Steam Tank Update

Good evening,

Well, I've made absolutely no more progress on crewing the Air Boat (apart from learning why it can fly - it's core is made from 'lift wood'!), what with school holidays, painting window frames (which is taking for ever!) and getting ready for the new school year, but I have managed to at least create some grates on (actually, sitting just above) the deck of the steam tank...





... ostensibly to release the heat from the cabin, but really, to see the crew inside!

The grating is just some old fly screen cut to size.

One problem with retro fitting a see through portion into an already constructed model is that, well...I now realize that, yes, there is crew in there, but not much else. I should have put some ammunition stores and such in there. The crew looks like they're dancing around an empty room!

Ah well, you live and learn...

And no, the tracks aren't finished. I've got a couple of plates to fit over their sides to hide a distinct lack of running gear! Then I can glue them to the bottom of the hull.

This thing's really quite tall!

As for the funnel, I simply added it to the back of the bridge. The box thing I was planning to put on the back of the hull from which two funnels were going to protrude was just too fiddly, and I couldn't get the funnels to sit both perpendicular to the x axis and parallel to each other. So, I settled on this. Not quite as cool, but far less frustrating.

Nick

Oh, and thank you to the three people who responded to my little survey about how to class this thing in HOTT. One vote each for 'Standard Behemoth', 'Foot Behemoth' and 'Shooting Blade'. Hmmm. Might just keep it simple, and class it as a normal Behemoth. Lets face it, it would fall over in rough ground, and something this big would be easy to bring fire down upon. Apparently, there were instances in WW1 where tanks were actually knocked out by rifle fire, either through penetrating their armor (!), or freaking out their crew. Or so says Robin! :-)

VSF British Air Boat

Good evening,

A while back Andy Gorman gave me his excellent VSF 20mm army, including this splendid scratch built Air Boat. Balsa, card and cleverness. Brilliant, in fact!




Well, seeing as HaT have brought out a naval Gardener Gun, complete with deck mount, I thought 'Cool. I'll add a couple of them to the Air Boat'.

I picked up a box from Stan last night (any Kiwi gamers who are after 20mm plastics at a great price, contact him!) and have started to pull some things together...



First up, I had to crew the gun, so I grabbed a left over sprue of the HaT Colonial Artillery and swapped their heads for the spare naval heads that come with the Gardener Gun (the result of which looks a little odd close up, but I'm hoping they'll look a little more natural with a coat of paint), along with the Heliograph Operator from the Gattling Gun sprue. I'm going to put him in a crow's nest on the forward mast. Cool idea, thanks Stan!

The Gardener Gunners also had their heads swapped. It is interesting to note that the mount is not quite tall enough for the gun's crank handle to meet the gunners hand, so I've mounted the mounts on some spare crew bases. The guns themselves will be mounted atop the bridge, to which I will add a solid railing.


I'm also thinking of mounting one of the officers with a telescope atop the bridge as well. I'll have to see how crowded it becomes first.

Isn't it funny how easily wargamers are distracted from one item to the next, before the former is completed! :-)

Nick

Steam Tank Update

Good evening,

Well, it's slow going. I redesigned the chassis, have cut up (and scored) some tracks, pulled it together and am in the process of painting same.




Not least because of...(see above post)

Nick

What Should the Steam Tank Be?

Good evening,

Well, while I'm waiting to get off my butt to actually do something constructive, construting wise, it has occured to me that I'm not quite sure what to class this Steam Tank as in HOTT terms.

The most obvious would be to call it a Behemoth, but, well, classing it as mounted would make it vulnerable to shooting which it just should not be ('cept to artillery). So, as I see it, there are four options...

1. Class it as a standard Behemoth, @ 4AP.
   


2. Class it as a Foot Behemoth - that is, as a standard Bh, but class it as foot, not mounted, @ 4 AP.
   


3. Class it as a Blade @ 2AP. Boring, but it would make it mostly invulnerable to shooting and suitably scary to foot. I think it would also suitably simulate it's lack of maneuverability and the difficulty it'd have with fast moving opponents.
   


4. Class it as a shooter, with Blade close combat factors, @ 4AP.

So, what do you think? Please vote on the side bar now!

(I also have the same problem with my EIR Tortoise...



...'cept that it can't really shoot back. What should this be?)

Nick

Now you see them...

...and now you don't!





Well, I've finally got the lid on the hull of the steam tank. I thought I might be able to see a bit more of the crew, but, well, at least now I've got evidence that there are indeed miniatures in there, and they are painted!

Next step is to add some...cladding(?)...to the remaining edges of the deck, try to touch up the gaps with PVA and paint, and then try to figure out this.


It's the unfolded running gear, or at least the bulk of it. I'm not real sure how it all goes together.

I at least figured out why the jolly thing is so tall. All of the crew are standing, save the turret gunner! I think it gives it a good 'naval' feel myself, something I was trying to get.

Still, if I was to do this again, I'd make it longer, possibly half as much length again, to give it more engine/boiler room. It wouldn't matter so much that it wouldn't fit on a 60mm by 80mm HOTT Behemoth base, they are only guidelines afterall.

No matter, I can justify its stumpyness by saying that it was designed primarily as an infantry support weapon - slow and steady, designed to just stay with the Tommies rather than speed off on it's own in some kind of 19^th Century Blitzkrieg!

Cheers,

Nick

Steam Tank Update

Good afternoon,

Well, it's been slow going. I enjoy making wargame armies, I endure painting them!








The wheels for the tracks are from the Airfix Ancient Brit chariots, with some air dried clay wheels in between so as to make the tracks wider, more chunky. I've decided to make the tracks with strips of card, with the 'links' being made by scoring lines onto/into the card.

Having the 'Mark 1' model there has been surprisingly useful in figuring out how things fit. That big white thing hanging off the side is a 54mm / 1/32^nd scaled ships air vent. I was hoping it was going to be quite a bit smaller when I ordered it. Not sure whether to use it or not. Whatdayarekon?

Next step - keep painting the crew so's I can seal them inside the hull, bridge and turret. Then on with the running gear. Which looks really tricky. Ah well...

Cheers,

Nick

...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

Right, Lets Get On With It...

Good afternoon,

Well, I've printed the bits, only to find that 33% of the Pepakura 2D net/model was still too big. So, after a bit of fiddling, it turns out that a scale of 25.5% printed out at the right dimensions. So, here they are...


I can figure out the main components (hull, bridge, turret, boilers) but some I can't. So, we'll see what we will see...

Next step is to glue these to card, cut out, score, fold and glue. Hmmm...

Nick

Boilers

Good afternoon,

Well, I decided that, for Pepakura to print this thing better, I'd pull it apart. In doing so I was able to place a couple of boilers and their bulk heads.




Hope I can actually glue this thing together!

Oh, and Merry Christmas!

Nick

Oh, So That's Why It's So Big!

Good evening,

I went into school this morning to physically print off my Steam Tank model. All 15 A3 pages worth. Ok, thought I, and I grabbed some big sheets of card.

Home I went, lined up all the sheets on the lounge floor, and thought...hang on, this is huge! And so it was.

For some reason, Pepakura has printed my Sketchup model at three times the size I designed it to be. So, I printed it (as a PDF file) at 33%, and lo, by holding the ruler up to the PDF image (@100%) it seems to be right.

So back to school I'll have to go...

Cheers,

Nick

By the way, I've added some more virtual crew...


...and yes, I know the Turret Gunner has his feet poking through the floor!

To Air Vent or Not to Air Vent...

...the answer is the later!

Good morning,

I spent this morning fiddling around with the Steam Tank. Lowered the deck, while keeping the sides - looks more ship like - added a boiler bulkhead, and then found and added some air vents for the crew compartment...


"Cool," thought I, "now to print it...". Hmmm, with the air vents the paper model suddenly ballooned out to 23 pages with lots of little fiddly bits. Far too complicated.

So I've decided to print the model sans air vents, and hope to find someone to make some air vents (and funnels, if I can) for me. I hope. Those vents look way cool!

Nick

3D Modelling...

...can be a wonderful thing!

Continuing to hack away at my Steam Tank in Google Sketchup, and it occurred to me that if I plonk some appropriately scaled miniatures in the model I would be able to adjust the view ports so's the minis can see out.


I tried to find a seated man for the Gatling turret, but it proved too fiddly to scale down to the same size as a 20mm miniature. Should be right though.

Now if I could only figure out which bit on the 2D paper print out corresponds to which bit on the 3D model. (Speaking of which, I've somehow managed to reduced it to 12 A3 pages now!)

Nick

Funnels

Hi,

Just added a couple of funnels. Whether I can fold them out of cardboard, now that's another matter...



Nick

And yes, I know the tracks look a bit naff, but I'm hoping that with an extra strip of corrugated card will help...

20mm VSF Mixed Media Steam Tank

Good evening,

I know I should have been adding text to the photos of my last couple of posts, but, well, school wound up toward the end of the year instead of winding down, and, well, I was distracted by making this...




I constructed this model in Google Sketchup and have exported the model as an open source 3d file format that Pepakura Paper Designer 3 can understand, which in turn converted the 3d model into a paper net - a 15 A3 page paper model, no less!

As indicated in the above images, I'm planning to arm and crew the tank with HaT's new Colonial Artillery, Gatling Gun and associated officers.

I may even make a couple of boilers to sit inside complete with a stoker. The funnels are most likely going to be drinking straws sticking up from out the back, and, hopefully some deck railings out of 1/32^nd inch brass rod.

I'll head back to school over the next couple of days to print it out and grab some card to paste the sheets thereon. Then we'll see just how easy this thing'll be to assemble...

Nick