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T-34 Mod. 1941


Foxbat

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I made a throwaway comment at the end of my Blitzbuild about tanks being easier to build quickly than my carrier or the Horch I did at Christmas as they are basically a couple of boxes and some tracks with none of the time consuming internals to build and paint.

 

I therefore have a moral obligation to put my money where my mouth is with the quickest build I can manage of a vanilla T-34. This is the victim this time. 

 

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Picturre stolen from Scalemates as my box is still somewhere between here and Japan (but in the opposite direction if you see what I mean). As it's an early one it will be in 3B rather than 4BO (dark green rather than olive). It would be nice if there's a camouflaged version on the decal sheet, even better if I could find evidence of one used in the Anglo-Soviet invasion of Iran as the Russian vehicles involved sported a great 3 tone tiger stripe scheme.

 

More when I have something concrete to show. Or plastic, that would be better, yes?

 

Andy

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Hi Andy. I hope the kit turns up soon. I have made one of these before and it was a really enjoyable build. These 1/48 Tamiya armour kits are rather good.

Looking forward to following the progress of this once it arrives!

Kind regards,

Stix

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45 minutes ago, PlaStix said:

 These 1/48 Tamiya armour kits are rather good.

I love them, I've finished 7 in the last year which is unprecedented for me. Got another dozen or so in the stash for after this GB.

 

Andy

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Best thing I ever did going to 1/48 after 1/76 & 1/72

 

Be careful about the colours see HERE the very early T-34 had a narrower turret than the kit item and the L-11 gun which means a fair bit of work. PMMS has a good review HERE so you'll need to backdate the kit for Iran as it happened before the tank as kitted was built see HERE upon further searching I can't find any T-34s in that campaign hopefully you'll find something. 

 

If you backdate it to the 1941/early 1942 build as 

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then you could build  the centre vehicle from this. Note that the side grilles are wrong on the profile. I hull mg could be either armoured or not it would be a brave person to challenge it.

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If you want to go further you could add worn winter white over it.

 

 

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That's all great stuff thank you. Since the object of this build is speed, I'l just go with what is in the box - from checking Scalemates the supplied decals are all later than I would have expected but since that saves both re-work and controversy they get my vote.

 

Andy

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3 hours ago, Foxbat said:

That's all great stuff thank you. Since the object of this build is speed, I'l just go with what is in the box - from checking Scalemates the supplied decals are all later than I would have expected but since that saves both re-work and controversy they get my vote.

 

Andy

That's a worryingly sensible plan. I hope it arrives soon. 

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13 minutes ago, SleeperService said:

That's a worryingly sensible plan. I hope it arrives soon. 

It is, I scare me sometimes.

 

I also have something a bit different waiting in the wings that I can take some time over. That might well get here first, which is typical of me 🤣

 

Andy

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  • 3 weeks later...

I have a box, so time to see what is in there. Four nice looking sprues and a metal hull, plus instructions and a decal sheet that manages to cram four schemes in. Excuse the cat's tail in the first shot, that's as far away from the camera as he was willing to get 😕

 

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All of the supplied schemes are overall green so I'm going to go for the one with the biggest slogans in lieu of camo.

 

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Andy

 

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I was sure I had an intermediate photo to go here but it seems not. Any road up, I attached the plastic hull end and transmission pieces to the metal hull tub like so, then gave everything visible a coat of Akan 4BO olive green:

 

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When that was dry, I gave the details a wash with black green ink to bring out the detail and did some basic weathering of the hull sides where they will be hard to reach with the running gear attached. Base is a light sandy colour for old, dried muck, then a darker earth tone over it to represent newer, wetter dirt. Paint was stippled on then wiped straight off to leave indistinct streaks and blobs just as Mother Nature intended.

 

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I then spent what seemed like hours very carefully painting wheels and tyres. There are only 5 wheels per side, so how hard can it be? Well, each one is a double width, and the edges have to be painted each side so suddenly that's 40 circles. I swear I took it easy and used a tiny pointed brush, but the photo suggests I let the cat have a go. I'll do a bit of tidying up before the next installment.

 

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Tamiya's instructions would have me add the tracks next, but I'm going to go off piste and do some work on the upper hull while I wait for all the various glues and paints to go off so I can handle the hull without fear of losing anything.

 

Andy

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I'm at the tyre painting point in my build and dreading it to be honest. Always the worst part of any AFV build for me.

 

Luckily there's always mud to hide it!

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27 minutes ago, badger said:

I'm at the tyre painting point in my build and dreading it to be honest. Always the worst part of any AFV build for me.

 

Luckily there's always mud to hide it!

My chosen scheme is dated June 1943, so not much mud. I'm going to need a LOT of dust :D 

 

Andy

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Sadly I'm a bit the same as mine will be during the 1945 advance into Berlin, but as you said there's always dust.

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No more painting to show for now, but I did continue with construction in the meantime. The turret went together without any major problems, although the old maxim "If a Tamiya part doesn't fit, check what you did wrong" came into play. 

 

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You can't really see it here, but there is a nice cast texture on the turret sides and some nice heavy weld lines where needed. 

 

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I made a start on the upper hull too, trying to get everything that will be green in place. Since the driver's hatch is closed to disguise the complete lack of internal detal, I remembered to have one of the vision blocks open. Again, some nice weld detail down the edges of the glacis - I'd never noticed before that the plates interlocked much like later German tanks. Seems the sloped armour wasn't the only concept they borrowed.

 

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Auxilliary fuel tanks and exhaust shrouds are also on. I've added a few boxes and the last engine cover since this photo, so there's just a couple of dozen grab handles and detail parts to add before I go to town with the 4BO.  As an aside, I'm losing count of how many 1/48 armour kits I've built with metal bottom hulls, but one statistic does leap out; only ONE of them had the screws to join the hull halves in the box :( 

 

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I've been reading Stix's SU-122 thread, so I'm going to steal his track painting tips and tackle them next.

 

Andy

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Tracks are on. They were so much easier than the Tiger ones I struggled with this time last year it was untrue - think the whole lot were done in the time it took to turn one Tiger link into a soggy, gluey mess :)

 

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I experimented with Plastix's painting method, but I wasn't happy about the sand - I basically turned the whole track yellow so I only did it on one side then gave everything a coat of sepia ink to blend it. Don't know why I was so worried, you'd be hard pressed now to tell which side got which treatment. Both look good, so it was a worthwhile borrow.

 

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For my own amusement I rested all the sub-assemblies together so they looked vaguely tank like. Looks like I'll need a little work when I come to permenantly join the two hull halves.

 

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Still loads to do, but I can see the progress now which is good for morale.

 

Andy

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On 7/8/2020 at 2:18 PM, SoftScience said:

Those wheels look really good.

Thank you. They're not as good as I was hoping, but they'll do for this build :)

 

Andy

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Finally got all the green bits attached to the hull. On this side you can see the headlight, a pair of shackles in front of the box on the track guard (no idea what they are for, the tow ropes come later and have their own) and numerous grab handles.

 

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There is still some cleaning up I could have done on some of the handles, but they're so fine and so much smaller in real life that I can live with them like that. On this side is the base for a radio aerial, more grab handles and if you look really hard you can just see the tail light.

 

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There is one handle missing. Final score for the hull was:

 

Stuck first time: 13

Stuck second time after being wrestled from the jaws of the carpet monster: 1

Disappeared into the ether, even the carpet monster missed it: 1

 

Time to play with green paint again so I can get on with attaching all the bits that aren't green - there's a couple of wooden boxes, the exhaust pipe ends and enough spare track links to keep two more tanks running :o 

 

Andy

 

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Got all the bits and bobs attached to the hull and gave it some preliminary pin washes and  a little dry brushing while I was there.

 

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I painted the boxes different colours for each side just to add a little interest.

 

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I finished adding all the detail parts to the turret - lifting eyes and commander's periscope. After Sleeperservice's comment above, inevitably the next grab handle I tried to fit snapped :D So I've made do with one on each side of the turret just for balance. The unpainted turret is just placed here to see how it will look.

 

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By now, I was on a roll, so I added the green paint and decals prior to detail painting and final weathering of everything.

 

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That is the only 1/48 Russian figure I have, he's there just to give some scale. The tail light was primed pink before being painted red - a tip picked up from one of the STOVL GB builds :)

 

On to the home stretch now. This should be finished soon.

 

Andy

 

 

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A bit of weathering, just done with paint. It's a bit heavy in places but I can knock that back. Having seen some really good desert builds recently, I should bite the bullet and start experimenting with powders and the like.

 

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I've now started worrying about the physics of dust. In a convoy, the front of the tank would get most as it would be driving through the cloud thrown up by  the tank in front, but in line abreast for the attack, the front would be clear and the rear would collect the muck thrown up by its own tracks. In either case, how would the dust settle? How much would be blown off by any wind and by the airflow just from the moving tank? It's not the first thing I look for in photographs, maybe I should do, or perhaps this is a rabbit hole best avoided.

 

Anyway, a little bit of unweathering then paint and fit the tow cables and I'm calling this one done. 

 

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Andy

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Well in the end I did very little extra to this apart from knock back the weathering a touch. What was left is in the gallery.

 

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This was a small but fun GB with some cracking models and some brilliant support. I WILL finish my SU-100 as the donated tracks need to be seen in public. I also have another of these kits in the stash which I will also build OOB but with some detail changes and different weathering as there's another set of markings I need to have a go at and I want to try some mud  and heavy use instead of usual near pristine summer builds.

 

Andy

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