirts that attach to the hull! However, not being too sure at this stage as to how much these skirts will cover or not means that I am playing safe and painting everything!

Progress so far sees the front plate of the upper hull detailed with various lifting points and the gun has been constructed and fitted to the body.

I just need to fit the muzzle to the gun barrel but I need the glue to set that joins the two parts together before I can sand them smooth. A job for tomorrow!