...and Back to the Drawing Board!

Good morning,

Well, the model is coming together quite well, 'cept, as it does, little things make themselves apparent that could be improved.

• Paint the boiler facings before sealing them in the hull!


• The boilers themselves are a lot easier placed when they're not! Leave them out.


• The driver could do with some sort of steering wheel to hold on to.


• The round portholes in the bridge are too hard to cut out - replace them with view slits.


• Talking of view slits, the hull could do with a couple down each side, else it's going to be too dark to see the crew inside. And, from a 'real world' perspective, the crew might like to know a little more of what's going on outside!


• The turret, hmmm...
  
  
  • The top needs to be in one piece, not the piece and a bit that Pepakura has made it.
  
  
  • For some reason the edges don't meet at the back. Not sure why, but I'll fix that...if I can.


• I'll put some sort of air vent in the deck, behind the turret. Again, this will be primarily to let in more light, but also to let the 'heat' from the 'boilers' escape.


• The funnel box assembly at the back needs to be separate. I can't figure out how to make it as it has been printed at the moment.

On a more positive note, the turret dimensions have worked out to be about right. Yes, it is a tight fit to stuff the Gatling gun, 'carriage' and gunner in there, but it yay, it works.

And the main gun looks good, now that I've rotated the mounts 90 degrees to attach them to the inside of the hull. (I hope I can pull it out this 'Mark I' without breaking off the mounts).

The crew all fit too - indeed the artillery...stoker? Swabber? The dude with the big cotton bud thing to clean out the barrel - looks great as an engineer. He's even got a lever to hold on to!

As for the track assembly, well I've had a bit of a brain wave. Ages back I got a heap of the old Airfix Ancient British chariots with those big bulky solid wooden wheels. I replaced them with 15mm ACW artillery wheels...


...but kept the originals, just in case. Well, this might well be one of those cases! I may redesign the running gear with them in mind...

All in all, I'm very pleased with how it's come together, now it's time to pull it apart and start again!

Nick