With the construction finished, time to move on to painting. Maybe not yet… Just a few words on the construction.. The kit went together quite well. no real surprises. There were some really tiny parts here and some that could have been moulded better. Some issues – pipes to the external tanks – there are supposed to be two for each of the tanks, but one of them you won’t be able to fit, it’s just is completely wrong. I noticed that Zach in his build article in Abrams squad completely left them out. I have included the one pair, that can be fitted, it still looks cool.

There are some nice photoetch parts, but bending lines are not always there, so need to be carefull. For some reason there were two copies of the same part, when only one is to be used in the kit. Not sure why, but if it’s just to help modeller in case he destroys / loses one of them to the carpet monster, etc. than I highly appreciate it.

I was also able to clean the barrel so that you cannot se the seam running along the top of it. Also the muzzle break, which has quite complex shape fits together well and with a bit of a putty, you don’t see anything.

I left out the tow cables, I just didn’t think they look good on the model, so I just made two S-shaped parts that were used to hook the end of the tow ropes (they were really simple) and glued them in place.

On the turret I have added few small tie-down loops, i think around 9 of them, I didn’t have patience for more as they are really tiny.

Now to the painting. I primed the model with Tamiya Fine primer white from Can, as always. For preshading I was experimenting with dark green, which I have then tried to lighten up for base coats and highlights, but I absolutely didn’t like the colour at the end. So out comes windex, I stripped the colour and started again.

This time I have used Tamiya NATO Green for the base coat and I have a formulae for highlights from the Akatsiya project, which worked well. But that’s for next time…

• See previous part
• See next part
• Go to main log page