British HO Scale Tank, WWII

Recently, Randy of Fidelis Models and I visited Paul Heiser of Paul Heiser Models at his company headquarters, research facility and manufacturing plant in Lakewood, California. While we toured this opulent facility, we were shown the creative process at work. This is the master turret for a new British WWII tank that PHM will soon release. The initial master has been created and a resin master has been cast from that. At this point the final details are being applied and the master is being modified to insure it will release easily from the mold cavity. You don't want any unnecessary undercuts or protrusions that can damage the mold after a few runs. Here the rivets on the turret face are being touched up and a brass rod barrel has been inserted into the turret.

An overview testing the mating of the turret with the upper hull. This is a critical element of the process as the hole in the hull must match the peg in the turret and allow the turret to turn freely. Sometimes you can have turrets that get stuck, or don't turn smoothly, or sit at an odd angle or even bump hull bits as the turret turns.

A rear view showing the initial test fitting of the tracks. As you can see the tracks are not quite perfect yet, closer inspection revealed a bit to flash to be removed. This flash will not be on the production models.

The side view of this test fitted vehicle. None of the parts are glued together because these parts will become the new master once the few errors are removed and the additional details are added. A nice looking model even at this stage. This is more than half way through the process, later they will make a new production master from this kit and then a large number of production molds will be produced based on the production master. Once that is done, actual model making can proceed. All that work can be done in a few days or can take weeks depending on weather, resin and RTV are heat and humidity sensitive, and how many problems are detected. This model is nearly perfect so production is not too long away.

This British WWII Crusader tank is another in a growing line of WWII British kits that Paul Heiser mkes in HO 1/87 scale in resin. Check out Fidelis Models for more PHM.