1/35th Scale British Mark IV

For my birthday this year, Martin, a chum bought me a Emhar 1/35th scale Mark IV tank kit. That my birthday was in July and I have only just finished it shows you how much I have been faffing about with it. The main issue was the tracks.
The kit comes with some rubber tracks which are a bit of a pain to actually put on. However, after much faff, I had the basic kit built, painted and decals on.

I based the colour on the Racing Green tank that I was involved in recovering part of back in June, at Bullecourt. The tank that we found was a Mark II, but I didn't think it too much of a stretch that a Mark IV could be painted in the same way.

(Picture copyright Harvey Mills 2017)

Another reason that I paused this project was that I was working out how to do the weathering. After a recommendation from another chum to check out the Flory clay washes I tried them out on this model. Having only used the washes on smaller tanks the effects on this bigger kit were spectacular! This was a simple addition of a wash which was then streaked with a dry soft brush. I also added some rust and other grime washes to specific areas.

Not all the advice I was given was so useful, as another chum (who shall remain nameless) then mentioned I should drill out the gun barrels. As I did, the superglue that I had initially used (I had no polystyrene cement when I started... More faff...) broke and the gun and bracket fell inside the tank body!

Out came the drill again and I bored a hole in the base to get the gun out and reattached it, this time with polystyrene cement...

At this point, I had done the penultimate weathering on the model. I used Flory washes throughout and I am very impressed with how the tracks turned out. I had also used some weathering gel on the exhaust, this has some very fine sand and grit in it and gives a good rough texture like rust. Ninjasaurus Rex gave me this gel and I am not sure where he got it from.

I wanted to add a little more mud the tracks and around the running gears, so I took some dirt from the garden, mixed it with water and PVA glue and slopped it on. Well, there's nothing more realistic for mud than real mud!

I declared the kit finished, for now. I have ordered a set of Tamiya First World War British figures and I am going to make a diorama using the wooden plinth that the tank is on in the pictures above. But that's all in the future for now!

Thanks for reading!