The making of a Churchill I OKE

For a moment I was afraid that I had to abandon the painting project of the Infantry Tank Company from the MW Dieppe PDF. Not only put it on hold for a while but abandon it completely. But gladly I saved some money and could buy a few blisters. I ordered 4 blisters with Churchill I or II and a blister with an infantry platoon (BEF) only to found out that the store owner forgot to order the infantry blister.
Two of the Churchill blisters are set aside these will bes used to form the Company HQ. The other two blisters are used to converted them to Churchill I OKE.
Using the prototype that I built earlier, that can be found here: here, and also using this webpage Modelling the Churchill OKE on the BF website as references I set to work. Not saying that this is the best or easiest method to convert the tanks but it is the method I used.
I am not going to write down every little detail because some can be found in the above mentioned website.

Materials used: 2 Churchill’s I, cardboard (I used a cardboard that is used to protect photo,s when you mail these,brass wire, greenstuff, small tubing, plastic of blister, wood-glue (can also be pva), super-glue, pliers, cutter, ruler pencil with a very sharp point, hobby-knife, ruler.
Of-course when you take a picture you always forget to include some of the materials.



First I cleaned the model and removed all flash from the hull and tracks (a lot) and removed at the back of the hull
those little piece that are no longer needed there. Make sure it is flat. On the picture below you can see at the right tank which pieces are removed from the back of the hull. Then I drilled a little hole in the front of the left track the size of the brass wire. When this was all done I glued, after dry-fitting, all pieces together.



Next I take the plastic of the blister and cutout a piece with the size of 15mm x 4.5mm. This piece is then glued to the back of the hull in such way that it sticks out a little above the hull. Most importantly is to keep the top of the plastic strip horizontal.

Churchill I OKE conversion.

This model lay in a box for about 10 months. This Churchill I was bought to start a long term army-building process. The armylist that I had in mind can be found here. At the moment I am thinking about changing this list.
I ordered only 1 Churchill I because I wanted to use it as an experiment to see if I could convert it into a Churchill I OKE. I am not very good at converting stuff.
When I opened the blister I already faced the first problem, the blister was missing a hatch. A quick email to Battlefront and the problem was solved. Weeks later (I had to move away from this project because of work and other things) I noticed the biggest problem, the tracks. When I took a closer look they where bend and warped and the front of both tracks had holes in them. Badly cast. At that moment I decided to throw all parts in a box and stack it away.
That was until a few day's ago when I saw the nicely converted Churchill I OKE tanks done by Ben at his blog Breakthrough Assault
This gave me the idea to see if I could convert my Churchill even with such badly cast tracks. First I did the easy part glue the separate pieces into the turret. After that the hard work started by trying to get the tracks as straight as possible. After many hours of slogging I managed to get them a little less bend and warped. It had to do. Next I drilled a little hole in the left track almost at the front. How to convert a Churchill I to a Churchill I OKE can be found on the Battlefront website or in the Dieppe PDF briefing.
Next was to glue the tracks and hull together. With lots of glue and a few clamps I managed to do this. Now all that was left to do was to built the fuel tank, fuel pipe and flame-thrower.
The fuel tank is made out of thin cardboard (yes really), wooden sticks, plastic from a blister and Green Stuff. The fuel pipe and flame-thrower are made copper-wire. When I am going to convert the next Churchill I to a Churchill I OKE I will show with pictures what I did. But because this is a long term project it can take a while. You may always ask questions.

The end result

Top view. You can see the holes in the tracks filled with Green Stuff.

Right side view.

Left side view.

Painting will be done when I have all 3 of the converted Churchill I OKE and the other tanks and infantry.

Thanks for looking.