Tiran 5, Tamiya, 1/48th scale.

[Bullbasket]

The fuel lines on the T-54/55/62 came in two different sizes. For the larger diameter ones I used .31mm nickel wire, and for the smaller diameter one I used some copper wire, (not sure of it's thickness, but it is thin).

Before adding the three fuel tanks on the RHS, I pre-drilled them in the appropriate places with a .4mm drill bit, ready to accept the fuel lines. All in all, I had to bend four pieces to shape, including the small equalising line between the two rear tanks. Once the tanks were fixed into position, the lines were superglued in place. Not the tidiest of jobs, but looking at photos of T-54/55's and Tirans, nor were the real ones.

 

For some reason, the IDF decided to change some of the bins on the RH track guard, but there's nothing suitable in the kit for the two that they fitted into the space between the fuel tanks, so they had to be scratch built. The first one, which is the smaller of the two, I made up from pieces of .5mm card. I copied this one from the Tamiya Tiran 5 kit which instead of having recessed mouldings in the lid, as per all the other bins, has them standing proud. Actually, this made it easier to replicate. I wound some Slaters 10thou rod around a mini file handle and glued this onto the top. The rest of the mouldings came from the same material. I won't go through the process of making the latches and the hinges as it would take eons. Let's just settle for saying that they were fiddly.

The second one was a lot easier to make with just a simple sloping lid for it to side under the turret overhang.

 

And this is them in position.

Well that blew two afternoon's work on those two bins. Hopefully, the next stage will go a bit quicker. Back when I've got some more to show. Thanks for looking.

 

John.

[badger]

Looking great John - really impressed with all your scratch built additions.

[sardaukar]

not to take away from your fantastic work, but I found this.

https://microworldtg.wixsite.com/0001/1-48?pgid=l3re6ugg-4400ffb9-1624-48c0-8815-46350ec975af

they do seem to be receptive to requests.

[edjbartos]

Very good John, Fuel lines look good but I really like the look of the hinges and latches, top work...

 

Ed

[Bullbasket]

12 hours ago, badger said:

Looking great John - really impressed with all your scratch built additions.

 

10 hours ago, sardaukar said:

not to take away from your fantastic work, but I found this.

https://microworldtg.wixsite.com/0001/1-48?pgid=l3re6ugg-4400ffb9-1624-48c0-8815-46350ec975af

they do seem to be receptive to requests.

 

10 hours ago, edjbartos said:

Very good John, Fuel lines look good but I really like the look of the hinges and latches, top work...

 

Ed

Morning all, and thank you very much for your comments. As always, they are very much appreciated. Oh and Sardaukar. You've just gone to the top of my Christmas card list. That site has just about every gun barrel that I want, including the Tiran, M51 and M50. Many thanks for posting that. I will be taking a long look at their site.

 

John.

[beefy66]

Great details John I keep forgetting this is 48th scale looks like it should be much bigger.  

 

Stay Safe

beefy

[Bullbasket]

2 hours ago, beefy66 said:

Great details John I keep forgetting this is 48th scale looks like it should be much bigger.  

 

Stay Safe

beefy

Thanks a lot Beefy. Yes, 1/48th scale, and don't I know it when I'm trying to work on some of the tiny parts.

 

John.

[sardaukar]

7 hours ago, Bullbasket said:

 

 

Oh and Sardaukar. You've just gone to the top of my Christmas card list. That site has just about every gun barrel that I want, including the Tiran, M51 and M50. Many thanks for posting that. I will be taking a long look at their site.

 

glad I could be helpful. I ordered a bunch of 1/72 stuff from them in the past and would be happy to again. they have some interesting subjects not covered anywhere else.

[Andy H]

Looking good! As noted, great work in 1/48 scale. 👍

[Jasper dog]

Super work John, folk might imagine you're an experienced hand at this modelling lark!

Whilst it might not be in my scale I can appreciate good craftsmanship.

 

Atb

Darryl 

[Bullbasket]

14 hours ago, Andy H said:

Looking good! As noted, great work in 1/48 scale. 👍

Thanks for the encouragement Andy.

 

John.

[Bullbasket]

1 minute ago, Jasper dog said:

Super work John, folk might imagine you're an experienced hand at this modelling lark!

Whilst it might not be in my scale I can appreciate good craftsmanship.

 

Atb

Darryl 

Thanks a lot Darryl. Yes, after seventy odd years, I'm starting to get the hang of this modelling lark.

1/35th is my main field, but I do enjoy the occasional visit to the 1/48th shop, and now that Sardaukar has given me the heads up with regards to the gun barrels, I can finally get on and finish my M51.

 

John.

[Bullbasket]

I thought that it was time to do some more work on the lower hull and the road wheels. Using a very coarse sanding stick, I rubbed down the tyre treads to get rid of the prominent mould line, and at the same time, cut some nicks into the edges of the tyres. Then they were all mounted on sticks and along with the hull, given a primer coat of Halfords Auto acrylic grey.

I'm never too sure about which colour to use on these tanks. The Tamiya mix for their Tiran 5 comes out more sand than grey, but the Mig acrylic offering of sand grey is definitely more grey. I believe that this one from Mig is for 1973 onwards which ties in approximately, with Tirans. If anyone knows different, please let me know.

I thought that I'd try a Stix on this one, ie; hairy stick, and I was pleasantly surprised at the coverage of the paint. So, lower hull and wheels coated in sand grey, and then the tyres painted with Vallejo NATO Black.

Wheel halves assembled and given a coating of a watery mix of Gulf War Sand pigment. Then the tyres were given a dry coating of the same material to give a worn effect.

 

 

All the wheels are now mounted, and I've made a start on the tracks These are link and length. I wanted to be able to assemble them on the tank in two parts, so that I could remove them for painting. So I assembled the top, front and bottom section as one piece, and then the rear section. Tamiya have a clever little innovation to help get all of the pieces in the correct place, and that is a small notch on the rear centre road wheels. This lines up with a small hole in the bottom length of track, and you work from there. Simples!

 

Hopefully, once I've finished my Full English, I can get these assembled, painted and weathered. If I do, I'll be back later with the results.

Thanks for looking.

 

John.

[Jasper dog]

Glad to see this pushing on after almost a week!

If these tracks are anything like the Comet ones good luck getting them to stay glued when you come to put them back on...

I'm not saying its everytime I pick the thing up they fall off but.

 

I might be barking up the wrong tree here but didn't the T55 have a fairly prominent ridge running around the circumference of the tyre. I'd guess this would wear away with use but a suggestion of it wouldn't be a bad thing?

 

On 12/11/2023 at 11:02, Bullbasket said:

I thought that I'd try a Stix on this one, ie; hairy stick, and I was pleasantly surprised at the coverage of the paint.

John, really......next you'll be reduced to 1/72 and asking for a bag of oats for Dobbin. Hairy stick indeed!!!

 

However I can't argue with the idea of a full English, food of the gods! Bon Appetit!

 

Darryl 

[Bullbasket]

8 hours ago, Jasper dog said:

However I can't argue with the idea of a full English, food of the gods! Bon Appetit!

Amen to that.

Thanks for the comments Darryl. They cheered me up on this wet and windy morning. As far a s the tracks are concerned, I'll post an update once I get back from having needles shoved into my arm so that I can donate to the local vampire's association. And you may be correct about the ridge running around the tyre, but I have checked the photo that I have of Tirans and it would appear that the rough and rocky terrain in which they operated, obliterated any trace of that.

And as for braille scale. Keep it strictly to yourself, but if I can get my hands on one of those lovely 1/72nd Tirans, I just might succumb.

 

John.

[Bullbasket]

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to finish the tracks yesterday as I ran into a small problem. Tamiya only supply you with just enough links and lengths to install the tracks as per the box art, ie; the top run up in the air. Looking at several photos of Tirans, the tracks were much slacker than that. When I assembled them, I wanted then to be more prototypical, so I superglued them to the top of the second, third and fourth road wheel. But the problem with that was it stretched the run leaving about half a link gap. The way that I sorted that was to make sure that the gap was either at the very bottom, or at the top, behind the track guards/fenders, and then I superglued a short length of rod into the gap. Not perfect, but once the paint went on, it became much less noticeable.

 

 

So once the tracks were complete in sections, they were given a coat of primer, and then a coat of Revell Anthracite/Red Brown mixture thinned down with water. When it had all dried, I brushed on some of Migs Gulf War Sand before running a silver water colour pencil over the parts that would come into contact with the ground.

 

 

That's the lower hull finished, so It's back to the upper hull.

Thanks for looking.

 

John.

[Hamden]

 

Like you fix for the short track, doesn't show at all!

 

  Stay safe             Roger  

[Andy H]

Looking good! Having used Revell anthrocite as my 'go to' black for a long time, it never occurred to me to mix it with red brown for tracks. 👍

[Bullbasket]

4 hours ago, Hamden said:

 

Like you fix for the short track, doesn't show at all!

 

  Stay safe             Roger  

Many thanks Roger. I'm very glad that you can't see it. That's a relief.

3 hours ago, Andy H said:

Looking good! Having used Revell anthrocite as my 'go to' black for a long time, it never occurred to me to mix it with red brown for tracks. 👍

Thanks a lot Andy. My only problem with the Revell paints is that they are drying up fast. Those two colours which I mentioned are now like molasses, but still work for jobs such as brush painting tracks, once watered down 50/50.

 

John.

[edjbartos]

Good work on the tracks John, I can't believe Tamiya didn't give you any extra links, cheapskates! Good fix though, they look great with some paint on, well done...

 

Ed

[Bullbasket]

Thanks a lot Ed. Yes, a couple of extra links would have been useful, even if only as spare track on the tank.

 

John.

[Bullbasket]

Before going any further, there was one job that I had to try and conquer, because I wasn't sure that I could manage it. I'm talking about the positioning lights which Tamiya chickened out of doing. They're small, but they are noticeable when absent. So this is how I attempted them. For the main horizontal body, I took a length of 40 thou rod, rounded off one end and then cut off 1.5mm. A length of 20thou rod was glued to the bottom at a 90 degree angle. Legend supply you with the front parts of these lights, which look like a tiny flower in bloom, which I superglued to the front of the lamp. The small brackets supplied by Legend have a small hole in them to accept the vertical part of the lamp, but these are slightly too small so I enlarged them with drill bits. The one on the RHS were then glued into place. I should just say at this point that my sanity was teetering on the edge doing these lights. Making and assembling them wasn't too much of a struggle, but when it came to positioning them, that's when the madhouse was put on alert. One complete light/bracket went pinging off into the ether, never to be seen again, so I'm already one set down. I think that there will be a couple of strategically place tarps/cloths to cover their absence.

 

The two headlamps were attached, but without the brush guard. Tirans had a kind of folding shield in front of them, which I made from .5mm card with a 5thou strip around the outer edge. I used 5thou strip to make the supports for the shield and added a punched out bolt head to each one.

The ducting for the cables for the headlamps and the positioning lights, was glued into place along the top of the sloping glacis plate, and wiring was added using Slaters 10thou rod.

 

 

Upper and lower hull joined together, and that's it for now. Back when I've done the lights for the other side.

Thanks for looking and any comments.

 

John.

[Lummox]

Super work John - you must have jolly good eyes and a steady hand!

 

My hands would be shaking like billy-o and I'd be forgetting to breathe.

 

 

[Bullbasket]

2 hours ago, Lummox said:

Super work John - you must have jolly good eyes and a steady hand!

 

My hands would be shaking like billy-o and I'd be forgetting to breathe.

 

 

Thanks a lot Paul. Actually, the air inside my hobby room is a shade of royal blue from the language that I've been using. Trying to position small etched parts with small dabs of superglue on them, only to see that they've gone on askew, or finding that there is just the tiniest amount of superglue on the very tips of the tweezers, which of course, the etched part sticks to, instead of where it's supposed to go. And as for my sight, well I have a decent pair of glasses and I also have my trusty illuminated magnifying lamp. Wouldn't be without it.

But I will definitely be going for a larger scale with the next build.

 

John.

[edjbartos]

That looks brilliant John, I can't believe just how small they are, you definitely have a lot of patience, really good work...

 

Ed