One could almost call this a Study in Two Three Four Five Six Seven Eight Beaverettes.
Stung by some justified comments from DJ Parkins over my account of how hard it was to build his Flightpath and Firing Line 1/76 PE and white metal models, I decided to take his criticism to heart and up my game with new techniques and skill building. I selected the Firing Line Beaverette Mk III as a test bed to learn how to better solder a PE kit. At the same time, I purchased a digitally controlled, low-to-high temperature Weller WD 1001 soldering station with WMP pencil to replace my hardware store soldering pens. This is a superb soldering station and I intended to use the precise temperature controls to learn how to use low melt soldering paste – eventually working up to soldering white metal model kits.
But, enough on tools. How did I end up with eight Beaverettes?
As with any of my projects, just building the model is not enough – it has to be placed in some setting to tell a story. That meant a diorama. After a bit of Internet searching, I decided to use this as inspiration:
This meant that I was going to need more than one Beaverette plus some BEF standing figures. I could simply get more Firing Line but rather than build the same model twice, I opted to see if anyone else had any kits.
Beaverette No. 2 – A resin + PE kit from Extratech (1/72)
At this point, the project seemed doable – a couple of vehicles, some figures, a small base. Couldn’t take more than a couple of months. But I couldn’t resist. I kept looking for more examples.
Beaverette No. 3 – I discovered by chance Bull Models, a vendor who does not deal by the web, only by post. The proprietor, Peter Bailey, had a resin Beaverette Mk I/II. This would add some visual variety of the vehicles while retaining the Beaverette theme.
Beaverette No. 4 – Deep probing in Internet 1/76 vehicle forums led to another resin Beaverette Mk III from Gramodels. Their website’s catalogue is not Internet searchable (it is a PDF) hence why it took me a while to find this.
Beaverette No. 5 – More probing yielded a reference to a long out of production Lead Sled white metal kit. Fortunately, I found one on eBay.
Beaverette No. 6 – I had ignored an Internet search result for a 1/72 white metal Beaverette Mk III from Sgt’s Mess as they were aimed at the tabletop wargamer market. But, at this point, like a junkie, I needed another fix.
Beaverettes No. 7 and 8 – Also in the tabletop wargamer sphere, I picked up the Frontline Wargaming Beaverette Mk II and Mk III – also white metal.
Were I able to acquire the Matador Models Beaverette Mk III, I would have (is it possible this is the same as the Lead Sled?).
So, now the project turns into a diorama plus compare and contrast of all the 1/76 (1/72) Beaverette kits as of 2015. I decided that I would enhance the diorama by adding some 1/76 scale civilians to represent Lord Beaverbrook himself plus aides, coming to inspect his namesake (inspired by the photo above).
Cropredy Beaverette Project 