Tuesday, July 25, 2017

Scratch Built 88mm guns in 1:144 scale


88mm Flak Project

Okay, so I need like 8 German 88mm AAA guns for my 1/144 Kasserine Pass battle and I am too cheap to go out and buy that many so I decided to make some. I don’t so much need the prime movers (Kfz half tracks) although I did break down and get four on eBay.

The first thing I did was research the weapon. I did actually go out and look at prices for these figures. Here are a few websites I went to:
Weapon Details:
8.8 cm Flak 18/36/37/41

Figures:

12.60GBP for 4 KFZ. 10 half tracks – Pithead is 10mm (I bought 4 Pegasus 1/144 on eBay for $20.47)


Next I figured out what the gun scaled out to:
            Length    Barrel    Height
Feet        20'           16' 2"    6' 11"
Meters   5.791       4.938     2.1
1/72       80.4         68.6       29.2  mm
1/120     48.3          41.2      17.5  mm
1/144     40.2          34.3      14.6 mm

I want it to look a little realistic so not just a tube sticking out of a blob but basically I thought to use two different sizes of brass tubes for the barrel and recoil mechanisms and then either card or thin plywood or bass wood for the shield and the rest of it.

I needed to see what it looked like in scale, for found a blueprint here and saved it as a picture:

I have used Powerpoint for scaling stuff for years, so inserted the blueprint picture into a blank presentation. I printed it out then reduced it to 1/144 to work with. This was basic math – I printed out the blueprint on normal 8.5 x 11” paper, measured how long the print out was (11.8 cm) and divided 40.2 (the length of the gun in 1/144) and ended up with a scale factor of .34. Then I copied the image in Powerpoint and pasted it onto a new page and reduced it by .34 percent. I printed out that reduction and voila a 1/144 blueprint of the gun.
Just to check it against reality, I compared the 1/144 scale printout of the 88 to a “real” 1/144 Pz IV. The Pz IV is 5.92 m long and 2.68 m tall versus 5.79 m and 2.1 m for the gun so the scale tank should be just a bit longer than the scale blueprint, and a bit taller. Perfect! Well, perfect enough for my purpose.



Then I discovered that a standard round toothpick cut in half and with the first couple of mm sliced off is the perfect size and shape for the gun barrel! The barrel scaled out to about 35mm. More toothpicks cut to size are perfect for the recoil mechanisms (8mm for the two lower and 10mm for the upper). No need to mess around with brass tubes.



I wasn’t satisfied with the gun barrel, so found a plastic tube from an old aerosol can that just fit over the toothpick gun barrel and cut it into 10mm lengths and just slid it over the barrel with superglue holding it in place. This at least gives it some appearance of the nesting tubes used for the barrel.



I used a 5mm diameter dowel cut to 5mm lengths for the gun mounts. I used flat toothpicks cut to 22mm to represent the loading mechanism and glued them on top of the gun mount dowel, with the two lower 8mm recoil mechanisms on either side of it (I used superglue rather than wood glue for speed of drying time).
















 I then glued the gun barrel on top of the flat toothpick – it fit nicely between the two lower recoil mechanisms. When that dried I glued on the top recoil gizmo.















I decided to pin the whole mess together to keep it from coming apart when being handled on the wargame table, so used a Dremel and a 1/32 (#68) drill bit to drill from the top of the recoil mechanism through the gun barrel and the flat toothpick into the gun mount and glued a brass jewelry pin through the whole shebang, cutting the pin flush with the top of the gun.






I made gun shields out of cardboard (I use old beer coasters – sturdy and thick enough) – they scaled out at about 13mm square. I cut the slot for the barrel in the center down about 8mm with a pair of sharp scissors, and used a very small hole punch to cut out the little “T” at the bottom of the slot for the two lower recoil tubes I slid the shield over the barrel and recoil tube and superglued it to the gun mount and the barrel etc. Upper part done!!






I did not need to depict the guns in travel mode, so only needed to make the distinctive X shaped gun trail. I used flat toothpicks cut to 40mm length and just glued two of them together in the center. Since this yields a sort of wobbly frame, I cut more flat toothpicks a bit shorter than 20mm and glued them to the trails to make a thicker, more stable base.

The gun base plate scales out to 10mm square, so I cut those out of my trusty beer coaster card and glued them to the trails. I glued this structure to a 40 x 40mm square of 2mm thick craft plywood (comes in bags of different kinds of squares). I put these on thick magnet sheets that will then attach to metal strips in my storage tray. I like Aleene’s Magnetic Sheets available at Michael's – these are 1mm thick and in addition to protecting the models during storage and movement add a bit of heft to them.


My original plan was just to glue the gun to the base plate but I got the idea to just pin the gun to the base plate so that the gun would be able to turn 360 degrees. I drilled a hole into the center of the gun mount dowel and through the center of the base plate, toothpick trails, base and magnet. I then inserted a brass jewelry pin into the gun mount dowell and through the base, snipping it off where it protruded under the base. This has an added benefit of allowing the gun to be removed during play to signify a destroyed gun.









I spray painted the lot with Model Masters 1955 Afrika Mustard and then washed it with Minwax dark walnut wood stain thinned down. I spread wood glue onto the bases and slid them into a tray of beach sand. Then I hit the finished product with Dull Cote.















I added some Perrin DAK artillery crew and voila! Two 88 batteries!



And here they are defending the village of Sidi Bou Zid.











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