SBG Assault Bridge

One girder built. 

All four girders. 

Hooks and other end plates on the girders. 

Girders added together with crossbeams to make basic bridge shape. 

Insides of the bridge laboriously sprayed with Tamiya dark earth. The real thing would have been SCC 2 brown, but I didn’t have any suitable paint that would work well on bare plastic and I didn’t want to prime the bridge first because that would lead to a lot of paint buildup on the outside of it, so a fairly close Tamiya acrylic has to do. Advice: glue a zigzag piece to each side plate, paint the insides, and THEN assemble them into a girder. 

Bridge complete, other than the booms that were used when winching it up into travel position. 

One of the handles was missing from the sprue, so I made a replacement. 

The instructions contain a mistake: they say to use part U17 on both sides of the bridge, but that on the right should be U6. I had corrected a U17 already before spotting the correct part on the sprue, so I’m leaving it like this. 

Booms added to the tank end of the bridge, still movable for ease of painting and to prevent accidents in handling the bridge later on, when building the tank. 

Protection for the booms: a piece of balsa strip between the boom and the bridge deck, held in place with some masking ta 

The bridge of the real tank this is a model of. Spot the mistake in my model … 

If you said, “the second crosspiece is in the wrong position”, you got it right 🙂 So I had to carefully take it out, even though it didn’t want to cooperate. 

The kit provides four pieces so I had one spare, that I could then put in the right position. 

I sprayed the bridge decks white with primer from an aerosol can, then started masking off the lengthwise slats. This is easy enough with flat tweezers (to position the tape) and a dentist’s/sculpting tool (to smooth it down) 

Bridge painted: the decks are a random mix of Tamiya X-9 brown and XF-1 flat black (more brown than black), the rest is Vallejo 71.269 insignia white with a bit of MIG 111 SSC 2 brown mixed in, to represent that the real bridge was painted white over its original SSC 2 finish. 

Close-up of the colour difference between the white slat and the rest of the bridge. The white will need to be re-masked but the tape came off when I pulled the masking off the deck. 

The bridge was then given a wash of the same paint mixture, but now at about a 1:1 ratio, plus water, to create shadows. Washed on the right, without wash on the left. 

After that had dried, I drybrushed the bridge with a cream white colour, Rackham Noëssis White. Drybrushed on the left, not dry brushed on the right. 

And then all detail and edges that will face towards the light when the bridge will be on the tank, were drybrushed with pure white. 

Bridge deck painted some more, with a wash of Tamiya NATO Black and drybrushing with various wood/earth shades. 

One of the eyes broke off, so I made some replacements from 1 mm brass rod. 

Stem cut down and drilled into a hole drilled in the bridge. 

Streaks painted on the bridge decks to better replicate wood. A medium red-brownish colour first (deck in foreground) followed by smaller ones in sand (at the top). The latter were, of course, then applied to the other one as well 🙂 

Decks drybrushed with brown to tone down the streaks a bit, and Army Painter Strong Tone applied to deck at top to accentuate the moulded wood grain and seams between the planks. 

Deck at bottom also has Strong Tone applied here, the deck at top has been drybrushed with Humbrol MC24 Natural Wood. 

After both had been drybrushed with Natural Wood, I then drybrushed them lightly with Humbrol 72 Khaki Drill; again, top deck,is done here, bottom isn’t yet. 

And then the tape was pulled off. Some touching up will be needed, but there is also some more painting to do anyway. 

The paints used for this simple little bridge … On the left for the trusses, on the right for the deck. 

Insides of the bridge repainted in SCC 2 brown. Tip: paint these areas and then put some tape on the inside of the zigzag parts before putting the bridge together … 

I had to laboriously repaint these with a brush 🙁 

Cables attached to the bridge. 

Close-up of the cable eye, clasp, clasp pin and ring on the bridge, that all still need to be painted. 

The two booms were glued together at the top, but everything else is still loose, including the boom hinges at the bottom.