I think we all can relate to John's predicament. Thank goodness the child did not get injured by any knife blades lying on the table, or get into the super glue.

Over the past week I have been pluggin' along on my WWI ambulance. Since I do not have an air brush, I decided to spray the sprues an appropriate shade of cadet blue before beginning assembly.



This way I will not miss any of the under parts. Of course I will have to go over all the areas I scraped to get the flash off and where I clipped the parts.

After assembling 26 steps out of 43, here is where I am at:



A shot of the underside at this point:


The front is starting to come to shape:


There are a lot of small parts in this kit, a couple of which flew off the table and onto the floor. Luckily, I am in the garage with a smooth concrete floor rather than a carpet monster that eats up such items. I am still building straight out of the box without any scratch replacement parts (which would disqualify my build!)

Hello all,
Well all major assemby is done,tools and cables will be added later.Now I will be on to some roadwheel madness,there sure are a lot of them.Her are a few progress shots.

Great work there Jim and Anthony looking good keep it up

@Anthony that looks like a really cool kit I have been eyeballing it, did it come with the PE or is that AM

Thanks Sal,it all came with the kit,or I'd be disqualified from this campaign

Oh yeah duah, i must have been having a brain fart

Hi all Great looking build Anthony,imagine sitting in your sherman and that bad boy came around the corner.that thing is a beast but it doooo look good,im trying to drift away from axis stuff but then i see something like that and I just gotta do it

Quick update on my pinky.




wheels are just placed on at the moment going to give her a coat of dark green(not to sure which type yet jdfg or nato green) then some hairspray lots of little details to do as well.

Great work gents, your builds are coming along very nicely.

Sal, don't worry we are all allowed a brain fart from time to time

I have been suffering very badly from hay fever the last few days so have not got much done . I got some tablets today so I am hoping they help?

John,
The pinky looks great and as previously mentioned is very nostalgic for me. More than 30 years ago but it still looks so very familiar. I'm going to have to hunt one down and put on my rose (pink) tinted specs. The kit colour really is an amazing baby pink, to me it suggests a diorama theme of a loudmouth walking into a bar and asking "Who's the poof who owns the pink landy?" ... are there any 'angry SAS mob' figure sets on the market? On a separate subject (and not that it matters now) but I noticed that Modelzone Southampton do have a couple of the Sherman Calliope kits left.

Anthony,
That is a big, ugly and very impressive looking brute you're building there (especially to eyes that have been working on 1/72 Humvees lately - your monster looks like it would crush the Humvees under it's tracks without even noticing)

Progress update... I've got one track left to add to my (comparatively tiny) Abrams then it''ll be ready for the (boring sand coloured) bare plastic photos before it's trip to the paintshop.

Cheers to all,
John

I couldn't resist... I just bought a pinky from ebay (and thus the 'to be done' pile gets another box higher!)

Cheers
John

Good on yer john the more pinkys the better, you know the trouble with S.A.S. men is they dont get angry they get even

Abrams pre-paint photos:











True to the OOTB requirements I used kit sprue to support the engine deck. The one real criticism I have of the Revell 1/72 Abrams series is that the engine deck can droop in the middle if it's not supported:


If it wasn't OOTB I'd probably have added a strengthener to the engine deck as I did with a previous M1A1 (soon to appear in the Getter Done camapign (but that's another story):


Anyho... this is painting time I'm a wastin'.

Cheers guys!!

John

Nice work John, I am looking forward to seeing the paint on.

That's a great looking Abrhams

John,pinky looks good so far

Thanks Scott,

The first coat of Revell acrylic 'sand yellow' went on last night. I'm always glad when the initial coat goes on and takes away that plastic toy look, however I'd have to say that it still looks far too clean and bright and yellow at the moment. Not a problem though, give it time and hopefully it'll look as unwashed and filthy as my ten year old son (well maybe not that bad,,, I don't want to over do it!!).

Cheers,
John

I'm still out here ,,haven't had time for starting the build on the Trump Dana yet ,,working on a rather big scratch build for the What if campaign ,,thats keeping me busy and i've only started the two front track sets ..not going to say to much about it ..the word might get out to soon as to what i am building hehehe

Nice looking abrams. It's sure hard to tell it's only 1:72 scale.

Thanks for the kind words Joel, the gap at the back is the main give away, in 1/35 it would be a couple of mm wide. Hopefull that gap will disappear when I glue the upper chassis to the lower (after painting the running gear).

cheers
John

John, white glue isn't the way I would try to close that gap as my 1st choice. I would opt for Tamiya orange liquid glue which is between a gel and their Extra Thin. Once applied clamp it with rubber bands. Then when dry, any slight gaps can be filled with CCA glue that will not shrink, and dries hard as a rock. White glue never hardens anywhere near that hard, and continues to shrink for a long drying time.

Hey all. Better late than never I guess. Anyway, my first tank in over 20 years. Thought I would start with a good one!! Here's my box pics.







O.K. Well, time to get building. Progress pics to come. Later!

Randy,that is a great kit for this campaign,lots a extras

Thanks Anthony. Just got back into modelling after a very long break. Have built a few planes and just now getting back into armor. Did some research and ordered this Dragon M1A1 AIM. Couldn't believe my eyes when I opened the box. Really looking forward to this one for sure.

Randy, welcome to the campaign. Only 20 years. I took a 30 year hiatus between builds. Left as a military aircraft modeler, came back, did 3 aircraft then got bitten by the armor bug.

Welcome Randy, good to see you coming over to the heavy metal side . That look to bee a very good kit, I was considering the cyber hobby M1A1 kit when I have the funds? Just one thing the magic link tracks can be a bit of a pig! I built DML's M1 panther for the military engineering campaign it came with them ad I had a few swearing sessions at them.

I have just started the decals on the truck I will get some pics up when I can.