Dragon T-34/76 Mod. 1941 Cast Turret

[Retired Bob]

Sorry chaps, I must have been sleeping or somehow distracted and missed the start of this GB.  Any how I'm here now, number 27 on the sign up list and I'm going to build an old Dragon kit of the 1941 version of the T-34.  I built the Tamiya one decades ago and I might get round to showing it, rubber band tracks and all.

Here' the box of bits

I will try and catch up, I will post the pictures of the decals and AFV workable tracks when I dig them out of the stash.

Bob.

[Retired Bob]

Had a look through some reference material for inspiration first.

The T-34 on the battlefield book has some good photos of the T-34/76 1941 models during Operation Barbarossa, or I should say what was left of them.

Anyway I started by cleaning up the wheels, sanding sticks make the job so much easier, added the suspension units to the hull and started work on the upper hull, removing moulded on fittings that are now supplied as photo-etch.  The AFV Club tracks had been removed from their box (to make the stash look smaller) at least there are no injector or sink marks to fill, just 4 attachment tags to each link to clean up, I did a short length, and will repeat that each day so as not to lose the will to live.  So far it looks like this:

Thanks for looking, any observations or comments are welcome.

[Retired Bob]

I wondered if Nikolay @Nikolay Polyakov was going to join this GB as he likes the T-34.  Here is my build so far with a some old Tamiya kits from about 35 years ago.

 

[badger]

Wow - that's rapid progress so far! Well done 

[Retired Bob]

1 hour ago, badger said:

Wow - that's rapid progress so far! Well done 

Thanks, that's the easy bit, cutting wheels off the sprue and cleaning the tags off.  The difficult bit is attaching all that photo-etch and keeping it there, tweezers can propel the damn stuff faster than the speed of light, well most of it is never seen again. 

[Nikolay Polyakov]

The Dragon box looks well! 👍 Don’t know why, but I prefer the vehicles in green plastic - any surface details will become visible. The PE grill is nice addition, it’s great that you’re having an etched set.

 

On 02/07/2020 at 21:19, Retired Bob said:

I wondered if Nikolay @Nikolay Polyakov was going to join this GB as he likes the T-34.  Here is my build so far with a some old Tamiya kits from about 35 years ago.

I like it a lot, but sorry Bob - there’s not any more T-34s in my stash! 😬 Anyway, I’m take a look at your build, thanks for inviting me. You’re going fast, excellent progress so far.

[Retired Bob]

A quick update on the T-34, I have used stretched sprue to enhance welds, added most of the hull fittings and sprayed some paint to check for imperfections.  The large mesh that is supplied by Dragon for the engine cover has an oval pattern that I cannot find on any photos, they all have a diamond cross pattern, so I will replace it with the Aber mesh that I have in my stash.  Wheels painted, I painted the tyres with Tamiya tyre black, I will tone them down with some dark grey.  Looking at photos from the initial defence against Operation Barbarossa there were a lot of T-34s with welded turrets, so I had a dig through all the old T-34 spares I have and found an early welded turret so now I have that choice.  Still plodding on with the AFV tracks. 

Thanks for looking, glad to know you are there Nikolay, hope you are well, any comments on what I'm doing wrong are welcome.  Sorry about the photo angle, it looks as if I am aboard ship with Roger @Roger Newsome, aye, aye.

[Nikolay Polyakov]

On 07/07/2020 at 13:21, Retired Bob said:

Thanks for looking, glad to know you are there Nikolay, hope you are well, any comments on what I'm doing wrong are welcome.

Thank you, I'm well - hope you’re safe, too. Just switch between the music and modelling (and haven’t had much progress on both)... As you’re owned all these books, you’re know what you’re doing! 🙂 The turret on the right looks excellent and suitable for your build, Robert.

 

[Retired Bob]

11 hours ago, Nikolay Polyakov said:

 The turret on the right looks excellent and suitable for your build, Robert.

Thanks Nikolay, I'm safe and well.  I agree with you, the turret on the right is the welded turret from my spares collection.  A lot of the T-34 built at the Kharkov factory in 1941 had those turrets so that's what I will use.  Progress today was slowed by a problem with the frame for the mesh on the engine grill, it's too big, here is a photo of it taped to the plastic engine cover with the kit supplied mesh.

As you can see the frame is too wide, the large opening at the bottom of the plastic engine cover is where the rear light goes.  So I had a think about my options and it was to either go back to building my Spitfires or go old school and use the solid moulded engine cover that was supplied with the kit before they upgraded to photo-etch (that doesn't fit and has the wrong mesh pattern)

So here is the solid plastic engine cover, I have thinned the inside and started cutting out the plastic areas of "mesh" which I will replace with the Aber mesh after it has been annealed.  I thought that I had finished with this sort of thing after I stopped building Tamiya T-34s in the last century. 

Hopefully my next picture will be the completed engine cover, with the mesh and rear light glued in and it is all painted.

Thanks for looking, stay safe everyone, IT's still out there.

[Nikolay Polyakov]

9 minutes ago, Retired Bob said:

So here is the solid plastic engine cover, I have thinned the inside and started cutting out the plastic areas of "mesh" which I will replace with the Aber mesh after it has been annealed.

This approach is very reasonable and this mesh (on the second picture) looks right. You’re moving in the right direction, Robert. 👍

[Retired Bob]

Well, for a change everything went as planned, I finished cutting out the moulded mesh without any breakages or blood, annealed the mesh and super glued it into place and got some paint on to see how it looks and here is the result:

The back light has two lens, looks a lot like those on the Sherman.  As there are no colour call outs on the instructions I will go with red, unless anyone knows better?

Thanks for looking.

[Nikolay Polyakov]

Excellent work on the mesh, Robert! 👍

 

On 10/07/2020 at 22:24, Retired Bob said:

As there are no colour call outs on the instructions I will go with red, unless anyone knows better?

Looks like this:

[PlaStix]

Lovely work with the photo-etch, Bob! I've got the same Dragon kit somewhere - picked it up really cheap a while back - so I'm following and taking notes!

Kind regards,

Stix

[Retired Bob]

Hello Comrades, work has been progressing in the glorious Imperialist County of North Yorkshire. A coat of Vallejo 4BO green on the tank, white identity markings have been applied and the rear light painted red, thanks to Nikolay.  The AFV tracks are finished, 72 links per side so now it's time for some filters and washes to bring it to life.

And for Nikolay  a view from the rear showing the rear light, those 4 box like objects are external fuel tanks.

Thanks for looking.

[SoftScience]

I like this version of the t-34. The long side mounted fuel tanks really change the look of the tank.

 

That early turret is pretty unique, too.

[KAYELL]

This one  is a lovely kit, and you are doing a fine job on it.

 

Cheers

 

akeith

[PlaStix]

Hi Bob. Looks to be coming along beautifully.

Kind regards,

Stix