In-Boxed: Fv107 Scimitar Mark 2 in 72nd scale from Fore Hobby.

Fore Hobby has switched from super detailed German Schnellboots to a kit of the British scout tank, the Fv107 Scimitar Mark 2, also in 72nd scale. Clayton Ockerby has it to investigate in his review today...

In-Boxed: Fv107 Scimitar Mark 2
From : FORE HOBBY
No. 2001
1:72nd scale

Price: $15 USD from Hobbylink Japan

The Subject: The FV107 Scimitar 

The Scimitar has always been a vehicle I loved the look of, but didn’t know a great deal about. The AFV Club 35th scale kit seems to keep finding its way into my stash and then back out in the sell-off that tends to happen every couple of years after I decide to focus on other genres and downsize the stash… only to find myself regretting the decision and starting the eBay hunt again the following year.

There is no doubt the Scimitar is an interesting looking vehicle and the opportunity to take a look at this new release by Fore Hobby was too good to pass up. Whilst it isn’t my favoured 1/35th scale, the 72nd scale is often an interesting introduction to a subject without the marathon that a 35th scale kit can sometimes present.

A quick Wikipedia search tells me - "The FV107 Scimitar is an armoured tracked military reconnaissance vehicle (sometimes classed as a light tank) used by the British Army. It was manufactured by Alvis in Coventry. It is very similar to the FV101 Scorpion, but mounts a high-velocity 30 mm L21 RARDEN cannon instead of a 76 mm gun. It was issued to Royal Armoured Corps armoured regiments in the reconnaissance role. Each regiment originally had a close reconnaissance squadron of five troops, each containing eight FV107 Scimitars. Each Main Battle Tank Regiment also employed eight Scimitars in the close reconnaissance role."

The initial version of the Scimitar entered service in 1971 and was upgraded to the Mk.II in 2010, and remains in service to this day.

The Kit:

Fore Hobby is a relatively new player to the hobby market. This Scimitar is released hot of the heels of the beautiful Schnell boot they released a few months ago. (Reviewed & build by Adam O'Brien here on TMN)

The box art for this kit (like their Schnell boots) is lovely and quite enticing.

Being 1/72nd scale, the model was always going to be small given it is a small vehicle to begin with. The kit, however, comes with a generous sheet of etch as well as a metal barrel.

Let’s take a closer look at some of the parts and see how they stack up. Fiirst, the plastic parts:

Sprue A contains the body of the vehicle, as well as the chassis. It also looks to house a couple of toolboxes, the exhaust and a few hatches.

The overall length of the body of the model is around 63mm, so don’t let the big picture on screen fool you… it’s tiny.

Bolt and rivet detail looks reasonable and in scale on this section.

The chassis has all of the swing arms in a fixed position to ensure the wheels and tracks sit flat on the ground. I also get the impression the rivet detail on this section is a little exaggerated. It will, however, be really hard to detect once the model is built, as it will be on the underside of the tank and obscured by tracks.

Sprue B contains the wheels and track sections. Whilst only one sprue is shown in the image, the kit comes with 2 sprue B's.

The track sections are supplied as a link and length assembly. The individual tracks are again very small…so some care and patience will be required during assembly. The moulding and detail looks to be adequate for this scale.

The road wheels from sprue B. Again, care will be required when removing the pieces from the sprue gates, so the rubber sections of the wheels don’t end up with chunks taken out of them.

Sprue C includes the engine deck and the assemblies for the turret and various grab handles and mounts. Producing a kit at this scale is always a challenge with the small pieces and how small is too small for a piece to be practical.

The turret includes all of the location points for the hatches and periscopes. The thickness of the part is quite apparent when looking through the hatch sections…so thinning those areas with a Dremel tool when building the model may be a worthwhile exercise.

The cover plate for the drivers section has some fine detail. It’s only on close inspection you actually notice the details like the mattock and the cables behind the drivers hatch.

The front plate has the tow brackets moulded in place. However, the detail looks to be intricate and tidy. A look around at the other pieces in the image gives you a feel for just how minute some of these pieces are. I am concerned how the removal of parts like the grab handles will go. I would suggest the modeller would need to be prepared to replace these with copper wire for an improved result.

The kit comes with a small photo-etch fret containing the mesh screens and baskets as well as the wire cutters. A small decal sheet is also included, as well as an incredibly fine metal barrel. The metal barrel is really lovely and will go a long way to enhancing the model of this scale.

Lastly, the instruction sheet looks to be nicely illustrated and reasonably straight forward to follow.

Conclusion

In terms of a subject, the Scimitar is appealing to me, so I hope others in the hobby are willing to embrace the release. I haven’t had the opportunity to built the kit due to other commitments, so I can’t comment on how it all goes together, but the ingredients look to be there to make a tidy, albeit, tiny model.

When researching the Mk2 Scimitar, it looks to be that many the Mk2’s received the slatted / bar armour when in combat. I struggled to find decent reference pictures of the version from the kit however, there was a glut of the slatted versions. From what I can tell, the all over green scheme from the box had a limited scope of activity, so make sure you do your research before looking at different schemes and ideas for your model.

Overall, the kit presents well and the inclusion of the metal barrel is the icing on the cake.

Clayton Ockerby

Thanks to Fore Hobby for sending this kit to us to review. We found this kit for sale $15 USD from Hobbylink Japan.