Barbastro tank SCW

[rockpaperscissor]

Model design isn't my forte, although I have generated a couple of pretty nice, albeit simple armored vehicles about a decade ago (1918 Holt one-man tank, and 1917 Ehrhardt E-V/4). The Spanish Civil War interests me, and while surfing the vehicles of that conflict I think I've found a perfect subject for my limited skills - The Barbastro tank.

It's a good candidate for multiple reasons: 1. Information - only two grainy photos of the vehicle exist and even the dimensions are unknown so it would be difficult for anyone to challenge my interpretation. 2. Simplicity - slab sided, few angles, no visible suspension. 3. Not yet available in paper - I did come across a small scale hand drawn paper model of the Barbastro tank for war gaming, but I couldn't find a download link for it.

I plan to make two interpretive models of the tank. First will be the simpler version, inspired by the 1/72 resin model by Panzer Garage. Their kit relies heavily on the side view photo of the actual vehicle. The second version is more complicated and will be similar to the 1/72 resin model by Minairons. Their kit takes its cue from the 3/4 rear view photo.

I don't have design software, so I'll be relying on my sense of proportion, a vintage version of Photoshop, paper, and a short plastic ruler with inches on one side and milimeters on the other.

Information on the Barbastro tank will follow in the next installment - this one is long enough.

[rifleman]

looking forward to seeing more will keep an eye on this

[CharlieC]

Did that vehicle have a snake track? The larger image seems to show the track elements swinging free of the centre cable around the idler wheel.

Regards,

Charlie

[Don Boose]

I look forward to seeing what you do with one, Don!

Don too

[rockpaperscissor]

I believe it had a normal caterpillar track, Charlie. The first image isn't a perfect side view. It's taken from below and angled a bit to the front. I think what we're seeing in that photo is a bit of the other side's suspension.

[rockpaperscissor]

A little history: this fully tracked tiznao (improvised armored vehicle) popularly known as the Barbastro tank got its name from the town in which it was constructed in late '36 - early '37. A well equipped local machine shop which dubbed itself Grupo de Construccion Tanques de Barbastro (tank construction group of Barbastro) took on the task of designing and building the machine using largely repurposed materials. The tracks were taken from an agricultural tractor, the engine was reportedly a Ford V8 salvaged from a commercial truck. The hull was skinned with unhardened steel sheeting riveted to a steel framework. The turret was fully traversable and carried a 7.7 mm Hotchkiss machine gun. It is believed that crew was comprised of four men. Some time after completion, it moved under its own power to the Barbastro train station where it was loaded onto a flat bed car and transported to the town of Sarinena. Again, under its own power it drove to the nearby Eastern Army headquarters, and is believed to have taken part in the defense of the town. Its operational history ends there. Presumably it was captured by Nationalist forces and destroyed.

As tiznaos go, the Barbastro tank was very professional in appearance, and showed a high level of workmanship. The Republican Ministry of War was impressed enough to order the production of 3 more vehicles with heavier armor, a more powerful engine, and additional weaponry. Simultaneous production of the 3 new tanks began on schedule but was soon bogged down with red tape and supply issues, and the project was eventually abandoned.

Design methodology: the best guess estimated length of the real tank is 5.5 meters, and I will use that dimension to determine the scale of the model. I'm going to rely on the nearly side view period photo for my initial line drawings. Using Photoshop, I plan to enlarge the photo of the tank, and use the skew and distort functions to get a truer side view. Next, I'll create a new layer and do a black outline tracing of the hull right over the photo, and then move that tracing over to a new page. Ditto for the suspension.

More to come soon.

[Don Boose]

Fascinating history of the machine and info on you approach to the design.

¡Adelante, camarada!

Don

[rockpaperscissor]

Many thanks for those who are following this thread. Step one of the process as explained above was a success. I now have nice B&W side view drawings that I can work with. Since all the accepted dimensions for this tiznao are pure conjecture, I'm not going to attempt to match them exactly - they're just educated guesswork, after all. Instead, I plan to use the 3/4 rear photo to come up with widths for the hull and track that look appropriate and pleasing to me.

Here's what I have generated so far. For easy manipulation later the document is a layered PDF rather than a jpeg, so you'll have to open it in order to view it.
Sorry about that.

[rockpaperscissor]

I spent an hour and a half working with the hull. I'm happy with how it looks, but the real test comes with the build, which will have to wait until tomorrow. Hopefully it'll go together smoothly, and only minimal tweaking will be needed. The red outlined part is an internal spine for the rear part of the hull and will be laminated to 1mm cardboard. I've been designing and building this project in my head for a few days now, and I think that the mental preplanning has really helped with the transition to paper.

This time I copied the parts and made a temporary jpeg file to post here so you can more easily see my progress.

Watch this space for the assembly!

[rockpaperscissor]

Success! Assembly went more smoothly than I had hoped. There was only 1 part that needed very minor trimming - the upper rear hull part needed less than a mm shaved off of each side, and the angled notch at the end of this same part had to go about a mm deeper at the center. Not bad for laying a plastic metric ruler against the laptop screen and measuring how many millimeters to the next score line.

Now that the alpha build of the hull is complete, I'll start developing this subassembly further, adding color/texture, extra details like a driver's hatch, vision slits, turret location, panel lines, rivets, etc. I'll also generate parts for layering, such as access doors, hatches, hinges.

Oh boy, this is the fun part.