The exhausts on some Whippets seem to have been wrapped with rope of some sort – presumably as insulation to prevent injury to anyone clambering around on top of the tank. I used cotton thread to replicate this. This looked fine until I sprayed on a coat of primer at which point the thread became a mass of ‘fuzz’ which needed to be flattened out with several applications of thin superglue. This left a somewhat less neat, tidy appearance, but looking at period photos showed that the exhaust wrapping on the real vehicles looked rather ragged anyway.
Some vehicles seem to have been covered in all manner of stowage so I made some tarpaulins out of Milliput. I used the Superfine white kind rolled into a flat sheet between two pieces of waxed paper with talcum powder used to stop the Milliput sticking to the paper. Once the Milliput had set for about an hour (which lessens the risk of fingerprints being left in the material when handled) it was cut into sheets and draped over the model. In the end I used only one of my home-made tarpaulins, being a little unhappy with their appearance once I’d painted them.
The individual track links supplied in the kit click together very easily and can be made to articulate. However, the connection points holding the links together are fragile and the lengths of track came apart very easily. The tracks on the Whippet seemed to have been quite tight with no sag around the front and rear of the sponsons. While I used the number of track links recommended in the instructions, the tracks on the kit were rather loose and drooped unrealistically. Removing a link made the track run too short.
At this stage I left the tracks as they were, in the hope that I’d find some ingenious way of sorting out the problem later in the project.
The assembled model was primed with Alclad’s Grey Primer.
With hindsight, using a black primer would have been more sensible. The model has lots of nooks and crannies which need to be covered and a black primer would have provided some useful pre-shading in these hard to reach areas.
I would also recommend that the insides of parts C1 and C4 are painted before the two halves of the sponsons are joined. The insides of these parts areas are visible on the finished model (if you decide to look at the underside), but I found it very hard to get any paint in there once the whole kit was assembled.
The tracks were given a coat of Alclad’s Black Primer.
In the following photos you may be able to see the mass of fuzz that was left covering my carefully applied exhaust wrapping.
Ask a question or add feedback:
You must be logged in to post a comment.