Armortek

Thank's Vince.

Managed to get some lovely aluminum channel from B & Q, ideal for the dummy bin mountings. Here's small selection of their ware's.

Also sorted out some 19 mm and a 32 mm glass lens for the front head lights and cupola search light seen here. On the head light they provide a nice curvature on the lens and the gap between the bezel and lamp housing allows enough space to fit a sandwich of two lenses and a scratched plastic insert giving the effect of a defused lens.

I'm also fitting the infra "red" lens, not black lens as some would have it. There'll be a more dramatic effect with an red LED.
I know it's wrong, But I like to think I'm giving the audience an infra red effect without the need for infra red goggles.

Hi John
You have been lucky, our local B & Q shops have stopped supplying such material.

Cheers Charles

Sorry the local B&Q isn't supplying the materials, Maybe you could find a "B&Q Depo" warehouse store. The materials are certainly reasonably priced ,varied and it allows easy production of sharp edge parts and other small parts needed to made or fashioned.

It won't be everyone's cup of tea to make extra parts or to make upgrades, but finding the place to get the materials is helpful. The lens by the way are watch spares off Ebay, cheap and they have great a selection of sizes,

A two to three week wait for them maybe needed, but that's ok because the way this is going, I'm going to be on this for years.

Spent a lot of time on future plans, what works what doesn't etc. Grabbing old torches and lanterns from the car boots has been a objective, seeing if they'll adapt into parts for Chieftain. I'm looking for maximum fit from the reflectors which are trimmed to size using dremel type tool.
A little work has progressed slowly on the rear end. Weld lines need adding. Painting tin work individually to prevent future corrosion, it's gone very cold recently and I'd rather drink coffee and watch discovery channel in the warmth.

All seems to have gone reasonably well with the totem pole project, time will tell when tracks go on, projections twenty twenty something... and when the ground has dried out preferably.
So lately I've been slowly working my way down the "port side" at a snails pace. Problem is the longer you look at pictures of the original, the more you see, "Geeez" "how am I going to make that" comes to mind.
There's all sorts little brackets and moldings around the mud guards, a lot is covered by the bins and the tow rope, but I thought I'd have a go, Not sure how the fasteners and fittings are going to go on these brackets. Glue and screw seems preferable.
Another problem is scale, one part made and fitted to correct scale position interacts not so well with other parts and positions, a good example is the tow rope. It looks great, but it is slightly bigger and shorter than normal, adding detail bits didn't help, it will tuck in, but it's tight. Tethering the original tank tow rope along the mud guard at the angle box end should be further on the front casting. But that would mean clipping the angle bin on the model, the bin it'self is then short and so on.
I'm finding that unless your prepared to remake a lot of the original model parts it'll be tricky and I might come a cropper.
I feel a "Banksy or Leonardo" coming on. (Artistic Licence)
Other fittings,
Using Brute force and ignorance, I've made alloy half round for the mud guard moldings from aluminium welding rod. It's lined up in lengths and taped down to a block of wood, I use masking tape as it does not melt. Then carefully go grinding away with the dependable angle grinder, replenish the tape to keep holding the rods down, crude I know, but an effective cheap way of getting reasonable length of half round aluminium rod around 3mm wide.
Other fittings are just filed from extruded aluminium shapes brought from the B&Q metal molding area.
A few welds and fills to finish later and I'm slowly getting back to the front end where I was 6 months ago.

Nicely done John. Keep it coming please!

Hi John
Really great job on the chieftain. Lots of innovative solutions to those very tricky details. Looking good.
David

Thank you guys, I just blunder along and try to make things easier.
The Armortek Chieftain is a wonderful model right out of the box, without Armortek we wouldn't be endowed with these fine models.
Adding to them is challenging and I do struggle with the Banksy's and Leonardo's as this picture shows.
Where the part is and where it should actually be. Then there's the little extras made and added to the mud guards hours to make, second to cover with a bloody big bin.

I even painted the underneath of the bins a different colour (BL green) guessing the squaddies don't strip all the bins off to do the camo paint job, How dumb is that I hear you say. When Steve Norris enhanced his Cheiftain's bum cheeks, I couldn't help myself, though I was loathed to drill the welded end of the mud guard, for me that was one rear end hole too far.
I find looking at target range tanks is sometime better than the complete tank pictures, details are exposed. And just looking at this one a few minutes ago shows I've made a bit of a bloomer with the size of the tray wall on the rear mud guard.
" I'll be back"

Hi John

Nice work and thanks for sharing, the attacehd photo may help ?

Kind regards

Andy

Great picture Andy, any more?

Hi John
Tons more far too many to post all but a good source is

https://www.facebook.com/groups/447349612437700/
Chieftain 03EB39 Restoration
where the above picture came from.



Cheers

Andy

Hi Andy
Thanks for the details.
I don't have a face book account, this particular tank looks like a fine example to walk round if someone has an account.
Especially with the clear outdoor photography.

Hi John

It’s based in Norwich, Raydon Airfield I believe.

Cheers

Andy

With a sharp spur into the flanks from Andy Musgrove. I'll add what little I've achieved over the Xmas period.
Not a lot I may add.
Each part I've made is rough to say the least and an estimated size. Some parts will not be very good, Accurate BL modeling then.
But other parts will warm the cockles for a few milli seconds, Then I think, just another dozen to make. Doh
That's how you'll roll on Chieftain.

So what have I bin doing. Bin Bracket's Bin bracket support pads and a extinguisher pull handle bracket .....Exciting.

Which leads me to a Question. If You were to pull on one of the big red extinguisher handles on either side of the tank would the crew have to be evacuated?

Would the enemy be able to run up pull on the lever and disable the 52 ton monster with it's own fire protection system?
Of course you'd need some big pants to try it

Ouch -but that was worth it
lovely parts there John but you're scaring me now i havent even thought that far along.....

but well done and keep em coming

Jab jab

Andy