On our side, the M2 and wartime M3 Stuart were a usable cavalry tank.

Hi,

I picked up a 1/35 scale French Renault R35 kit over the weekend off eBay.  It was an old Heller kit sold as open box, whichthe seller said that it looked like there ware extra parts included, but no instructions (or decals).

When I got it I found enough trees for the hull and running gear (but no treads) for two complete kits, but only enough parts for one turret.  In addition, although the original kit was packaged with some accessories, like crew figures, some chain and a towed anti-tank gun, those were not included anymore.

Overall, I'm really happy with the buy, since I can do one model up as a short barrel variant, and use the parts for the other either to do a long barrel variant, or maybe even a modified R40 build.

Overall, since I have almot enough parts for two kits the lack of crew and treads (and the other accessories) isn't a big deal, especially since it looks like the original Heller treads were the rubber band style that you had to "melt the tabs together" to attach.  Looking at eBay it appears that there may be several optional treads that I can consider.

I started building the first build this weekend and discovered that the turret sprues are actually from a Hobby Boss kit instead of the Heller kit.  Unfortunately, while the sprues are complete, it appears that the Hobby Boss model uses a brass barrel (and possibly a photo-etch wheel on the main gun) which were not inculded.  As such, I have cleaned up a piece of sprue for now, to use as a stand in gun barrel.

The other odd thing I discovered is that apparently Heller and Hobby Boss made different assumptions on the diameter of the turret ring.  The Heller one is larger in diameter, so I am looking into trying to 3D print an "adapter piece" to mate the Hobby Boss turret to my Heller hull.

Below is a quick picture of the build so far.  In general it was a very easy and relaxing build.  Since I'm not sure yet how I want to paint the model, I have just given it a basic light beige ("linen") covering for now 

PF

CapnMac,

Thanks for your response.  Learning about these vehicles on line, as I reseatrch about them has really helped highlight alot of the technical challenges faced at the time and how the designers from different nations tried to meet each country's specific needs.

Today I started to try and build the resin Schneider kit that I have, but it is turning out to be a fair bit of a challenge for me.  I haven't really worked much with resin before, with the exception if the two small Spanish tanks I just put together. 

Overall the Spanish tanks were quite easy, each consisting of only 6 parts, 4 of which were a fairly dense resin that feels alot like regular styrene plastic.  The other 2 parts were white metal gun barrels.  I found that if I just let the glue set for a few minutes, I was able to stick those resin parts together with clear Gorilla glue, and I was able to attach the white metal gun barrels with a no-name CA glue that I had handy.

Unfortunately, On the French tank build (which has about 22 parts, all molded in a relatively light and brittle resin) neither glue seems to provide much of a bond, even after letting the glue set for several minutes.  It probably also hasn't helped that for several of the parts, the matting surfaces are either very small or consist of very thin edges.

Anyway, I have most of the main body together right now (excluding the track/suspension parts) and intend to let the glue set till tomorrow. If all goes well I hope to prime and paint it sometime this week 

PF

Was a fascinating time that looks very odd from the lens of history, unless you look at all of the parts.

The light MG, as in 1-2 man portable, was an invention of the future.  So, automatic weapons were hearvy and needed lots of protection.  A single emplaced Vickers wanted about a 5 man crew and was a few hundred paonds of gear.

Putting a heavy MG bullet resistant box that could advance at a walking pace across a battlefield seemed very logical at the time.

The way you dealt with emplaced MGs was to use a 2 to 9 pound field gun to engage them with counter-battery fires.  So, in the advance, it also made sense to bring anti-MG arms across the battelfield, and the pace of an infantryman seemed logical as well.

Now, some of the thinkers took this a step further and said,   having 1 or 2 men able to replace 5 and also advance over a battle ground was also a net gain.  Smaller target also being less vulnerable to atrillery fires against it.  (Because this was all new, the workload requirements for having only one man to drive mechanically under-reliable vehicles; or having one man loading, and firing a gun and also directing movement was not fullt thought out.)

The competing concepts of large vehhicles and small ones both had to cope with the ability to span battlefield obstacles.  Which made some of the large vehicles overly so; and made some of the smaller ones similarly large.  And, all had an Achilles Heel of mechanical reliability.

The idea of arming a heavy metal box to shoot at other heavy metal boxes took a bit longer to gel.

Even so, the tactical doctrines were still muddy even well into WWII.  And this even after everyone realized that combined arms had made trench campaigns obsolete.  Which often happens because technology lurches forward in less predictable ways.

Hi,

I put the two Trubia-Naval tanks together and painted them up.  The kit came with some Spanish Republican/Basque decals and some Welsh decals for some "What-If" UK Civil war game set in the 1930s.  After searching the internet though it seems like the actual tanks may have had few if any markings during the war.  So I think that I may just add a little dirt/mud and a flat coat.

I included my WWI tanks in the image below to help show how small these tanks were in comparison.  At a little under 12ft (3.55m) in length they would have been just about the same length as my subcompact Chevy Spark 

PF

Wow, that looks great.  Thanks for sharing.  Although I probably won't start my Takom Mk V for some time, I keep going back and forth on whether to do it in a drab olive or earth brown paint scheme.  

Since I have my 1/72 Emhar kits to experiment with, I've been thinking of doing one brown, one green and maybe doing up the tadpole in battleship gray, to see how each looks .

PF

PS.  I also broke down and bought a box of two resin and white metal 1/72 scale Trubia-Naval light tanks to help me with my CAD modeling.  Here is a picture of them alongside my Mk IV and A7V to show how small of a tank they were. 

OK here is my rather old 1/35 Emhar Mk.V.

https://flic.kr/p/9KhdAT][/url]Emhar Mk V-1 by N.T. Izumi, on Flickr

I used a lousy resin track set, but now much better sets exist from Takom and Friul.  Other than the tracks, the kit is pretty much box stock.

Those look really cool PF! That's two eras I don't have much stuff in. And it's an interesting one. I had a book of First World War / Great War AFVs I traded to a friend for some kits with all kinds of photos of stuff from that era. Bridgelayers, APCs, SP guns, searchlight tanks- it's amazing a lot of stuff we think of with the Second World War was invented back in the First.  

PFJN,

If you get some aftermarket tracks (I think Takom sells their plastic ones separately too), you are good to go.  Don’t sweat the little details, just build them and pile on the mud!  After studying photos of the real things in the field, I don’t think you can possibly over weather them!

Thanks for the offer to host pics, but I have an account; I just haven’t figured out how to post from my phone!  It’s real wonky, slow, and lots of features seem absent.

http://cs.finescale.com/fsm/modeling_subjects/f/3/t/177628.aspx

Ok the search feature really sucks I ended up just searching back pages of the forum found it on page 10 I think, anyway he really did a great job on it.

Hi,

I look forward to seeing your pics.  If you need a place to post them, drop me a PM.  I can upload them to a folder on my website for you.

The 1/35 Emhar kits are something I picked up off eBay at a fairly low price (basically I got both the male and female version for about the price of just one kit).  I'm not fully sure yet whether I will build them straight out of the box, or if I might try and make some small updates to them, or even use them to kitbash some "never-were" concepts.  Right now my building skills are still a bit rough (especially when it come to painting and weathering, etc) so I was happy to pick these two kits up, since their price was so low, and they don't look to much more difficult to build than ther 1/72 kits.

I figure I will probably hold off on the Takom kit for a while, and practice on some of these other, simpler kits first .

One (or two) additional interwar tank(s) that I am interested in are the No 1 & No 2 designs from Vickers tested by the British in the early 1920s.  They have an interesting look that's a bit of a cross between the older Mark I-V Rhomboid designs and later turreted tanks.  If I can collect enough info on them I hope to try and scratchbuild one of them as well.  And if I can't get enough info, I may try and kitbash one of my Emhar kits into something vaguely similar 

http://www.felixshara.com/vickers-infantry-tank-no-1/

PF

I built the 1/35 Emhar Mk.V way back in the day before Tamiya and Takom came along with their excellent kits.  With replacement tracks and a lick of paint, the Emhar kit wasn’t bad, but the newer kits make it obsolete.  Will post pics when I get to a real computer.

Nice build, love the idea of captured equipment

Thanks,

I forgot that I am also currently trying to put together a 3D model of a small Spanish tank from the Spanish Civil War, called the Trubia-Naval, based on a paper model from the internet.

Paper Model Source

Depending on how things work out I'm hoping to try and 3D print it in 1/35 scale. 

PF

Sweet!