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NIK122

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Posts posted by NIK122

    T54B Early production-Angola?

    in Work in Progress - Armour

    Posted

    9 minutes ago, Bullbasket said:

    I know just what you mean Nik. I've built a couple of T-54/5s and T62 in the form of IDF Tirans, and each one had those fuel lines, but unfortunately, they weren't included in the kit. Great fun bending those to shape.

    I like the way that this is shaping up. You're doing a great job Nik. Nice work.

     

    John.

    Thanks John. I've a Tiran 4 to build possibly in Lebanese colours. Two tone blue is a little different!?

    I did think about replacing all the fuel lines etc with brass rod but chickened out so kudos to you. 

    • Like 1

    T54B Early production-Angola?

    in Work in Progress - Armour

    Posted

    Good afternoon everyone. Following on from my last post here's some more progress, infomation and photos. Having drawn a blank on identifing the tank represented in the Star decal set by any photographic evidence the mission has been to collect any photos of Angolan T54B's and use them as a general guide for the build. 

    First up are the fittings for the mine roller system. All the examples I've found have the fittings present. The second picture is of captured Angolan T54's but I can't be sure about the other two other than they are in Africa.

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    The picture below is of a T54 in Angola as far as I can tell as it has the mushroom dome vent on the turret. The caption in the book it's from says that it is a T55. This I think is a mistake.

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    As the MiniArt T54 kit doesn't come with the parts for the mine roller I first thought about buying another kit with the missing parts and using them to scratch build what I needed. I've ended up thinking f**k it and used the parts from a donor kit instead. It's possibly madness to go about it this way but as there are so many duplicate parts in MiniArt kits I'm sure that I can cobble something together or model a knocked out tank maybe. The donor kit was the MiniArt T55A early.

    Below is the kit before alterations.

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    And after. It's been an enjoyable build but all of the fine fuel lines, cable trunking and especially the headlamp brush guards have been a bit of a nightmare and require an enormous amout of care and patience. No matter how carefull I was breakages happened. Consequently the front mudguard clips? have been replaced with 0.6mm brass rod. The fittings for the fording splash guard were added with spare photoetch sprue.

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    The conduit at the rear of the tank needed replacing with brass rod as this plastic piece fell to bits removing it from the sprue.

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    Next up was the IR searchlight which on the early T54 was attached to the mantlet but later moved to the turret beside the mantlet due to problems with waterproofing the mantlet with IR attached. The donor kit has once again resolved this.

    This photo of a scrapped Angolan T54 shows the repositioned IR mount but not very clearly.

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    Below is the clearest picture that I could find of an early T54B with the positioning of the mount for the IR and showing the original position of the lifting hooks on the turret front.

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    And on the model. It isn't perfect as the position of the lifting hook on the kit is possibly a little low? I initially glued the parts for the mount in the same position as seen in the photo but then the linkage from the mantlet to the IR mount wouldn't marry up. The linkage didn't break during assembly which was a small miracle so as soon as everything was aligned the barrel was permanently super glued in position.

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    And with the IR light.

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    Some shots to date.

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    Thanks for looking.

     

    • Like 5

    T54B Early production-Angola?

    in Work in Progress - Armour

    Posted

    55 minutes ago, Kingsman said:

    Those fittings are for the upper anchorages of a KMT mine roller and are not standard.  The lower fittings under the nose became standard for the BTU dozer blade, but also for the later KMTs.

     

    T-54Bs are actually quite rare.  They entered production in 1957 and finished in 1959 and were only built in the Soviet Union.  The Poles and Czechs never transitioned to the T-54B from the T-54A, which Poland built until 1964 and Czechoslovakia until 1966.  Although both the Czechs and Poles began T-55 production in 1958 and produced both T-54 and T-55 in parallel for 7 years.  However, they did gain some T-54B features along the way.  Many export customers did not need or want the T-55s new features.

     

    So I suspect that Angolan tank would have the Czech or Polish style engine deck, the non-rectangular shape of the rear right vent being the most visible difference.  But who else will know ...........

    Thanks Kingsman! Do you think that the fittings for the mine roller are speculative on the Star decals illustration!? I can't find any images of this tank which I'm assuming exist?

    T54B Early production-Angola?

    in Work in Progress - Armour

    Posted

    Hello. Another birthday present build. I'd had my eye on a Tamiya T62. I built one years ago and brush painted it in a Afghanistan green and yellow camoflage pattern but then saw this T54 with a two tone camo pattern and thought why not?

    This is going to be a strictly OOTB build. That lasted the lenght of time it took to get the kit home! 

    The kit is a simple low parts offering from Miniart.

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    Just a few sprues.

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    So the deviation from OOTB is a set of decals from STAR Decals. What caught my eye was this scheme from Angola. 

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    The only issue that I can see is that the hull in the illustration is a late version? If any one can help with identifying this I'd appreciate the advice.

    Are these features typical of late hulls and are they the only difference? I've noticed that the Miniart Tiran 4 kit has these features. If a change of plan and paint scheme is necessary, so be it.

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    Anyway on with the build. Boy there are a lot of pieces. All of the openings for the swing arm attachement points needed attention to prevent the lower hull from curling up. 

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    The holes for the torsion bars all needed drilling out with a 1.2mm bit to fit. They also went together by feeding them in the opposite direction to the instructions I found.

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    I followed the instructions diligently because of the parts count until it came to assembling the hull. Squaring it up with lots of easily damageable parts attached seemed crazy. The fit is OK but I found the fire wall pinched the top plate so it needed prizing apart.

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    After assembling the engine deck louvres I found they wouldn't sit right due to a tiny handle(partR41), which was removed to solve the problem. There is some nice detail here and it's a shame it will all be hidden by photo etch.

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    Once the hull was set the detail has started to be added. I'm really impressed with the level of detail that comes with this kit but consequently there are some seriously tiny parts. 

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    Thanks for looking

     

    • Like 9

    A tale of two AA's

    in Work in Progress - Armour

    Posted

    Good afternoon! Just a brief note to let anyone who is interested know that this build is now in the 'ready for inspection' part of the forum. I haven't started the SP40 to date as unless I'm mistaken the Churchill group build is imminant? Can anyone point me in the right direction for the start date for the group build as I can't find the information on the site anywhere. 

    Many thanks 

    • Like 1

    A Tale of two AA's #1

    in Ready for Inspection - Armour

    Posted · Edited by NIK122

    Finally finished this Crusader AA prototype from Italeri. The kits Bofors has been swapped out with one from ARVClub and the tracks are from Friulmodel. The figure is from Tamiya. An enjoyable build apart from the turret which needed reworking to get a good square fit. 

    The vehicle sufferered many teething troubles mainly to do with the turret not being robust enough. Rollers were added to the underside of the turret to support its weight before the project was eventually abandonded. During trials the turret spent a lot of time in the travel locked position to try and minamise the damage to it. 

    I hope the photos do the model justice. Some are taken outside and some inside which is why there is some colour variation.

    Thank you to everyone who followed the build and took the time to comment.

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    Thanks for looking

    • Like 13
    • Love 1

    A tale of two AA's

    in Work in Progress - Armour

    Posted

    38 minutes ago, Bullbasket said:

    Excellent work Nik. That's a great looking Crusader AA. I've built the other Crusader AA, but not this one, so this is one I'll look out for.

     

    John.

    Thanks John. I've enjoyed this build. It's all gone together pretty well. The kits Bofors is it's only real let down.

    • Like 1

    A tale of two AA's

    in Work in Progress - Armour

    Posted

    Good afternoon all! It's been a while but not without progress, so here goes. Following on from before with some paint on the Bofors. I added the iron sight (not the right shape but better than nothing) from the spares box and a wingnut from Bronco to the adjustable rest. The paint for the greens are the 'UK Bronze Green' set from Vallejo The lightest colour in the set has been used for the seat.

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    The turret elements painted and ready for assembly.

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    Off camera I had a disaster with assembling the turret sides. The front piece of the turret isn't the same width as the rear at the bottom. As you can see the base is 2mm wider. The mistake I made was to remove a 1mm strip, top to bottom on both sides. The width at the top of the piece was correct though so the angles were ruined. 

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    A deep breath and some plastic card and filler later the model was back on track. The foot plates have been replaced with plastic card as the kit parts were far too thick. The kit part for the flags and poles stowage is modeled as a canvas tube. The drawing of this that I have looks as though it is a metal tube which is what I've gone for. Some plastic rod was added to the top to represent the flag poles.

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    Below the whole model has had a coat of paint added. The lower hull has been weathered and the tracks added. The tracks took four evenings in total to clean up and assemble. I found 120 links per side, I think, to get the look right. I also found the fit around the drive sprockets less than satisfactory. They kind of fit, just. Luckily it's hidden behind the mud guards.

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    I'm jumping around a little here. I'd fitted the travel lock and found that it didn't really align with the gun barrel. It looks as though it should lock around the thickest part of the Bofors gun barrel vertically, but it doesn't really reach it. It's a pain really as I had wanted to display the model with the travel lock in position. During trials the weight of the turret caused it to deform and buckle on its mount so the cross country aspect of the trials were mainly performed with the travel lock applied.

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    The solution was to add a suitable figure. Not needing any incouragement I went out and bought the Tamiya Churchill VII for the figures and well, I now have a choice of two Churchills for the group build, Yes I know, it's just awful!

    This seems to work pretty well? He's looking down as well so hopefully I can wing the face painting. The travel lock has been altered to look a little more functional. The alterations are speculative.

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    Here's the painted chap. I seem to always pick rather jolly looking soldiers. He's chuckling to himself about the prize plumb who designed a travel lock that is only releasable from outside the turret. A criticism levelled at the real vehicle. I don't knw if I will use him on the model as I'm my own worst critic when it comes to painting figures.

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    A simple base for the tank. VMS smart mud, 4mm static  grass and fine silica sand.

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    With some paint. 

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    And finally some shots of the tank to date. I'm still working on the weathering. It's a case of trying to give it a used, not used look as it's a test vehicle. Restraint is the watchword. I'd hoped to add a photoetch sight to the model from the AFV Bofors but nothing was suitable. The kit part has been sanded as thin as I dared.

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    The model has had a brown Flory wash which I hope hasn't given it a rusty look as that really wasn't the intention.

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    There is quite a difference in colour depending on the lighting. The antenna mount is from T-rex and they are very detailed and extremely fragile. Just looking at them causes them to break.

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    The tracks need aligning. I'm using the same colours used for the base for the weathering to try and tie everything together. It still looks too clean maybe?

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    Thanks for looking

     

     

    • Like 2
    • Love 3
    • 100% 1

    FV107 Scimitar (1/35 AFV Club)

    in Work in Progress - Armour

    Posted

    Lovely work on this. Tonnes of detail.

    'One big issue is the cable reel is supposed to sit between the rear storage and off side storage on the turret. It doesn't fit! The kit says stick it on the rear body storage but I can't find any photos of it other than on the turret.'....... is it because of the orientation of the storage box on the turret corner!? 

    • Agree 1

    T-34/76 - Tamiya 1/35

    in Work in Progress - Armour

    Posted

    Nice job on the T34. For a first model tank it's excellent. 

    Personally I like to get all the base colours down, seal with varnish, add decals and seal them with another coat of varnish and then start weathering. There is always the option with Russian tanks to use the decal sheet as a mask for the large numbers by carefully cutting them out and airbrushing them on.

    I use a pair of Anglepoise lamps with 100w white light, light bulbs. I avoid using warm light, light bulbs as they give off a yellow light and distort colours when painting. I think I paid about €50 in total. I'm tempted to get a third.

    • Like 1
    • Thanks 1
    • Agree 1
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