Treasures from the Top Drawer III: Battlefront Matilda IIs

Today I take some Queens of the Desert through their paces.

These old Matilda tanks have been sitting in my spares box for a while. A friend of mine had them sitting in his spares box before that. About time they received some attention. I don't have any Soviet Matilda IIs, so I will paint them up as Lend Lease vehicles.

Bits from the box.

Here they are in their full neglected glory. These are very old, dark resin Battlefront models. Sadly they are not in great condition. Aside from needing flash removal, some of the tracks and one of the hulls are cracked. One of the hatches seems to have been made by being filled with glue or epoxy and moulded into shape. There are 2 hatch covers missing totally. One of the barrels has been replaced by metal rod, the other is missing all together. So, some work to do!

I cut the mantlet off a metal Sherman 75mm gun sprue to make a new Matilda barrel. The small hatch was made from the casting attached to the gun. It was simply trimmed to size. The commander was from my spares box. I chose not to try and find a hatch for that as I couldn't think of a good way of doing it and figured people were unlikely to notice it was missing. Finally I cleaned up and assembled the model.

Doing some research, it seems that most but not all British Lend Lease vehicles were left in their original colours. Some were painted as they were sent for repair. I have chosen to paint mine as repaired vehicles. Given their cracks and scratch built parts, it seemed appropriate.

It has been raining solidly for a week here in Sydney so I brushed on a white undercoat rather than spraying. I then base coated the model in Soviet Green. I then washed the model in Strong Tone. I highlighted the tank with a mix of the base colour and some Iraqi Sand. I followed this up with a light edge highlight of green gray. The tracks were painted black and dry brushed flat earth. I tried something different and brushed on matt varnish. It seems to have worked well.

Not bad for old models that have been sitting unloved all this time.

I hope you enjoyed this post.