Model by Jim Baker
Photographs by the author
The kit consists of 8 printed sheets on medium weight, somewhat glossy paper. The printing is sharp, and all of the parts are well numbered. There is one page of assembly drawings, but no text. In most cases, I found the drawings to be enough. A few times I had to "guess -t-mate" where, or how a piece fit, but it usually worked itself out. The tracks, by the way, are rigid pieces, so no multitude of links to make!
My biggest criticism is the use of dashed lines on the face of the parts to indicate scores. Because the paper is a little glossy, water colors will not cover the lines, and markers, as most know, spread into the paper and cover a lot more than intended. Of course, it depends on which way the part is folded as to whether the dashed lines show or not.
Because the paper is glossy, I scraped off the coating in a lot of places for a better glue joint, especially parts that could be bumped around. The barrel of the flamethrower is made up of several rolled pieces butt glued together. I thought this would be particularly subject to breaking apart, so I glued a 1/8" dowel inside the barrel pieces and into the turret, with a former inside to keep it from flopping around. It is quite rigid, and has survived several knocks so far.
Because the directions are just gray/black images without details, it was almost by accident that I realized the track linkages needed to be matched up, and made into left and rights. Also the tracks were a little difficult to match up onto the bogie wheels in final assembly, but this could have been as much as my inexperience as a fault of the kit. I would suggest to anyone building this kit to glue the tracks around the front and back wheels, and join them to the top track. Then glue them in place, and glue the bogie frame and wheels in place. Then, carefully test fit and plan the final assembly of the rest of the track before gluing. The directions seem to indicate the entire track and wheel assembly is glued up and then added to the body, but when I tried this on the first side I had to it take apart and re-glue several pieces to make it fit.
I couldn't resist a little kit bashing in the end when working on the lights. It was easy to cut out the lens area and put a piece of clear acetate behind them, then line the inside of the lamp housing with some foil from a potato chip bag. I though that this made a much more interesting part. After looking at the finished model, I felt the flat printed end of the mufflers seemed a little unconvincing, so I made a couple of exhaust stacks, painted them a burnt blue and rust, and glued them on. Probably not even close to the real thing, but pleasing to me!
The model is 1/10 scale, but since it was a small tank, it makes a nice size model, about 12 1/2 inches, 318 mm long. I would think anyone with a little patience and experience would find this an enjoyable project.
An Italian L.3 Light Armored flamethrower pauses above the Arc river on the Italian-French border before descending into the town of Bonneval to support infantry troops holding the river crossing there.
