As is the case with many of my other models, Abrams was sitting on my desk for quite a while, so I have finally decided to finish it off for the Ajax model show. This of course meant touching up all those small things, so I try to summarize them briefly.

First of all, after the previous step I have still felt that the tank is bit too “clean”, so I have taken another round with pigments, adding more dust and dirt especially in all the nooks and crannies. Retrospectively looking, I should have blended the transition bit better, bit the effect I think is still improved.

Stowage – what I have expected has really happened, I have not been able to put the stowage back again (I suspect our two cats might have some knowledge of few pieces of stowage that I am missing…), so I went for the minimized version of the stowage. I have used resin piece from Legend stowage set for Bradley APC and added a tarp sculpted from Magic Sculp.

I have added lenses to the reflectors. The rear ones were painted with Tamiya Red from the back (the inner side). The lenses fit perfectly and the glue was essentially not needed to fix them in place.

After having tried few options to simulate smoke stains, I settled on using Mig’s smoke pigment to have darkened the exhaust grill at the rear of the tank. Using pigments I have also added some dust just above the tracks at the rear sides, where there would be some of it most likely deposited on actual vehicle.

One of the things that I am not happy with (and which is quite visible) are the periscopes on commander’s hatch. Long time ago, when I have started to build this tank, I have painted them silver from inside and now that I have cleared the masking from their front side I must say hey look weird. Note for myself – paint the periscopes in dark color from inside next time…

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