The kit contain 4 dark green plastic frames with a lot of small parts, vinyl one with rubber wheel bandages and little PE which is quite hard with few details. the parts are flesh free with nice detail with a lot of tiny parts. The decals are for four different Red Army machines.
I started with the different steps from the instructions. Assembly of the turret took a bit of putty at the rear. I cut off the main hatch to make t open (unfortunately the kit offers only the gunner hatch opened). The gun body needs to be narrowed a bit to fit. Another tricky part is the placing the handles, there are no position pins and the good drawing is needed to place them correctly.
The assembly of the hull is a bit tricky and needs putty and good eye as the top part of the hull is devided in a strange manner, it comes partly with the fenders and it is not easy to fill and sand the seem without destroing the details. While the putty was drying, I assembled the bottom half of the hull. In my kit the main part was twisted a little, but it would be straightened when glued together with the top. I wasn't bothered to much about the precision, as it will be covered with mud. I glued the driving and idler wheels to the places. The main wheels were first painted as they have the bandages of vinyl and I wanted to save some masking work.
I decided to open the drivers too, so I made at least the seats of radioman and driver and the steering stick, I was not bothered to much about it, as it won't be seen much of it. Just in case I glued to the back piece of plastic to separate the engine area, again, in the end you won't see it.
The time for Surfacer came. I sprayed the turret and the hull just to find out the places that needed more putty and sanding. When I finished I sprayed another layer of Surfacer with another sanding. I assembled and placed the external tanks. I wanted to make them damaged, so I cut the tiny pieces of plastic off them as well as the taks handles were curved.
There was one of the first TV series in Eastern Europe inspired by a book called Four tankmen and a dog that was very popular. The T-34 in the series was the 85 mm gun version, but in the book originaly the 76 mm was the heros' machine until it was destroyed. I picked this machine for my kit. The tank had the russian green camo with white polish eagle markings and tactical number 102 on the turret sides. The name "RUDY" was on the left side of the hull as well as the prints of the hands of the crew. The main problem was to find the decals of eagles, numbers and letters, first I tried the polish modeling sides without success.
I sprayed the model with Gunze Green H303 as the base for the green, Then I used few filters of the same green lightened with the yellow H4. The I used kids water colours for the dust and mud on the wheels and exposed places of the structure. The oil stains were made with black oil colour thinned with Humbrol thinnerOn few places I make stains with the pencil to simulate the scratches on the steel.
June 2011