Landships II

Hello landship enthusiasts,

over the last 2 years I have been visiting this forum every so often and had been asking weird questions about details - the reasons will follow in this documentation: Scratchbuilding a Mark IV in 1/16 scale as precisely as possible, RC-enabled if the tracks allow it.

I had promised to do this report, so I better get started as it is going to be rather detailed and extensive. And there is still much to do. Tell me if I am boring you!

I have been making models since I was a kid, concentrating on 1/32 scale aircraft in my teens. Over the last few years I discovered the 1/16 scale tanks of Heng Long, providing very reasonably priced RC toys which make a good base for more detailing. I started with modifying a Panther G tank, then a T-34 /85. As I am also very interested in history I did a lot of research on the originals - here also to get the details right - and this lead me inevitably to the first tanks of the Great War.

Diving into their history, I am fascinated and have the greatest respect for the early tank crews. And, there being no model kits in "my" scale around, I would have to make one myself.

I bought the Emhar 1/35 scale kit, hoping it would provide something to start on, but I quickly realized that it is merely "similar" to the original, so that just would not do.Collecting as much pictures and data as I could, I started drawing plans, calculating sizes, de-perspectifying photographs with Photoshop...

Making the plans takes up as much time as the actual building does, and I have still more to do - so this report will evolve over time. Hopefully not too long.

So I had to decide on which bit to start on - and chose the "face" of the tank.

To save weight and costs, I decided on hardpaper circuit board as basic material for the "big bits". It is light, rigid and you can glue and solder it - perfect for my means.

So here goes, I started with drilling the basic holes tor the visor lids and the ball bearing for the Lewis gun.

It is my aim to have as much "working" detail as possible, and as no ready-made hinges are available, here goes the DIY. Hardsoldering various tubes to their bases...

..and constructing little helpers to bend the surrounding girders for the "windows"..

In the front you can see the two already bent girders.

Lids and hinges evolving:

Where possible, actually riveted or bolted instead of glued.

In the beginning, I thought "it's all flat plates and stuff, easy..." but then you stumble upon bits which are not so, like the protectors for the outer end of the lid hinge axis. More tools had to be devised, thats the "shaper" in the background...

... and the lids are laid out to see if all fits as planned.

Here in the making are the "ratchets" for the lid levers which are inside the cabin, and more detailing going on the lids.

Both parts of the lid work individually. This was the test setup.

Of course, mistakes happen. I had to take the drivers tower apart again, as the side panels were too long - an error deriving from taking the Emhar kit too much into account. So I had to remake the sides, "shoulders", roof and back plate - with rivets and all. 

Next section, the vehicle roof....

Let's start with some boring pictures of the petrol tank plates.

Girders, rivets and bolts. The petrol tank is made up the same way as the original one, I guess. The adhesive tape stops the rivets from falling out when I turn the thing over to hammer them.

The top plate with the cut-out for the filler flap.

Anyway, the flap houses the electrical jack for charging the battery later on. I can refill it almost the same way as they did back then

Here's the jack from below, with all that brass around I needed to come up with a well-insulated mounting.

Jack from abowe:

Serial production of the petrol flap hinges - glueing the hinge strip I soldered (which was made as described in the first section) to a piece of wood before drilling and cutting helps a lot:

I needed some attempts before I got that handle right in shape and size.Here are the hinges and handle bits.

Looking like this

to reveal the jack when in need of recharging.

I believe these things were intended to hold wooden posts, supporting camouflage nets, but I could be wrong. Please correct me if so.

The lower protective plate and the holders for it. The thing in the background is yet another tool I had to make to bend them in the correct angle - it also was for making the post holders above:

And attached to the petrol tank.

The rear compartment panel was needed now. Here it is, not all cut out yet. I do this with a jigsaw, as I do not have a mill or such.

After my visit to Brusseles, taking a very good look at Lodestar III, I noticed that tjhe cover I made here in the middle is wrong. At that point it was guesswork, based on various pictures of the survivng examples. It is corrected now.

Now came one of the most complicated bits yet, the radiator cover. I made myself a tool to be able to bend all segments equally - and then bolted them together with M0,8 nuts and bolts. I must be slightly (if not completely?) mad.

I had a hell of a time trying to get those nuts in between the segments - don't ask how many times I was crawling on all fours in the workshop, trying to find the tiny nuts I dropped.

The upper protective rear plate, here already with the holders. The notches in the lower edge are to make room for the petrol lid hinges:

The plate fitted, at that point I had also fitted the hinge blocks for the "door" to the rear compartment plate.. 

The radiator grille is also fitted already, complete with the rain roof and the mud visor.

Test-fitting into the body...

Next section: The rear "door". (I was shocked to see how tiny it actually is, back there in Belgium. I might just fit through there, crawling through on my side.).

MRG wrote:

The rear compartment panel was needed now. Here it is, not all cut out yet. I do this with a jigsaw, as I do not have a mill or such.

Whow! This is a really big deal! Ok, there are some really talented engineers around equipped with professional CAD tools  ... but YOU do this with your jigsaw !!!!!!!

Awesome!

Peter

Hello all,

thank you very much!

After all, I have to admit that I did have some training in metalwork, until 10 years ago I used to be a goldsmith - had to quit it though because it's a poor mans job (at least in Germany) and when my daughter came up I needed to do something completely different, just for the money's sake. It was frustrating back then anyway (stupid hearts and stuff ), so I am still not very keen on jewelry - but I still have most tools and I kept my skills upright by modelmaking - but just as a hobby.

But now for more, here comes the door.  Cut out and drilled..

Some test-fitting - the gunport-lid was made in the meantime.

I drilled the holes for the hinge arms with the door in place, to be sure everything works out..

As you can see, the "keyhole" and the bolts for the lock mechanism are inserted already. The inside looks like this, here with the hinge arms riveted in place already (the pink discoloration comes from the solder flux - it takes the zinc out of the brass, so you get pure copper "stains"):

The thing with the handle is the lock bolt for the gunport-lid - I made this work like the original one does. Pull the thing out, slip the lid up and push the bolt back again, so that the lid cannot damage the cooling sleeve of the Lewis gun.

The door in place with the nuts on the hinge axis and the little triangular stopper on the lower one. Now I could file the notches into the side edge of the upper armour plate. These allow the "door" to open that little bit more.

Working on these bits, you forget the actual size of the original. In reality, the hinge arms are only 20 cm long.

The order in which I post this is not necessarily chronological. Two very recent discussions I started on the tanks section here in the forum led learning that the bracket I added here is actually for a tail light...

... and looking at the surviving tanks I noticed I had to decide what covers the view port - a drilled plate or a priscope block. As I have a certain tank - made by Metropolitan -  in mind, I decided for a periscope block. "Flirt" and "Deborah" were also made by Metropolitan - there is certainly a periscope block fixed to the rear door of "Flirt" and with "Deborah" one cannot be sure until further evidence turns up - but I believe she has one too. Thanks to Gwyn Evans on this one!

So another tool needed to be made, after all, there is also five more periscope blocks in the commander and drivers compartment. If they are all to be the same, a certain serial production needs to be set up.

Here is the die and core, next to the raw stamped copper sheet. To make copper really soft and malleable, heat it until it glows cherry red, then throw it in water. It behaves the opposite way to steel, this way it gets soft as chewing gum - and easily shapeable. 

The copper basin was cut out accordingly, the thing in the background is the stencil for the fixing ends of the block. I could not resist, after cutting the viewing hole into the block , I just had to put some mirrors in.

These are made of mirror-plated styrene, easy to cut and shape. So, the periscope blocks will actually "work":

Here it is fitted to the door. The inside grip for the gunport lid and the "lock-blocker" (or whatever you could call it) are not mounted yet.

.

Next section will be details on the roof, especially the pistol port lids.

Thank you all!

Well, I try to do my best but it still is easy to find better.. there are modelling gods out there which I just cannot match.. So you are worthy all right!

So I will continue with some details to the roof, here the pistol port lids. These were a bit I had feared over, because I did not really want to make countless identical lids by hand. Lasercutting was the solution. But first I had to get into basic CAD to make the necessary vector file for this online lasering service I had found. The price was better than I ever dreamed, so I had a sufficient lot made.  A few days after placing the order, I found them in the letterbox, much more precise than I could ever have done by hand.:

I could hardly wait to get started. So I needed to make the handles, here before soldering the blocking rings on. I solder minute stuff by placing a tiny crumb of solder together with the fliux on the bits and then carefully go over it with a small gas burner. Much easier than trying to do that with a soldering iron. After soldering, I cut the M1 thread onto the lid end, that's why I tapered them.

Here is the set: Lid and handle, already soldered and bent and with a M1 thread cut to the end.

Here is the setup with the blocking bolt and the locking hook. The hook was cut out of 0,3 mm material, with help of the pantograph engraver, like I did with the rope fastener bits of the luggage rack.

And it "works", as I had desired.

To be continued....

Thank you all again!

Well, yes - I am going to splodge paint all over it.  Alone the burnt bit on the roof and the aluminium turret demand the paintwork. Hopefully the job will then look as good as on that stunning FT-17 turret in the other thread here in the modelling section - but I will have to practise hard to reach that excellence. I want to drive "Cynic" around, after all.

Metal is the stuff I like working with most, so that's just what I use. It is also the reason why I am documenting this in detail, because I need to remind myself then what it looked like without the paint - when I started it, I never thought about publishing a "making-of".

Sometimes, with stuff I made in my life, years later I wonder "How did I actually do this?", so all this was rather intended as a reminder for myself.

But I let you in on a secret which I kept so far - I am making parts for three tanks. Well, I need a male sooner or later... Maybe I will not paint the third one, because it will be better made than number one, and also probably made entirely of brass and copper, maybe even with the machinery in the interior, as a static model. But that is far in the future.

It is not much more trouble marking out three pieces - than only one - once you have the compass or caliper adjusted.

So, here are in fact three rear ends. I have not made the big pieces for the other two yet - I regard no.1 here in the report as the research piece.

After all, I still have not completely solved the track problem, but I have a good idea how to.

And TCT- cutting the small threads is really not such a big deal as it may seem, the threadcutter is just a somewhat smaller than the regular ones, but the technique is the same.

With best regards,

Martin

Hi Helen,

insanity, without a doubt... . Well, I somewhat believe that without my hobbies, I might really go insane...?  It's my way of Zen-ing out, tanks in wintertime, scooters when it gets warmer..

So, here comes more about the madness: Doing the inner side details. I hope this does not get boring now... The girders around the horns were pretty difficult to bend into right shape, no chance without some selfmade tools. Making the brass red hot (literally) and shocking it in cold water softenes it up, as opposed to steel. I had to soften it several times to get it "round the bend".

One fine thing about using circuit board, you can solder stuff to it. That's what I did with the horn girders before inserting rivets. After riveting these, I made the track-maintenance-gap-lids. Or whatever you can call them. Here again, the trick is bolting several sheets together, so that they come out identical.

Here is the other type lid bolted in position. It will do exactly what the original was for - I can unbolt it to get at the track pins later.

Aligning the long girder at the bottom, I had to make that one a bit longer by hard-soldering an extra few centimetres to it.

Slowly but surely inserting rivets along the length...

..and sinking the other end of the rivets on the inside girder. These have been smoothend then, so that the running track does not catch on any protuding bits later. The bolt was only temporarily, to hold the girders in position while riveting.

The same had to be done on the insides of the horns, where there is no inner girder to guide and hold the track. here you can also see the big girder already fixed to the inside sides, the maintenance gap and the smaller girder below the mud chute opening. This will hold the brass sheet which will serve as the floor of the mud chute cavity.

Several rivets later, some more bits added. Here are the connectors for the single plates of which the original is constructed. Each side  is made up of two circuit boards, as I could not find any long enough to cover the entire length of the model..

The area where the separate boards meet has been fillered and sanded. Originally, I had intended that that part gets covered by the connectors, but I had to make corrections to my plans after I had cut the sides out. You see, this is the research "prototype".

Mistakes included...

Many more rivets later, it looks like this. The triangular bit is the big strengthener which sits at the sides above the upper front glacis plate. I believe only "Flirt II" does not have these, maybe they were not replaced when it was restored.

More work on the rear insides, the upper beam holders above the petrol tank. I wish there were some photographs showing what they were used for, and how.

First, I had to make yet another tool, to bend the raw material as needed, here are the raws in the front and the tools in the background. They look a bit strange, but they became remade to cover for several tasks, sort-of "homebrew-multitools"

The lower clamp in place, bolted to the girder. As you can see, I needed to relocate the bolt positions for the mud chute floor and the petrol tank support (That was one of the results of visiting "Lodestar" in Brusseles last year) so I had to close and filler them over.

The beam holder in place.

So, it's getting late again, more to come! Next chapter - the track tensioners.

Best regards,

Martin

Hi TCT,

final number 3, (if ever it gets done) I will not paint over, but this one, I just will have to. Too many flaws which are too obvious. Areas were I burnt the circuit board, some displaced bolt holes, gaps I had to filler over...  And giving a model a good paint job is a challenge in itself.

Anyway, about the Arduino, it's only for the guns. No point in having an expensive 12channel remote just to twiddle the gun turrets manually. So I have written myself a program which keeps 10 small servos busy (2 for each gun, left/right, up/down) at random speeds and (restricted) angles, at random times.

As I am completely new to the subject of microcontrollers, I had to study quite a bit beforehand. A slow process, as I am not familliar with all the commands and stuff at all.  Paste-and-copying codes from the net, a lot of trial and error here too...It took quite a few hours.

I made a small test setup with which I was able to monitor the changes to the programm, the servo behaviour looks fine now, just as I had wanted. They move and react like people sitting behind the guns, checking out the landscape, taking aim, moving off etc. Not too much movement, some pauses, some short simultaneous movements which look like the gunners being jerked inside the tank when passing over bumps - I am quite happy with the result.

The HengLongs also have machine gun sound (which is sort of acceptable for the Lewis) and flash, the Arduino re-routs it via transistors and LEDs over optic fibres into the 5 Lewis guns, also at random intervalls. First of all I wanted to programm a "machine gun routine" with flash and sound myself, but I quickly gave up on that. Sometimes it's the seemingly simple things that prove almost impossible - at least for my rudimentary "programming skills".

But I admit - fiddling about with the Arduino is fun, even total n00bs like me can get stuff done with it.  To start with, I was somewhat afraid of it - but there are great tutorials out there in the net. The possibilities are amazing. Someone with true programming skills could have the tank driving around by itself, also avoiding or climbing obstacles, without any remote at all.

With best regards,

Martin

Hi TCT,

from what I know about the Arduinos, it should be possible to program them to function as an ESC. But - I am not the expert here. All sorts of input can be processed by the Arduino, analogue, digital, PWM.  There's people building entire robots with them.

It would certainly need an additional "motor shield" (these are available ready to use, more or less) or a self-made circuit board with an array of transistors, as the Arduino itself cannot handle high currents. Size should not be the problem, I have the "Duemillanove" which is the size of a cheque card - but there are much smaller ones around. I am quite sure that there would already be some codes on the net for such an application, which could then be modified to your needs. I am afraid I cannot help much on the subject - yet.

Best regards

Martin

More metal madness, I have done some work on the "gear box" recently. The gears themselves are actually combined with the motrs themselves, so the "gear box" only flips the movement by 90 degrees. So the usual busines, first the drawing, then marking and cutting and drilling some nice solid 2mm brass sheet.

Which can be put together like this:

The trick is that I can later take off the body with the motors and the sides can stay in the model. So, if this should ever need service, I only need to take the side axles out and then I can take the engines out of the model without having to totally dismantle it.

Here with the floor and the central bearing holder...

... and with the motors, drive cogs and bearings fitted.

Here is the assembly test-fitted to the belly plate group.

The sides are fitted with just a few screws here, so there are still some gaps which will close up when all of them are fitted.

The battery fits exactly under the gear box...

... and I have enough clearance...

... to adjust the battery's position to find that perfect point of gravity, which the original Mark IV has:

That strip of wood is all the model is resting on. The point of gravity is essential if the model is supposed to move in that special manner later on.

Next: Some details on the electrical equipment.

Prod! Prod! Prod!! Anything new? :) 

H x

Next in line were the Lewis guns.

As the inside of the model is all tech-filled anyway, I did not bother detailing beyond the visible part of the cooling sleeves. They were enough work as it is. Here are the sleeves, made up from two soldered thin tubes of brass, then worked upon on the lathe.

By the way, if anybody needs thin-walled but sturdy brass tubes in odd diameters, consider taking a car radio antenna apart.

Here are the inserts with the internal muzzle and the cooling fins. As they are only visible from the front, when looking into the gun, I only jigsawed the fins into the front ends.

The muzzles are 1mm tubes, which will have an optic fibre inserted, for the muzzle flash when firing.

I spent a lot of time thinking about how to make the front gun moveable, as the space in the drivers cabin is now very limited due to the other tech inside the model. But I solved the problem. First I had to prepare the brass gunbearing ball.

The Lewis gun sleeve fits through now. I also had to file the "vision duct" (for lack of a better word) into the brass ball.

Next I had to figure out how to hold it in place without loosing its mobility. I came up with this:

In real life, this would not be wise to do, looking down the barrel of a gun

The gunsight is already soldered to the sleeve, the cross-shaped thing is the servo coupler. The groove in the coupler allows room for the optic fibre going into the muzzle. The coupler fits into the gun sleeve from the back, the fins on the coupler and on the holder are fixing points for the springs which will keep the gun upright, even if the servo is moving the setup around. A ball bearing has no limit in which way is moves and I needed a way to avoid movement around the Y-axis. It took some time to get the idea for the solution.

Here is the assembly complete with the tiny servo - it does not need to be powerful anyway.

And - its "alive". I mounted it for testing onto one of the fronts I have prepared for the sister models.

So, now it seems as if there could be someone behind the gun, looking for someone unfortunate enough to be in its line. For all the fascination I have for this piece of human ingenuity and the respect for the crews inside, the intention behind it is horrible. I am a pacifist, no doubting that. Researching the Great War for the model I came upon so many dreadful images..

Anyway, the red-glowing thing behind it is the servotester. The servo itself will later be steered by the Arduino, which will feed it with signals for random speeds, angles and pauses. The speeds and angles are within a set limit, making the gun's movements much more life-like.

So, thats it for now, more to come!

 

Testing..to see if I can undo Photobucket's assasination attempt...