Built the FV4005 turret.
Last picture is a size comparison with a mk3 Centurion.
The hull is a modified Mk3 Centurion hull which will built next.
5 Likes
So, the DJ has his mixing desk near the front, and the dance floor occupies all that space in the rear? 
That’s a massive turret!
1 Like
From what I’ve read:
It’s a 183mm gun, and it could only hold 17 rounds of ammo!
1 Like
Somewhat akin to the old joke about Malkara, if the round didn’t detonate, it would push the enemy tank over!
3 Likes
I’ve been inside a battleship turret, and this kind of reminds me of that 
1 Like
Thats a big old bullet catch on the turret ring … I envisage lots of turrets flying through the air !! 
1 Like
The gun was a Naval gun originally
1 Like
I don’t think so; 183mm equates to 7.2" which is a Brit Army calibre anyway (used as a howitzer throughout the Second World War).
I believe the 183mm was a specifically designed anti-tank gun - the Ordnance, Quick-Firing, 183mm, Tank, L4 Gun, to counter once again, our old friend the JS3 - and I’m sure, other Soviet heavies that might present themselves on the 1950s battlefield. No small panic at the War Office or Director of the Royal Amoured Corps then(!)
The gun was ultimately destined for this beast, the FV 215, on a Conqueror chassis:
which, Amusing Hobby have seen fit to produce in 1:35, should anyone wish to tackle it say, for this campaign:
I think such was the dread of the Soviet heavies, that fitting it to the Cent chassis was an experiment to see if it was viable at all should it suddenly be needed on the plains of West Germany.
Sorry for the history lesson - and my speculation; the build certainly looks interesting.
7 Likes
You are correct mate … it was a specific design for that chassis as an anti tank gun
1 Like
After a good deal of searching for a suitable riser for the turret, which I wanted to have a conical shape because that’s what you see on Piranhas a lot, I found one:
This is a Games Workshop 40 mm wargames base, from which I filed off the texture on top and in which I made a hole for the turret, including the bayonet fitting.
I also scribed a line for the engine deck, between the grilles and the driver’s hatch, but you can tell from the putty that I did that wrong on my first attempt 
At the back, I added the basic shapes of two passenger hatches:
These are just rectangles of 0.5 mm plastic card, 15.5 mm wide and 33 mm long. I took the dimensions from Trumpeter’s instructions for the Canadian Grizzly, which are on Scalemates — I just zoomed in on them on my iPad’s screen so that the hull width matched that of my model, and measured them up.
5 Likes
It was pointed out to me elsewhere that the riser I built was very low compared to the real thing, so to get it right, I went browsing through Jane’s Armour and Artillery 1985-86 for the entry about this turret that I knew is in there:
No dimensions, unfortunately, but by measuring in the photo and on the AFV Club turret, I could work out that the “inside” part of the turret needs about 39 mm of height in the hull. Some measuring on the model, then, showed that that room simply isn’t there with the riser I have — there is just 39 mm from the top of it to the inside of the hull floor, but there are some tunnels and things on that floor for the drive shafts, which reduce the height inside by about 3 mm. I need to add some height to the riser, then, but the YPR adapter ring that AFV Club supplies (see the first photo above of the built hull) isn’t thick enough for that, and would require a good deal of work to remove the bevelled edge it has to fit in the YPR’s hull top, as well as to fill the gap along about a quarter of its perimeter. So, back to searching for something usable. Which I did:
I cut the riser I had from the hull, which was easier than expected — GW’s plastic apparently doesn’t glue that well with the solvent I use. It’s next to the hull here, together with a second wargames base, but this one is by Rackham (which went under over fifteen years ago) for their game, AT-43. This is also 40 mm in diameter, but has a vertical lower half and a bevel above it. By reaming out the GW base, it fits fairly neatly over the other one:
I’m going to glue them together and then fill the seam with putty. This will give a slightly different appearance than on the trials vehicle, but I shall explain that by arguing that they would have built the production vehicles slightly differently
7 Likes
Figures for the crew for my T-74/Object 450; I’ve now re-jigged them with Hornet Heads and added appropriate details to the helmets:
3 Likes
Ouch! Those mounting posts are eye-watering!.. 
2 Likes
Yeah - pretty sort of Balkan I feel.
1 Like
Maybe they met Vlad the Impaler?..
3 Likes
I just recall flicking thorough a paperback my boss, a Brigadier, had left on his desk one evening; I was working late - no change there perhaps (this was in Bosnia). It was some ghastly history of Bosnia and the regions and it described, in mind-shredding detail how impalement was carried out. Dear God - it was grim reading - and I’ve read some stuff!
3 Likes
I don’t see any Adiddas track suits 
2 Likes
For the Piranha PWI, I next needed to tackle the rounded bit of armour below the turret riser. After first considering how to make this from a piece of plastic card to fit between the riser and the sloping side armour, I didn’t feel like actually working that out: it’s an plane that intersects a cylinder at an angle, so you could calculate and draw the exact shape it should have, but that was too much theory for me. I turned to a practical solution instead:
I placed the riser on the roof and then used the tip of my modelling knife, held as vertically as I could, to scratch a line in the hull that follows the outside of the riser. I then drilled a line of holes just above that line (perpendicular to the side armour, not vertically) and connected those using the knife. After that, it was a matter of scraping, cutting and filing to get the inner edge vertical.
All that remained was to glue in a bit of plastic card:
To work out the length of this, I put the riser back on, made two pencil marks on it at the ends of the hole I had just cut, and rolled it along a ruler to measure the distance between them. I then cut the plastic slightly longer so I could trim it until it fit, and bevelled the edges where they butt up against the roof. Finally, after taking the photo, I filled the seam with putty.
6 Likes