Kampfpanzer Leopard 1 - Tamiya 1/35

[Ron NL-S]

These past 2 weeks I have been building, fighting and cursing said Tamiya kit.

This time it is the Kampfpanzer Leopard 1, which will be made into a Norwegian version during winter. Turns out that is a good choice, since some of the details will need to be buried under snow!

Although slightly older than the Leopard 1A4, max. 5 years, the quality of sculpting in this kit is nowhere near the quality of the A4. Indeed the year 1969 on the bottom of the hull confirms the age and subsequent quality. Again this kit may, and probably does, have dimensional and other errors, yet I will not address these. Why? Simply because I am not knowledgeable on Leopard tanks. I just want to build one and make it reasonably resemble the real thing. I just wanted a simple build, even though I fear I might have gotten more than I bargained for..... since this kit was a bargain.

One thing that immediately catches the eye are the chevron-style tracks, typical for the first batch of tanks produced. After that they switched to the block-style tracks.

 

 

Polycap wheels centers and a horrible and horribly think poly tow cable. No chance in hell I will use that or that it would even fit and stay in place!

 

A child soldier in this kit??

 

Well, this is not a kit for the beginner!

First of all the fit it not good. There's a lot of filling and sanding to be done and that exludes the holes for motorized use! The barrel was oval shaped, when glued and the wheels have badly fitting polycaps.

 

 

A neat feat; a real metal screen to be popped in from below, followed by the "engine", which shows through. Only problem is that it is not correct and quite visibly so. The screen should be flush with the top, not under it. It also is not fone enough and lacks all detail.

 

Loads of filling and sanding to be done:

 

Thinning down the turret basket sides. Here the plastic's annoying feature of fraying when sanded or scraped comes to life in full! It is very hard to get a smooth even finish, because after each pass over there's more to be removed, leaving behind fine curls or hairs of plastic.

 

Thinned down and bent the "rubber" mudguards too.

 

And then disaster struck!

I wanted to replace the original chevron trakcs with square padded ones and I was given a free set of Tamiya's Marder 1A2. These do fit and would look OK with snow on them. But they were bent and twisted. So I thought a warm bath would soften them and laying them on a flat surface when cooling would make them straight.

However I was not having a clear mind and used water that was far to warm.....

[Ron NL-S]

Finally!

This build is completed! Well, apart from the future tarpaulin over the turret basket, that is. I was getting pretty fed up with this kit and I am afraid it might show a little here and there. I think it is a bad kit by today's standards; dimensions are way off, details are bad, horrible or non-existent and the fit in many places was not exactly precise either. The rear comes immediately to mind, as do the wheels and their cursed polycaps.

Many of the details had to be redone, cobbled together from existing parts or made from scratch. The new tracks I got, coming from a Tamiya 1A4 were too long and the kit's dimensions explain why. The stowage in the baskets are not accurate, but these only serve to give the upcoming tarp its lumps and bumps.

Detaisl I made from scratch were the canvas cover at the base of the gun, the muzzlecover, the2 lifting eyes on the front, the entire basket bottom and the pole arrangement on the left side. The rest, the colours will show that, was made by mixing and matching parts or parts of the parts to get something that looked reasonable instead of horrendous.

Now it is time to get this thing painted.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Jasper dog]

Looks hard work!

I suppose being the age it is we can't expect to much from it and at least you've beaten into submission!

 

Once painted I'm sure it'll look tremendous!

 

Good luck

Darryl 

[Ron NL-S]

I was as confident as you, Darryl @Jasper dog

However........

 

This build keeps frustrating me.

First choice I had to make was whether I would go for plain dark oliv, like the old German ones or if I would go for the Norwegian 4-tone splinter camo. Of course I went for the latter. Why keep it simple, when you can complicate things??

That meant a whole lot of taping and masking during the process. And wouldn't you know it. I ran out of tape almost right at the beginning. I did happen to find another roll, but that was not as wide. So more pieces were needed.

As a basis I chose the same colour I had mixed for the 1A4.... but forgot that it looks like it does, because of washes and such. For the black I chose NATO black, the brown is flat earth and the second green  is flar green. All Tamiya. Spray and mask. Spray and mask. Repeat..

 

 

 

 

And then the moment of truth. Always exciting to remove the tape... But then...

 

The colours are all wrong, except for the black. The olive green is not dark enough, the earth too pale and the green too dark. So I was left with the choice of stripping the paint never done that), just repeat the entire painting and masking cycle or just go with it and add the wintercamouflage. I went for the last option. Just want to get this build over with...

So more tape, then hairspray and then Tamiya flat white. But not after I had done the markings, which was a chapter on its own. I'll get back to that later.

While doing the hairspray technique I noticed that the water used started turning a slight green??? At first I thought the brush was not clean, but it kept doing that. I g´have no explanation for it, but the white now has a very faint green hue. Makes it look not fresh, used, exposed.

 

 

The decals..... As always I use a gloss clear coat underneath them, usually Vallejo's. This time I took Tamiya's Clear coat. Out of habbit I thinned it down with a drop of water.... and it turned milky on the model! When used pure it desolved the NATO black at places... What the....??

The decals themselves took ages to loosen from the carrier paper and silvered, despite gloss, Micro sol and Micro Set. The covering coat of clear matt tones it down. I made the number plates out of strip styrene, painted a musterd yellow and applying numbers on them. The Cavalry marking on the glacis is painted in place and decal numbers were added.

 

[Jasper dog]

This does appear to have fought you all the way!

For what it's worth it looks the part!

I'm not familiar in any way with the correct colours for a Norwegian version but the splinter scheme looks pretty good as does the winter wash in the last picture. 

 

Did the tamiya gloss dry clear after going milky?

I tend to cheat with varnish and use a rattle can, Tamiya,  Humbrol or even Halfords before now!

 

Atb

Darryl 

[Ron NL-S]

It stayed slightly milky, yes. But since it was a small patch I could hide it.

The end of this build is drawing near. And none too soon!

Since this is a build with focus on whites I am looking to get a varied look within the whites. The worn camouflage paint was one and now I have added winter camouflage netting as a second. The third will be the snow itself. For netting I used bandaging that had expired, but was unused. However I felt that it just looked like that, when I had draped it over the tank; bandaging. So I looked at my references and saw that the netting actually was like the 3-tone netting, but white. How to make that? Normally I would go for bandage + herbs, but I know that spraying that white would get the herbs to leak their colour into the paint. In 3-tone not an issue, in white a major issue. And then I had the luminous idea of doing it with paper! With wet paper to be precise. Soaking that in water will make it fall apart and the fibers can be used to make the netting's cover. Time to try something completely new! Never seen anyone do it before...

With tissue it was a no go. I had used that to make a cover for the turret basket. With kitchen paper a similar result. That is made to hold even when wet. Hmm... printing paper? Works, sort of, but is way to bright due to the added whiteners. It glowed blue compared to the bandage. And I ended up with toilet paper in the right shade. I added small pieces to a mix of white glue & water and started the tedious job of picking apart the soaked paper and adding one piece/blob at a time. The result however is none too bad, I think.

I tied the netting to the sidebars of the turret. Because I applied the same glue/water mix to it, it would retain its shape, so that later on I could add straps that would hold it all in place.

 

 

 

 

 

As can be seen in the photos I also added cables to search light and Hoffman device and added the red tape that is used in exercises to distinguish between teams. I used the thinnest plastic card, but it still is too thick. Decals would be optimal here. I painted the tarp on the back in Vallejo's German field grey. It looks a lot darker in the photos. I added a coat of satin varnish to make it look like a artificial fiber tarp. The last details to be added will be the antennae with pennants, but I will add those last.

 

 

 

[Hamden]

 

That looks extremely good, every inch a Leopard!

 

            Roger

[Jasper dog]

Nice work, you've really knocked the old kit into submission!

Neat and interesting idea with the camo net to.

 

Great work

Darryl 

[panzerlehr46]

A good go at a dog of an old kit.Norway initially used the Leopard 1a2.This Tamiya kit is from first batch of leos produced.If you like Leopards then Michael Shackleton does some great books and also leopard conversions and updates at the Leopard Workshop.Ive got 7 Leopard kits in stash from Italeri which are still nice to build.Italeris a4 kit is better then Tamiyas but i still like the a4 kit as it got me into leopard modelling.

Well done.

Rich.

[Ron NL-S]

Norway apparently also bought Leo's from the first batch, as I understood it.

Anyway...

This beast is done!!

 

[Hamden]

 

That turned out very well nice workmanship

Looking forward to the next one

 

              Roger

[panzerlehr46]

On 9/3/2020 at 5:39 PM, Ron NL-S said:

Norway apparently also bought Leo's from the first batch, as I understood it.

Anyway...

This beast is done!!

 

Norway bought them fresh from the factory.They bought second hand 1a2s and 5s from Germany but might have had one or two first batch ones.Leopard guys inform me.

Great build well done.

Rich.