Thanks Jacques I'll give it a shot and post a photo!

Thanks for the translation Jon. Sorry to hear about the barrel you got, I couldn't tell you the difference between the two. Looking at the online photos it seems to be no difference, but them again it's hard to see any details.

The heat resistant coating or thermal jacket is used to keep extreme heat from wrapping the barrel. Lot of countries use this to keep down the diameter of the barrel and it cuts the cost of manufacturing. I've seen people use metal foil to replicate the jacket. You also have the RB barrel, you could use the straps from that barrel (if they will fit?) and wrap thin foil around the barrel. If you look on the back cover of Ian Allan book you can make out the thermal jacket on the T-80 going down the road. Maybe George or Jacques can chime in with a different way to make the jacket, but it would be the way I would appoarch it.
Chris

Hi Chris, I agree it sure is complicated. I can't even get native Russian speakers to work out the difference between the Russian discription of Barrels MP 3517-4 and MP 3517-1! I even asked my wife's cousin who is an Officer in the Russian Navy based in St Petersberg and even he couldn't work out the difference between the words без теплового кожуха and без теплозащитного кожуха they are really similar. I'm still not sure if thermal sleeve and heat resistant casing are the right words in English!

It gets even more confusing because on the actual Modelpoint label a description is written in English that is different yet again from the Russian (theres no Russian on the MP label at all). In English it says "barrel without Thermal Jacket, recommended for conversion T-72 to T-72B (1988 prod) and T-90", so I imagine that if you had those barrels in person the descriptions between each 5 would be different from this Russian and more specific.

So... yes it seems this was the barrel without the thermal sleeve, so today I went and made myself one from scratch! it's not something I'd like to have to do again, sure as hell was tricky!

Hey Jon if you get a chance, check out Tank Workshop's website, they explain more about the barrel and which tank they go to One barrel is ment for early T80's without thermal jacket, another with, one for t72, another for t90 and the works. I know the translation thing cam be difficult at times. When I was stationed in germany I had a buddy of mine that spoke german and he still had a hard time translating thing into english. Some of our words and meanings don't translate too well in other lanuages. So how did the barrel turn out? Did you use the straps from the RB barrel?
Chris

Well I've finally managed to get some photos uploaded of my recent progress.

It's been very much a case of build something, find somethings wrong, change it, build something else, and find another correction thats needed!

The entrenching blade was a prime example. I don't know why by SKIF seem to have made the part and the mountings totally unusable. It's really odd but the mounts of the underside of the hull are in the wrong place and don't let you actually mount the blade or the rods that run to it. Also the SKIF instructions are a bit strange, they don't really make sense for this part either. In the end I had to remove the two outer mountings and make new ones out of plasticard, moving them over to the centre by a few mm so the rods actually connect with the blade. I also removed the kit mounts on the blade itself as these were just too crude and blocky and will replace these with either some foil or plasticard later. The blade also needed a little sanding down on both sides to thin it out a little. Now I just need to make the little catches that cover the front teeth and the hinges to connect onto the blade.

I also had to remove the lower hull mine sweeper mountings as the Mig kit includes these as replacement parts on the KMT-7 rig.



The Mine Roller connects onto the front glacis by two cables and the Mig parts were very well detailed. Again I had to modify the SP glacis a little to fit them by removing the rivets from the mounting points:



I also carried on detailing the rear hull, adding the various components and unditching beam. The SP Designs unditching beam is a nice part with good wood surface detail. I also added some parts with foil coated with Mr Surfacer 1000, such as the clamps for the rail cleats.



The biggest problem though that really worried me was the lack of thermal sleeve on my barrel from Modelpoint. I thought about it a lot and considered a few different approaches. First off I thought about foil, but the textured ridge detail on the barrel made that impossible as the foil showed the surface detail right away. I then considered trying using Mr Surfacer to paint on the thermal sleeve, but giving a smooth flawless finish would be tough, and I wasn't sure how well Mr Surfacer would adhere to metal. In the end I decided to use paper from my Modelpoint packet that was slightly laminated to give it a shiny almost plastic texture.

The front end of the barrel was quite easy as it was even width all the way down, however the back end was tricky as the barrel starts thinner by the bore excavator and gets wider towards the mantlet. In the end I had to leave a small gap near the mantlet end and fill this with numerous coats of Mr Surfacer 1200. I'm still not 100% happy as the paper covering has left a line on the underside of the barrel where the two halves meet, however since this is underneath the gun and not easily visable I'm happy to compromise. As long as the top and sides look good!

I also added the RB model straps around the casing, these again needed work as the RB barrel is thicker even after I added a Thermal Sleeve to the MP one. I had to cut various straps to the right length after lots of dry fits and then add the buckle detail from the cut end. I also found that the PE ring with the rivets for the bore excavator was also the wrong size for the MP barrel being too wide. So I used the spare rivets from the RB PE sheet and attached these directly to the moulded on MP bore excavator.

It was very fiddly and took hours, but I think the end results are worth it.

Jon,

The Thermal sleeve, or whatever you want to call it, wraps around the barrel segments ONLY where you see the top ridge piece. Also, the top ridge piece is the seam...it connects the sleeve to itself. The ends have the straps. Here is the best shot I could find to show you, from the T-80U on Prime Portal:



Also, here is a shot of a T-72 trench blade in action, as a example:


Keep plugging away.

Nice work Jon, the barrel turned out pretty good. Good way to impervise with what you had on hand at the time. I can see why so many people either leave the trenching blade of or scratch build a new one. After all once the dust deflector is on and a coat of mud, not much of the blade can even be seen. I love how things a coming along, I started to monkey around with mine last night, cut a few part and test fitting them. Things seem to fall together pretty easily so far with a few fit issues here and there. Keep the work coming.
Chris

Thanks Jacques, so thats what the ridge is actually for! I never realised that. Also I made a lucky guess about the length of the sleeve stopping at the last strap!

THanks Chris, I've spent a lot of time on this project so far on things I hadn't planned to do, it's amazing actually how much time and energy these things can suck up!

Jacques, I tried lining the segments up on the MP and RB barrels and I just couldn't get them to match well at all. Maybe its something to do with the fact that the MP barrel is without the thermal sleeve, but the ridge detail on the segments was odd, they have two sets of raised rings instead of single segments seperated by a single line like the RB barrel. In some places the segments matched up but in other places they didn't.

I've been working on the KMT-7 the last few days and took the opportunity to take some photos of a KMT-7 over at the Stalin Line Museum. It was a great help to actually be able to walk around it and look at it up close. The Stalin Line Museum is amazing by the way. I could have spent years there just taking pictures for walkarounds!

The Mig kit's biggest challenge I think is the vague instructions. They show lots of seperate sub assemblies but no order or stages in actually assembling the completed roller. Even the MIG download isn't that great as the resolution is quite low when you zoom in the photos get pixalated and difficult to make out. It takes a lot of dry fitting and skipping some stages to work things out.





Adding the wire to the top of the main frame was very tricky, you also have to drill out the tiny resin clamps that hold it in place. My reference photos from the Stalin Line Museum proved very helpful here.

hi jon following your build ,great job,if your doing the t 80 in action you might want put the copper wire in its active deployment mode against trip mines ,hope the kmt 7 goes together well for ya,regards zack

Hi Zack, thanks for posting. I'm not too familiar with mine equipment and just followed the Mig instructions. Do you have any photos of how the rig should look when it's deployed in actual use?

Anyway, whether this setup is wrong or not, I've finally finished the mine roller. It was a really tricky build and quite hard to finish, the wheels especially were a nightmare. The fit wasn't great either and some parts on my kit at least just didnt go together well.

I had to also replace some of the bars with plastic rod since I couldn't for the life of me work out how to mount the chains around the front bars. Chopping off the resin bars and replacing them with plastic ones then glueing the ends back worked and seems like the only way to actually do it (apart from trying to chop the metal chain links in half and bending them around).

This took a LONG time, but in the end its a great rig. It's detailed and from what I've seen of the real thing (although I'm no expert) it seems accurate.

Looks real good Jon. Some of the parts do seem like they are kind of fiddly and not to mention the directions suck from what I've downloaded. I still like to build on myself, I'm defiantly going to use your build when I decide to tackle one. But other than that, it looks suprisingly pretty good, can't wait to see how it looks on the T-80.
Chris

Hi jon,I'm sorry to hear its such hard and fiddly job,but i suppose it is a complex bit of work ,it is the most complex master i've built for mig produtions so far abd there are also a number of casting limitations,but those are enough excuses from me besides all that your end result looks spot on,regards zack

Great work Jon! I like this a lot!

Hi Zack, I don't think its a problem with the master or anything. Infact I think in terms of design and quality of product this is a great kit. It's very detailed and very accurate. For me I felt that what made the construction phase the most difficult was the instructions themselves and not the kit.

I'm just really pleased that people like yourself are putting out useful and interesting Russian kits the topic often gets overlooked by the big plastic manufacturers

Did I get the front chains correct? The Mig instructions are rather vague on this point and the KMT-7 at the Museum had the chains unattached. I'm guessing that this is how they are supposed to be attached?

Thanks Martyn!

Thanks and no worries Jon,i agree with you in relation to the lack of sov and east block modern gear,i think the chains are spot on I for one will keep tipping away at russian and third world stuff,keep up the great work ,regards zack

Well at long last I've finally managed to mount the KMT-7 to the T-80, and it wasn't easy! Took a lot of dry fits and cutting and re cutting of the thick cables. I think though that the effort was worth it as it certainly looks impressive when its on the tank.

Here are a few things I found when making my KMT-7:

1, Dont attach the mounting points on the underside of the lower front hull without the actual roller. Mig's instructions show these mounted separately with the idea being that the pins on the end of the main structure/arm clip into place afterwards. I tried this and found it very difficult, if the mountings are even slightly out of place or misaligned it makes it very difficult to mount the actual device. I would recommend attaching the mountings directly to the device, then, attaching the entire thing to the lower hull.

2, make sure you leave the connectors (tow rope looking clips) on the upper hull mountings unglued, this will make positioning the cables much easier. The connectors on the device itself have to be glued in place and don't give much bend/movement so leaving the upper ones free really helps. I actually had to cut off my connectors on the KMT-7 and reposition them to get the cables to fit (this is a tricky part of the build).

3, leave the hinges on the front of the roller by the main wheels unglued. Again this will allow movement on the large wheels of the roller making it much easier to attach the overall device to the tank.

Hi

Really nice, its looking really nice, good work, Im waiting to see your paint work on this beauty

regards

Good tips on constrution Jon and it looks as if its going to be pretty cool,regards zack

fantastic work Jon! Perserverance pays off in the end. Great looking build.
Terry

Thanks for the kind comments guys. I primed the tank last night and hope to start painting this weekend.

Hey Jon question, I read that you told Sean that you were also having troubles with the masterclub tracks, what's up with the tracks? I was about to order a set for when I do my t-80 and was just wondering if their was something wrong with them.
Chris

Their fiddly to put together and a lot more fragile than the Miniarm T-90 tracks I made. I found the Masterclub BMP-2 tracks easier to work with.

Putting them together is not too bad but the strangest thing is that left by themselves they tend to warp a lot. To get them to sit flat and straight you have to hold them down into place. I'm guessing (although I havent tried yet) that once I mount them to the sprocket and wheels that this warp will be dealt with by the sprocket and wheels holding them in place.

Given the difficulties I'd still use them again as they are more detailed than either the SP Designs or new Plastic click links (can't remember the name of the company who made those off the top of my head).

So yeah, they take some work but they look great once finished.

Thanks for the info Jon. I have only one masterclub track set and it's for my BMD. Their still sitting in the package, so I haven't really tried to build any yet. I'll defiantly be on the look out for the wraping.
Chris

I bought a BMD-2 while I was in Minsk (got one really cheap in a model store there) and I've been looking for some AM kits to spice up the Zvezda kit a bit. How did you find the Masterclub tracks? I really liked the Masterclub BMP-2 links and found them much easier to work with than these T-80 links.