Landi_uk

Hi George Looking good on the air brushing front. Glad you got the clogging sorted out to your satisfaction. I left the advice to others more experienced with air brushing, as I've only just started my foray into that. I use the tamiya acrylic thinners (x20a) with tamiya paints, but after seeing some good reports I've bought some Ultimate Airbrush Thinner as I have tamiya, vallejo model colour and vallejo model air paints and the reports have been positive that it works on all. I've been away from the modelling too, just seems so much to do at moment. I am trying to get back to it, to get the black camouflage coat on, but can't find any decent references for the overall pattern. Anyway glad to see you're getting back to it an that you've sorted the airbrushing.

There's a conversion chart here: http://www.creativemodels.co.uk/paint_conversion.php?manufacturers_id=1 I haven't used personally yet as I'm mainly used Tamiya paints and using the "near enough" method :-) If you google Vallejo Paint Conversion there are a lot of options for conversion information. Hope this helps

Whilst practicing with the airbrush for the chieftain build, I started to get construction withdrawal, so I started the Tamiya M1A2 SEP. However I reached a point of cutting the clear sheet for driver periscope and started to get a bit nervous about how I'm doing the build and how I plan on painting it with all the clear parts that are included, so I thought I'd put that one on hold and start the Meng Leopard I've had come through. Here's the obligatory box shot This is the hull with the torsion suspension fitted Rear bulkhead with most parts fitted, I'm using Mr Cement S for a lot of the fixing and that's the blume you can see in the photo. Upper hull with the supplied PE in place. I was given the tip of using Nailene glue and it seems to be a good contact adhesive. As you can see the PE has to be bent after fixing, it was pretty simple using the plastic craft knife handle. You'll notice it wasn't aligned correctly but trimming the resulting overhang was simple using a craft knife. So now some observations about the kit. The plastic used for this model is almost a mix of standard material (abp?) and the material used for polycaps. I've got to admit I'm not a fan as it's a bit of a pain to cut. Also when it comes to sanding it seems a bit on the soft side, so some times needs a scrape with knife blade to get a clean edge. There are a lot of parts for mounting on the upper hull that require painting individually (tools etc) so I'm using this as first foray into masking fixing points prior to paint to allow a decent fix after hull painting is complete. Will be using masking fluid for this. One of my reasons for buying the kit was having the option of rubber band type tracks AND individual links, however I didn't realise that the individual links have to be built using cement and so are not workable. I did think about trying to link by drilling 0.3mm hole and using brass rod, but the effort didn't make sense, however I might give that a whirl in the future. This has "made" me buy my first after market add on, so I have the adventure of constructing the below which I picked up on eBay for £8 This is now going to be kit number two in the build queue and I'll probably get back to the M1A2 after this one. Anyway thanks for looking and any comments would be welcome. Ian

So I got round to trying the new airbrush and what a difference to the Chinese one. Better action and seems to be more control. Just need to work out the flow vs distance, but I guess everyone has worked through that little conundrum. I've base coated in the the tamiya green specified by the destructions last night, but it looks a little on the light side to me. I'm thinking about applying a light thinned coat of a darker green (is this a filter?) to tone down the green before spraying the black camo pattern. Would welcome any input on this, as I may just be being too critical. I painted the tyres this evening so thought I'd wait until then to post pics. Amazing the way e camera picks out light patches that aren't visible to my naked eye, but perhaps that's just age and worsening eyesight :-) This is the wheels with the tyres painted. Thanks for looking and any feedback is welcome, particularly about the green used. Ian

Looking good George, just the easy bit to do. Painting. :-) Look coward to seeing another update in the near future. I'll be posting an update tomorrow, as I've spent the evening laying the base green coat with the new airbrush.

Just thought I'd post to say about the great service from Paul at little cars. He gave advice and then to cap it all, he dispatched the same day. Royal Mail delivered the following day so the speed of service was great. Thanks again Paul Ian

The primer was Vallejo surface primer (grey) and I sprayed without thinning. I bought the 200ml bottle and it's acrylic- polyurethane. The bottle setup is really good as you can just shake for a couple of mins, pour into airbrush and away you go. Had no problems with clogging. The hull bottom was done first using thinned primer but I wasn't happy with the outcome, so changed to unthinned for the rest. The sticks are actually bamboo skewers with a tiny amount of blutak to stop spin. Toothpicks were just too narrow for the road wheels and only used for idler wheels, but thanks for the cotton bud tip I'll try that on the M1A2 wheels. Ian

So I broke down for priming and snapped the idler axle. Whilst fixing I thought about supporting the axle as it does flex under track tension and came up with the below using some sprue that I heated slightly to form to the hull shape. So I've now done some priming below, using the Chinese airbrush that came with the compressor. It was a bit inconsistent, so been on to little cars and ordered the H&S silverline 2in1 today. Thanks for looking

Hi again George. Still looking good, some of the parts are easy to miss, I wouldn't worry. I missed the turret coaxial mg when building the turret, so had to trim the part and fit to barrel assembly with tweezers and patience while the glue set. :-) Whilst disassembling my chieftain for priming I snapped the axle for the front idlers. I've fixed it and strengthened it which should stop the front idlers bending the axle, which you've probably noticed already. I'll be posting pics on my thread tomorrow.

Hi George She's coming along nicely, keeping soldiering on :-) I went the OOB route too, but that was more due to first model in an age, than anything else, but I know what you mean about resin add-ons etc. On the return rollers, I didn't experience exactly what you described, but I did notice that the axle wasn't easy to locate in the poly insert so I slightly rounded the edge. This seemed to make inserting a lot easier. I didn't have to glue the poly insert, but after checking fit I didn't mount the return rollers until after fixing the road wheel assembly to the hull. So the poly insert was trapped when it came to inserting the axle. Also, I found that I had to press home the axle to full depth with pair of tweezers, fingers had too much give to press home the axle. Hope to see more, Ian

Not much progress on this at moment, been practising with the airbrush and I think I moght be expecting too much of the chinese (see cheap) ones that came with the compressor. So decided I'm going to make a start on construction of the Tamiya Abrams SEP I have. So could end up with two to paint at the same time :-)

Thanks for the reply Nick, there's so many POV and opinions on the uniform on the Net, it's a struggle to sort out the truth from the rubbish at times. Many, many years ago, as a kid I got to see some RTR manoeuvres on Salisbury plain, Dad was stationed at Bulford. There's nothing like being aged 6 or 7 and getting a chance to sit on a chieftain tank to leave an impression, so I was biased as the choice for first build too :-)

Thanks hootch,I did some lookup and found some pics. Was the black Norwegian standard too?

Update So not a lot of forward movement on the armour as yet. I'll probably look at starting the airbrushing with priming at the weekend. However I have painted the figures that go with the build. I don't have some Klear and matt varnish yet so they aren't quite finished, but thought it would make sense to get any feedback while I can still clean up and repaint if necessary. :-) I was wondering if it was worth applying a wash to the faces, so would be open to pointers. Oh and looking for the digi camera so I can get better quality pics instead of the Apple device ones so far Thanks for looking, Ian

Hi As said in my introduction, I haven't built anything for 28 years, so I thought this would be an ideal starter kit. It's straight OOB, no after market add ons. This was always about me getting back into it and practicing before starting on more challenging kits. I will be using an airbrush and acrylics for the first time as part of this build, so would appreciate any feedback. So far I've completed the build to point of paint. Dry fit of the complete tank Breakdown of chassis, turret and skirts I've had the tracks mounted for a number of days. I read a tip about training the OOB band tracks. It appears that the tracks are "learning" their mounted shape, but I think they'll need a few more days to improve. This is what I'm thinking about as the breakdown for painting. If anyone has any advice about the breakdown then please let me know. The next build update will cover starting the paint process, but if there's any other new starters interested I'll post up my airbrush setup for info. I do have one question at this point. I've seen a lot of posts about acrylics and I do have some Tamiya acrylics , but are vallejo acrylics better for both airbrush and brush painting? Thanks for looking, Ian