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1:35 Hobby Boss Leopard 2A4


BadCop

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Okay everyone. I've been knocked out for the last few weeks with a nasty Viral infection, and have finally found the energy to pull my finger out and start my first build for this GB. Initially I had planned to do the Tamiya Leopard 2A6 first, but when I saw this one in the LHS, I had to pick it up!

L2A4001.jpg

Overall it seems to be a very nice kit, that includes some PE parts. The detail in the parts seems to be quite nice, not quite up to Tamiya standards, but what is besides Tamiya? There is a little flash on a few parts, and overly large sprue gates on some parts, but nothing that a little modelling skill can't handle. Anyway enough blabbing, it's time to start building!

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Guest snipersmudge

a nice looking tank that, i must say i prefer the square slab sided looks of these earlier leopards. Is it a new molding or a copy of the old italeri kit?

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I can't really say whether it's a copy of the Italeri kit or HB's own tooling for the kit. I do like the more modern 2A6 with the extra turret armour and longer barrel, but there's something about the original slab sided look that I prefer ever so slightly.

Anyway, construction logically starts with the suspension parts

L2A4010.jpg

cleaned up, and attached to give:

L2A4012.jpg

I'm glad to have that most tedious part of AFV building complete. The road wheels, idler and sprocket are all attached with poly caps, so I'll remove them for painting later on, but I had to put it all together to see how it looks.

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Thanks Antoine, Stebos.

A little bit more work done - the construction of the three main sub assemblies - The Lower Hull, Upper Hull, and Turret - is complete. Handles for painting the road wheels have been made from a bit of sprue. I'm not going to add any extra detail to the kit, after all the PE on the Centurion I just want to do a straight forward build and concentrate on the painting and weathering.

L2A4015.jpg

Next I primed the whole lot in Tamiya XF-24 Dark Grey to give an even base colour.

L2A4017.jpg

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Guest snipersmudge

that's looking good mate the detail on the kit looks to me like a new moulding as opposed to the old italeri kit. looking forwards to seeing the rest of the build

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Okay everyone - apologies for the slow progress and thanks for the encouragement.

I found the painting guide that Hobby Boss supplies with the kit doesn't seem to match up with any pictures that I have found on the internet. Instead I'm using the painting guide that Tamiya provides with their Leopard 2A6 kit.

Camouflage has progressed - first with the NATO Brown

L2A4018.jpg

Then the NATO Black

L2A4019.jpg

L2A4020.jpg

The colours look somewhat washed out by the flash, but my tabletop lamp is giving pictures without the flash a decided yellow hue, so I'll stick with these until I can get the camera working better.

The next step will be to gloss coat the whole thing in preparation for an oil wash.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Thanks everyone for the comments. A little more work to report. I've painted some of the small details, then gloss coated the tank, decalled, re gloss coated, and applied a burnt umber oil wash.

L2A4025.jpg

Next the weatherising will begin - My favourite part of building tanks!

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Again, thanks for the comments everyone.

To answer your questions -

Dave: I'm afraid I can't comment on a comparison with the Italeri kit as I've never seen it.

Antoine: The kit is fairly basic build, but with some ejector pin marks in difficult places, and rough moulding in a few spots. The fit of parts is alright once you've cleaned up the typically Hobby Boss sprue gates and the moderate amount of flash. The Tamiya 2A6 kit in the stash seems to be much better, but it was also more expensive.

I've started the weathering with the "Spots of Oil Paints" filter method, starting with the upper hull.

The first step is to add random spots of Ultramarine Blue, Yellow Ochre, Emeral Green, and Vermillion Red Oil paints all over a satin base coat. (In hindsight, I've gone somewhat overboard in the amount of paint per spot, but I'm learning)

L2A4027.jpg

Next I've started blending and thinning it out with a brush of clean odorless thinners.

L2A4028.jpg

More of the same to give this:

L2A4029.jpg

Just to see the difference, here it is compared to the untreated turret.

L2A4030.jpg

The same spots were applied to the turret.

L2A4031.jpg

and again blended and thinned for this:

L2A4032.jpg

L2A4034.jpg

Next up will be to muddy up the lower hull, suspension and road wheels.

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Slow work, but worth the effort :) That's the second time in as many days that I've seen a model being given the "spots of oil paint" treatment. What do you do if some of it gets into the panel lines? Toothpick?

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Mike, it's more a case of working out and overly large concentrations of a single colour gathered in a panel line or other area with a clean brush wet with oil paint thinners, and blending the colours together. For a much more competent example than mine, have a gander at THIS step by step.

It should be a nice subtle effect that isn't all that well shown in some of my photographs, other than the last one.

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