1/35 Tamiya M1A1 Abrams

[The_Lancaster]

Hi Guys,

Well, I had a spree of aircraft building but now I'm back in the civilised(?) AFV world. Here's Tamiya's M1A1 done in the tri-colour NATO scheme. Construction, as per Tamiya, was a dream and it was a true shaker and baker. Paint was in the form of Tamiya Acrylic and I guessed it was NATO green, black and brown as the instruction sheet was printed before Tamiya released the paints...
Weathering was a succession of brown umber oil washes followed by oil dot filters on the slab sided shapes of the Abrams, Tamiya Buff was then misted onto the lower halves of the sideskirts.
All the extra kit was from the Tamiya modern US equipment set, I used half the set and painted them with Humbrol Enamels followed by  Tamiya Acrylic Smoke then a slightly lightened original colour.

The track was Rye-Field Models after-market set and that was a wrong, oh such a wrong choice... the boredom levels were high with that one. Raked my dad @HL-10 into doing the other link set though!
Painting the track was a simple affair of spraying them some mud colour then dry brushing the metal black before painting each individual pad black as well, to pigment or not to pigment is something undecided at the moment.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thanks for looking!

Sam

Edited September 2, 2017 by The_Lancaster

[Widow 65]

Nice one.

[celt]

Love the stowage.

[HL-10]

Sam, great work on the Abrams, the photos don't do it justice!

Those tracks were a royal pain!

I only built them for you as I felt guilty for making you get them!

[Rumblestripe]

Great work. It is the "stowage" that brings your model to life. The contrasting textures of the tarpaulin covered items with the cardboard boxes of rations(?) and the leather straps etc.. Superb work. I'd love to see some detail shots of the stowed items.

[The_Lancaster]

On 10/09/2017 at 12:58 PM, Rumblestripe said:

Great work. It is the "stowage" that brings your model to life. The contrasting textures of the tarpaulin covered items with the cardboard boxes of rations(?) and the leather straps etc.. Superb work. I'd love to see some detail shots of the stowed items.

Here you go! Sunny Ol' Bedfordshire hasn't been that sunny recently, so I've only just managed these with my caveman garden setup!

 

 

 

 

 

Painting them was a bit of a cheat (but a good one!) Basically just painted the kit a mix of humbrol enamels (I think the straps were just Khaki) then used tamiya smoke on them followed by a dry brush of the base colour. I left the big tarp gloss as that is what I expected it would be in the field.

 

The ammo boxes were supplied tamiya on card, just a case of a bit of cutting, folding and gluing. Did help though if you scored the fold lines with the back of a scalpel blade though!

 

Thanks for all the comments guys! Much appreciated

 

Sam

[Reini78]

lovely work, and thankfully not overweathered

[stevej60]

Excellent build and finish Sam,love the extra stowage and nice to see a change from desert schemed variant's.