I was going to give it another month..but i kept on passing by the shop and could hear the vehicle section calling me. After many visits and tossing up between the Tamiya Sherman and this kit i bit the bullet earlier today and waltzed out with it and only one tin of paint..ONE! So that made me feel better money wise lol. After the Tiger build and watching a fair few YT build vids in the last week i have decided i am going to build most of it first and paint later. I've always sort of painted as i go but it seems this may be the easier way. See what happens, i'm prone to change my mind any tick of the clock.



So first things first, here's the new baby, and also the T34. Can't build a tank without Iced Coffee!






Comes with a bunch of options for decals, two different Berlin May '45, a Yugoslav Spring '45, two North Korea 1950 and a captured/destroyed South Korea July 1950. I don't really like any of them insofar as the cast look turret is bumpy as heck and the decals will look #%&*$# so i am going to go with this one i found and hand paint the turret number and name.







Chassis, nice and simple four piece base








Suspension








You will probably never see this but i couldn't just paint it green. Flat earth painted and then dirtied it up with a mix of dark and rust weathering powder watered down.








Looks sort of cool tucked away in there but i feel my work will have been in vain, especially once i hit it all with the green. I might jam small bits of bluetac in the holes when i paint. Even if nobody ever sees them, i will be happy they are done.









The end result of a nice slow two hours

Nice. What made U decide on the 1/35 scale ?

The model shop really. When i was looking at armour they had mainly 1/72, 1/48 and 1/35. I definitely didn't want something as small as 1/72 and 1/48 still looked a bit small. Problem i think i have now is if i want to do a couple of aircraft then am stuck with 1/32..which hopefully won't look too odd.


Today was just finishing up the wheels and painting the chassis. 20 rims turned into ten wheels, painted and on their way to being dirtied up.








Crap pictures, i just cannot capture the correct colours indoor or out. I think they need some sun to come out correctly.










Found the bluetac End plate on the chassis was a bit of a wank of a thing to sit right, had to sit with it held together fairly hard for about fifteens minutes while i watched the cat chase lizards in the back yard. It'll need a small cleanup and another light coat, no biggie as it will never be seen underneath and at the rear.









So far i much prefer the Tamiya kit for fit and just how much nicer the pieces cut away from the sprue. This kits plastic seems much softer and tends to squish instead of snip.

Oh yeh, forgot to add this one. Enough grab handles to climb the Reichstag...

So last night and today was track day!









The main part of the tracks come in a plasticy dull silver so i mixed up a ganky looking mud colour with red brown, flat earth and some rubber black, put it on fairly lightly and then wiped the tracks on some card. Once they had dried i scraped flatly across the surface to see if i could bring out the dull silver colour underneath. Looks ok.












Now the fun part, putting the links together.









I watched a vid on these tracks and the deal is, lay them out, glue 'em together, give it a couple of minutes set time then simply fold them over to join top and bottom placed large track pieces.








Had to shuffle them around a bit and then tighten them in as they kept sticking to my card.








Whaddya know..it bloody works.









Attacked the rest of the tracks today.












As i was doing them i made sure to spot a bit of glue on every inside lower wheel for a bit more 'track please stay here for longer than a couple of months' sort of thing. There is still enough slack in the top section so i can get a bit of glue in there tomorrow after it has sat and completely dried overnight.








Moving on to the top half of the tank while the lower half sets. Cut off some bolt heads and drilled six holes in the rear plate for mounting points, three done here.









Oooooh...shiny! My first ever photo etched part! Feels terrible that i will have to paint it and dirty it all up.

Pre bend





and glue






It fell off about two hours later when i moved it so i had to reglue it and then add some more dabs in the under corners.





Production of the T34 continues. The tank factory was moved far beyond the enemies reach










Fairly happy with the tracks now, in between things while stuff is drying i keep going back and playing around with them.









Most of the parts added to the hull, just missing the tanks, tools, tool boxes and extra track pieces. Off to the paint shop.












Back from the paint shop









A little bit of exhaust soot from the dirty Russian diesel








Nearly all the parts to make a T34








Cupola sitting on the turret. The cupola is 18 pieces by itself, the turret 19 so 37 pieces all up in this pic.







My attempt at the markings. I used the Korean turret to practice, luckily . I still have weathering to go so it should look half decent and not so bright once finished.

Looking good Ajay. Your hand painted markings look great. Do you have MicroScale Set and Sol decal solutions? This would get the decals to soften in to the texture and look painted on. Useful for markings that aren't so readily hand painted.

Fairly limited model shop out here Goon so i am going to have to start looking online as i want some more weathering products and washes especially. It's about a 40k drive to the nearest decent shop in the big smoke. I need to look at some decal stuff as well because i wasn't real happy with how the Tiger ones came out. What i am also wondering is, what is the best final coat i should use to seal the models? The paint is i'm using is all Tamiya acrylics.




The daughters cat Nina greeting me (or dying) at 7 am this morning as i started to move the T34 production out into the lovely sunlight for a modelling session.








Making holes for the outer tank brackets











Tanks on and a bit of weathering. You can see the front of the tank doesn't sit true, lower front hull. Took about 30 minutes of sanding the lower and upper parts to get a match before i glued it down.










Not happy with my tank work, really need some filler/model putty for the joins. The rear guards are going to need a ton of work to fit, they just do not match up at all to where they are meant to. Top and bottom still not matched at this point. I used a heated up nail to make the extra hole in the rear where the cabling goes in above the rear hatch, you can see how far out the hole is in the kit. I think of it as a field mod








Rusty front track piece, surprisingly the front guards fit perfectly when test fitting.








Stuka view









Wasn't sure what these were as nearly every kit i looked at online neglected to put them on. I rusted them and choose to believe they are some sort of track 'get out of jail free' linkage.










I reckon i have another day left to fine tune the weathering i don't like and put the rest of the bits on. Bit of an ugly duckling of a tank, makes me think of a Dalek gone wrong.

Thought a size comparison between this and the Tiger would be interesting

Cleats for ice conditions.

Looking nice once again Ajay.


Wheels

Cheers, nice to know


Thanks Wheels, just got to find the interest to do the last couple of hours and finish it now. Formula one and V8 supercars are in the way atm

Love the weathering on this one. Great job, and nice compantion to your Tiger for sure!

You need a shed, so you can do both at once...


(Apologies for the humble brag)

Being proud of what you have earned and making great use of it (doing what you like to do) is NOT bragging IMO.

Is that a Lightning?

Just didn't want to hijack Ajay's thread, but it seems we share common interests. I spend hours out here with models and IMSA / WEC / F1/ WEC / BTCC / ETC!

It is a Lightning - Airfix's superb 1/48 kit.

Nice setup Goon. I am going to work myself a spot in this new house soon, just undecided whether i move to the shed or set up my pc room properly I like the sun as well so have been doing about half of it out there.




I'm calling it finished. I wan't happy with it as it was above, it just seemed to clean and no matter what the green just didn't look like paint..it still looked like plastic, especially the turret. Anyway so i thought i would try my hand at brush flicking on some dirt/mud. Spoiler, it looked like crap












I knew once i started down this road there was no turning back so after further interwebbing i discovered this..








Mixing sifted dirt, clear drying wood glue and your choice of brown coloured paint, i went with flat earth. Defimitely no turning back once i started applying this goop so throwing caution to the wind i went for it. I also jammed a left over shovel from the Tiger onto the side of the T34.





























The mix ended up being pretty good and set nice and hard, the end result..probably better than i thought i would do and think it will look a lot better if i make a basic grass and mud diorama for it. Too messy?

Looks interesting and not at all bad. Maybe a tad too much on the fuel cans. But the idea is very solid and adds to the model.