Hi, I'm QDC. What we're about to build today is Bronco
Ram Tank and this is in 1/35 scale. The reason why I'm building this kit is because
of my lack on knowledge about Canada's contribution to the war effort. Canada had made many contributions to the
war effort in World War Two but for whatever reasons, in my country, I was never taught
about that. As a result, I had to learn that on my own. This is a unique tank because this was designed
and made in Canada. The reason why it's called the "Ram" tank
is not because of a batling ram to break a door down. This tank was named after an animal, the Bighorn
Sheep. According to David Fletcher of the Tank Museum,
it was a symbol of Frederick Worthington.
He as the head of the armored section. What makes this unique is this tank was a
little bit ahead of the Sherman tank but not by much. What the Canadians have done was that they
took the lower half of the M3 Medium tank which is better known as the Grant or the
Lee tank and they put their own superstructure on top of it and put their own turret on top
of it. As a result, it became the Ram Tank. It was ahead of the Sherman tank. It was a unique for its time. Unfortunately, the Ram tank was not a successful
tank so it was relegated as a training tank in the United Kingdom. This is going to be an exciting kit for me
to build. Lets start building this kit right now. Let's take a look inside the box. We have the upper hull. Doors. Tracks. Wheels and more wheels. More tracks. Parts of the lower hull and the turret. More parts for the lower hull. Photo etched parts and decal.
And the instruction sheet. I want to talk to about assembling the tracks. Assembling the tracks will be the most complicated
part of this model kit. Each track consists of four parts and in total
I need to assemble almost 700 parts to make two sets of tracks. The instructions calls for you to not glue
the parts together. You are suppose to snap it on and according
to the instructions it will work.
I tried it and it didn't work for me so I
had to glue it. Here is an example. This set of tracks I have glued. As you can see it's flexible and it looks
realistic. This is a set that I done exactly as the instructions
say to make no glue at all. Here it is. As I pick it up, as you can well see, it's
falling apart. It's a huge problem that the instructions
is not correct. You will have to glue it together and it's
very tedious. You will have to have the patience of Mahatma
Gandhi in order for you to assemble all these tracks. Good luck! Alright. So, I'm going to build the tracks. Even though it's over 700 parts, it shouldn't
be that hard. The instructions make it look easy. Since I have a few years of experience building
model kits, it shouldn't take too long.
Maybe a few days at the very most. Maybe? I was wrong. It's not taking a few days to make. It's very tedious. It's very monotonous. And I'm getting bored. This is not fun at all. I've been doing this for many weeks now. After doing all of these parts over 700 parts,
I have had it! This is the last one. I'm finished. I finally completed both sets of tracks. This is the most complicated and most tedious
tracks that I have ever built in my hobby career so far. It started of as being fun but after making
all those pieces together, it became tedious and a little discouraging.
It took me weeks to make this because it wasn't
fun. I want to talk to you more about the mud effects
that I used. I used this automotive putty and I basically
spread the putty all over the undercarriage to make the mud effect. I want to talk to you about battle damage. When I looked at historical photographs I
notice that the Ram tanks have battle damage on the left fender. That's because of the driver's blind spot. When the driver's hatch goes down, the driver
could barely see what's in front of him from the slit or from the periscope. If they are not careful enough, they might
crash into things from the left side because this is their blind spot. Ok, so we built the model kit and now it's
time for me to show you what think about this kit so far.
Take a look. This is the completed model kit before painting. This is the most complicated kit that I have
built so far up to this date. This is a beautiful kit but what lets it down
are the tracks. As I said earlier, the tracks are made up
of almost 700 parts and it's over engineered in my opinion.
When I put them together, and look at it,
I don't see much difference than the Dragon Magic Track system. Dragon has made a beautiful way of making
a realistic tracks without having over 700 parts like these sets of tracks. That's the only negative of this kit. This model is designed for the advance modeler
or the intermediate modeler. When you build it, you will need a lot of
patience. If I were you, I would change tracks and switch
it to Dragon's Magic Tracks or maybe you can find a rubber band type tracks to replace
this complicated track system. It's time for me to paint the model. Before we start painting the tank, I want
to start building and painting the figures first. I'm going to make a diorama out of this kit. This kit does not include figures. I looked around my spare kit box and I found
figures from Tamiya and I also ordered this from Japan from Aurora Model called "WWII
A Civllian Girl, Heil".
Building these figures and painting them is
going to be boring but I have a solution. I'm going to use magic today and speed up
the process so you will not be bored. What I have in my hand is a magic wand. I'm going to turn it on and now I'm going
start some magic. It's time for me to paint the model. I already gave the entire model a coat of
black primer and now I'm going to use my airbrush and start painting the model kit.
I just finished painting the model with bright
colors and I did that to give it some visual interests it's now time for me to paint the
main color. I want to talk to you more about the colors
of this model. When you look at this model kit, it likes
one color, green. But in reality, there are four colors. When light hits an object it creates shadows
and highlights. This is the base color. Right over here is the highlight. Right on top is the bright highlight. And down here are the shadows. This is the actual colors that I used to paint
the model kit. This is the base color, the highlight, the
bright highlight, and the shadow.
I used all of these four colors to make this
model kit as it looks. I'm going to make some chipped paint. What you see is a sponge that has been dipped
in black paint and what I'm going to do is I'm going to dab that on to areas where I
want chipped paint. I'm going to make black soot effects. What I'm brushing on now is black pastel chalk. I'm going to apply that onto the tip of this
gun barrel to simulate gun blast.
The model is all finished and I want to go
off on a small tangent but an important tangent about this vehicle. As I said earlier, the Ram tank was not a
successful tank. It was never used as a gun tank but it did
have other uses. The most important other use that I think
it's important for you to know about is that this tank became a very famous troop carrier. What the Canadians and British done was they
simply removed the turret. They used this part to hold soldiers. As a result, it became an important and famous
armor personnel carrier called the Kangaroo-the Ram Kangaroo. This vehicle is most famous not as as gun
tank but as a armored personnel carrier.
It's time to build a simple diorama. It's time for me to build the diorama. What you see now is the wooden base that I
created. I stained it. I put a bolt to secure the model and I made
holes to have a better adhesion for the ground material, the tile grout. After that, I'm going to add static grass. I got this plaque from Ebay and it looks handsome. Alright so we built the model kit. We painted it. We weathered it. And we also made a diorama out of it. It's now time for me to show you the entire
model kit from the beginning to the end. Take a look. This is the completed model kit after painting,
weathering, and building the diorama and this model kit is the best painted model kit that
I have done so far up to this date.
I like the weathering that I done. The painting and posing of these figures looks
pretty good. When I look at the diorama, I see a story. I see that there are three tankers and their
attention is drawn by this little girl and her father. As I said earlier, the Ram tank is not a successful
tank it was relegated mostly as a training tank in England. I also like the fact that there is a manufacturer
whose making this model kit for people to build. Canada has made many contributions to the
war effort and as an American I didn't know anything about that so having a model kit
out in the market like this one forces people to have a better understanding about Canada's
contributions.
Canada has made many contributions at least
for me, I didn't know anything about it until recently. That completes this project. What you are about to see is a video slideshow
of the entire model kit but before I go, as always, just because I put this video here
on Youtube it doesn't make me a model kit expert. I am not an expert. I'm just a regular guy just like you. At the time of this recording, at least for
my country, it is the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. At the time of this recording there are over
100,000 that died in my country. Everyone in the world has been affected by
COVID-19 but I want to focus your attention to the United Kingdom.
Because it is related to this tank that you
saw me build. In April 2020, Queen Elizabeth, the Queen
of the United Kingdom, gave a speech to her people to boost their morale. I want to read out an excerpt of her speech
towards the end. She said to her own people "While we face
challenges before, this one is different. This time we join with all nations across
the globe in a common endeavor using the great advances of science and our instinctive compassion
to heal.
We will succeed and that success will belong
to every one of us. We should take comfort that we may have more
still endure. Better days will return. We will be with our friends again. We will be with our families again. We will meet again." When the queen said that, she was referring
to a song during the Second World War. It was sung by Vera Lynn and she is still
alive. She is 103 years old now, amazing. Her song is called "We'll Meet Again". You will hear her song that the queen was
referring to. At the time of this recording, it's still
COVID-19 and I wish everyone to be safe and God Bless. I'm QDC and thanks for watching. Bye. Bye..
