MHF Crocker FINISHED

Wow !! disastrous week
I decided to spray the body parts which went quite well



I then masked off the front of the tank using some bulk buy masking tape from some back street leezy model shop I should have guessed when i saw the junkies outside injecting Tamiya thinners into swollen veins i was entering a world of model hell !!

The front of the tank needs to be white and from the get go i had grave doubts about this because the method relies on a white decal matching and joining seamlessly the white paint...


Anyway although i had allowed 3 days for the red to dry the glue on the masking tape had literally eaten into the paint. Thus i scrapped the lot.
The up side is as all the parts are metal you just wipe them down with thinners and you have shiny parts ready to go again.



This is a definitive paint pattern for most big tank Crockers . there are variations on colours but the design is pretty much a Crocker trade mark



If you look at the MFH website at their demo model you can just see the join between paint and decal running vertical from the "o" of crocker



anyway however you do it, its not going to be easy.

I also started looking at the drive chain........oh dear.....

its made up with individual PE side plates and cast roller pins.





here you can see the bottom side plates fitted and the top/pins ready to be fitted above

I made a complete mess of this. You fix the plates in position by paining over the pins..... at first i didnt pain them over enough and the chain fell apart



This is
a disaster because at this stage you cant remount it on the jig as the pins are now removed from their spru, the second picture above shows the frame that holds the pins in place.
There are several sections of chain to be made so i tried another section and pained the thing over a little more and basically the pins just swell in the middle and bend. the chain is then rigid the pins are ultra soft, TBH armed with a tin of spinach and support from Olive Oil you could probably squash them in your fingers popeye style.

so a new chain has been summoned from spot model at a cost of slightly more than your average complete Tamiya 1/48 kit and i have a week or two to work out how to do this ( these rivet pins are less than 2mm long)


and just throw the cat amongst the pigeons...i think my choice of metallic red for the body sucks, its a nice colour but its not really 1940's so i need to think about that as well.




I wonder if dark blue might look better than black

A disastrous week of modeling is a lot better than a disastrous week at work. Ask me how I know!

End result is going to be great Paddy.

Wow sounds like you are going through the mill at the moment Bob, hope things sort themselves out soon mate .
As for this ? no worries i will sort it

I doubt this will be popular however its probably more realistic

Its proving very hard to photograph without it looking black but once on a black frame it should show as a very dark blue metallic or Tamiya TS-64 Dark mica blue.



I cant polish this till the decals and gloss coat are applied so at this stage it looks a bit raw, rough, orange peely and yuk

ha ha i copied the diagram for the white areas..then found they are completely wrong



so i have had to strip back to bare metal...again.

On a brighter note i have sorted the chain assembly, it doesnt look perfect but its plenty good enough bearing in mind this is only 2mm wide so greatly enlarged..



Its made up of 4 sections like this its taken he three sections to get one right but i know what i am doing now. I have a spare chain and now, loads of spare parts going forward. ( it looks like i have missed a side plate but its ok its just a reflection of the line on the mat)

This was always going to be learning curve and TBH it could all have been going a lot worse.

Basically the out line of the area to be painted white is incorrect so this didnt work.
I am starting to think that this is mission impossible.

My next attempt ras to strip it all back to bare metal, re apply the dark blue then add the decal in a very much cut down version so it doesnt have any compound curves and lugs to cover


Then i masked off the decal and painted the rest of the front white..



however when i removed the masking what is left sort of works but its not good enough to use on the model...



Obviously it still needs its gold pinstripe but this phase is proving above my pay grade. I will carry on as its just so easy to wipe the thing down with some thinners , back to bare metal and start again but i thinks it going to be a plain colour TBH.

A dinky brush and steady hand with Tamiya gold paint pen paint, may well cover the flaws in the scallops. You can do it! This looks like a win to me!

Thanks for your confidence but the pin stripes are decals not sure if that makes it easier or not but as you say it will cover the misalignments etc.

Don't know why you'd be disappointed here. Fine job!

Oh boy, I can see the frustration in this portion. How do the gold decals fit with the current paint results? Like Rhino was saying, a paint pen might save you a ton of hassle. Either way, those curves are not a happy place, but we've seen you go above your pay grade before, Paddy!

This is what makes a master builder. Anything less than perfection just will not do. I see zero flaws. None what-so-ever, and my jaw will be picked up off the floor shortly..

I think this is as good as i can get to now without another set of decals, its a learning curve but i'm a bit slow



The pinstripes went on ok and they have had a gloss coat or 6 but it needs to now go hard before i can really see how they look when cut back. This was always going to be a learning curve as its so far removed from a normal plastic kit, you cant really use your normal model paints on metal, they dont cover and they run 10x more easy than on flat plastic. The real problem here was not just losing the join between paint and decal but getting a white that matched the decal, although there are 2 decals on top of each other the dark blue still shows through them ( yes that is dark blue not black )
Once all the badges etc are fitted it might look a bit better and i still have the alternative just plain blue if at doesnt look up to much later after polishing....

Anyway, about those other 2 sections of chain

Out-Funking-Standing! I knew you could pull it off!

OK, I just had to tweak the photo Paddy. These look AWESOME in the photo. Hope they look as good in person.



Still looks black though.

Its deceptive because the white has bleached out. Its one of those things where you think, i could get away with this, its not too bad however because of the cost and rarity of the kit, getting away with it is not really the point.
I would be better to have a plain tank or a simpler design thats perfect than keep looking at this from the wrong angle and seeing the faults.
I am happy with everything except the tank so i am going to progress the build to a more complete stage so when i add the tank it will give me a better idea of how it will look but in my heart of hearts i dont like it. Put it this way, if i was building this as a comision i couldn't let it go.

This is an option i have found.
This Crocker sold for $700k at Mecans in the US and dint have the two tone paint, just the pin stripes on the Tank
As i mentioned before these were built to customers spec and no two were the same .








I know its not as flash but near perfect and simple might be better than complicated and " not really right"
after all these bikes are worth up to $1m so you wouldnt expect them to be anything other than spot on ?

I eventually managed to get 112 links to stay together...just





anyone who has tried some tank tracks and been driven insane , have a go at one of these

I lost count of the hours , more like days actually but hey...its not a race

Even fitting it took a morning and several repairs to the chain just because you cant join the ends till its on the bike.



Anyway, this is pushing me too my limit and beyond which is kind of what i was looking for and although these kits are bloody expensive..in terms of $ per hour i still think they will work out cheaper than most other forms of entertainment .................

That is looking good Paddy! I will do the chain for you if you ever need another done.

It is a watchmakers job but my problem was while the holes on the side plates (PE) are identical the pins on the rollers vary so its not a uniform pressure to rivet them and you can do one and its fine and the next pings apart a little while later. Then you are really stuck because you cant re-rivet that pin or get a side plate on it so you are looking at trying to fit a new pin and to do that you need to seperate the side plates of the completed section far enough to get the new, un-swaged pin in ..and thats when another side plate pings off. Anyway..its a challenge