...It looks very good indeed Remco!

Can you post some larger pics?

Starting this soon. Tamiya Carro Armato M13/40 with the Aussie markings, out of the box with no funny stuff.

Damn lot of wheels for such a small vehicle!


Boring bit almost completed

Nice work everybody!

@ Remco - why did you feel the need to replace the bolts on the rear-plate? Are the Dragon ones the wrong size? And if so, what size should they be?

Cheers,
Dierk

@ Dierk- The rear plate bolts on the kit are a bit undersized for STZ bolts. The STZ bolts are flat and a bit bigger than the 183 factory bulb bolts.
On the exhaust covers are standard seven bolts (three left, three right and one on top). On the STZ mid/late types there were eight bolts (four left, four right) on the covers....
On the rear plate, there are less bolts than normal on the underside. Two bolts less than the standard rear plate.

Regards,

Remco

A bit of filling and shimming later. Was surprised by the large gap when I fitted the superstructure to the body. It might have been a mistake on my part. The link and length kit tracks went together perfectly.

The major components are complete and next will be primer and paint, or at least it will be if it does not rain. The model was very enjoyable to put together and the tamiya photo etch is very easy to work with.

Jon..... Great start I'm looking forward to this one with the Roo's painted on the side.... I'm really getting into Italian Armour of late and I will be getting hold of some soon, a question does the Tamiya kit come with the aluminum barrel?

Thats a very cool tank John
Has the turret a "cast" look?

O, i see its bolted... Didnt have my glasses on
You can make some nice weathering with those bolts...

Duncan, the tamiya kit comes with the aluminium barrel, and a few other small PE pieces.

Remco, yes this will be a great tank for some weathering. The decals (after some serious Micro sol due to the bolts) will hopefully come out great. There are some large roo's to put on.

I will have to see how much I can fit in during a busy weekend.

O, no! I messed the tracks up!!!
I was so busy putting the links together, i forgot there was only one way to link them together...(thats why they were not so movable ) Of course i glued the links together with zapp a gap to keep my pins in... So 25% is in the garbage bin, and had to place a new order.... (there goes 23 euros again...)

Regards,

Remco

Emmm.... is it too late to join into this campaign?? I could grab something out of my stash.

The campaign ends May 31.

@ Remco - I'm sorry to hear about your track disaster, but in a way I'm also glad to see that even pros like you aren't safe from being visited by the F-U Fairy and just to rub salt into your wounds, may I quote something to you? "Work smarter, not harder..."
Experience makes you rich...in experience Cheers,
Dierk

@ Dierk- well, its hard beeing human ... And so am i. I am not a pro, just a regular joe glueing my model like many of us...
I just finished my tracks (or whats left of it ) and waiting by the mailbox for my new shipment (of fail???) to arrive. In the mean time i am going to assemble my hull parts together. Only the fender things have to be done... I will post some photo's, prior to painting...

O, its sometimes hard to work smarter...

Regards,

Remco

Ps. Mauro, i will send some full size photo's soon

Whew!

The K-M photo gallery is back up!

It's high time for some updates on my Semovente L6/40 da 47/32 "seconded to German service" build:

OK. So it's been a while I plead busy busy busy (= guilty ). BUT... There HAS been progress made!

After some wrestling and a little epithet-tossing concerns Italeri and sink-holes and ill-fit and flabby details and poor location-holes & pins and other minor complaints... I got the interior together (about as much as it shall be, given as there seems little good info as to what these things looked like inside ) - added some details, and decided this needed a radio as the in-German-service vehicles often had one. I used the later-war receiver (fu-5) and PE frame as lifted from a Tristar Pz 38(t) interior kit (REALLY NICE! Too bad this semo isn't made by T or at the standards of that interior kit...! Hint to model companies?), and added styrene and sprue bits around the compartment to rep the power conduits, cables, dynamotor/power supply, junction box, etc.. Also eventually fitted a German aerial mount on the hull, with feeder cable. Here's the interior progress as of about 15 OCT:





After a lull in things, I assembled the hull and started the exterior painting. I first redid the black primer to cover places I had to sand and fill following my first pass... Next, I masked the interior and shot the hull with a base coat of ModelMaster Italian Sand enamel. I am using the MM "Italian" colors (sand, olive green, and brown) right from the bottle (thinned, of course) as the Germans originally seconded these vehicles pretty much as the Italians had them (in Italy in 1943, many were painted a tri-color scheme), and if they repainted them, mostly used Italian paint stores. Here is the draft hull (after taking this pic, I headed back for yet more filling and sanding of revealed nasties ) as of OCT 23:



Last night, I leapt ahead with some last goes-around with detail fix-ups, and moved back to the spray-booth to do some base sand touch-ups followed by camo with the MM Italian olive green, followed by Italian brown. I sprayed the camo at ca 17 psi from Iwata HP-CS. Had some sputtering problems, but made it thru (sounds like a wimpy run-up to the Star-Spangled Banner stuff w/ rockets, etal! ). It came out pretty nice - at least I don't feel I need to go back and redo much of it! So - here's last night's progress:



Tonight... I'll fit the painted-up running gear, and set those horrid Italeri tracks onto the thing . Probably I'll jump on to doing some exterior pin-washes, and maybe get the tools on...!

And then I'll be joining into the "club" of all you who have made such cool and great progress on "under a different flag"!

Comments and suggestions are, of course, most welcome!

Cheers!

Bob

@ Bob- Your interior looks nice The camo color looks great

I myself has never airbrushed german three tone camo This wil be the first time I only use green as a extra color, so it wil be yellow with green stripes

If you got any tips, that will be great

Keep up the good work guys!

Regards,

Remco

Kimmo......Your more than welcome.

Bob........... Fantastic job on that little Semovente, I really like the way you've added the German Radio kit etc (good thinking) plus the mottle camo is subtly done.

Remco....... Sorry I've got no advice on technique so I think your best move is to have a practice on a scrap kit or the inside of your model (if it's not all ready joined together) A good tip I picked up on here is to mount your model on a 2 litre drink bottle which acts as a good handle/turntable put a bit of water in to act as a counter weight too.
The bottle helps as the model is not down low so you can get more of an eye level view, looking on the BeutePanzer site at the T34's at Kursk I go low pressure on your airbrush and dust in the paint and build it up slowly layer at a time.
Good luck .

Regards Duncan.

Hey Duncan,

The tank i make, is on the beutepanzer site. I think the was also a color drawing from it, but is wrong....(I think you find the photo's if you look on SS beutepanzers photo's).

In my book of ''operation citadel'' from fedorowich, i found a thirth photo from the back of this vehicle . Here is also color drawing from the tank, but its stated as a model 41 (frontplate is wrong) but is more accurate than the beutepanzer site

My main problem is to make the stripes nice and neat but the rest is peanuts

Thanks for the response,

Remco

Remco:

Thanx for the kind words!

"tips" on tri-colours camo jobs...

Use well-thinned - maybe "over-thinned" - paint and shoot at lower pressures. Get CLOSER to the job to cut down over-spray and keep the paint-flow low (if you have a set-handle, use this to keep yourself from getting a gusher and badly blobbing on paint).

The very-thin paint will go on light-coloured - coupled with lower pressures (10 - 17psi?) means the spray pattern is small and the amount of paint will be small / light. This allows (causes, actually) you to work each little area with multiple passes to get a denser coat, But this also allows you to get a small hand-movement pattern going (a small swing or other motion on the brush) so you can focus on just the small area yet not feel like you have to keep moving along (if you are spraying more paint, you need to keep moving along the work, which can lead to taking a camo patch too far, etc.). The small paint flow and a close working distance also allow me to get comfy with changing angles and corners, etc. These are the places where we often "forget" that we are painting a very small area and pattern yet working in 1:1 real scale while trying to emulate a 50mm-tall gent with a field spray-gun smaller than a small grain of rice!

There are those who suggest doing a light pencil outline of the pattern onto the tank and then painting "between the lines". This works - but best when you are filling patches with pretty dark or deep colours (rotbraun over gelb) and can spray right along the pencil-lines and cover them. IF you are doing the reverse - gelb over braun, for instance, it is easy to not really cover the pencil and it can show thru the gelb coat.

In so far as I plan my patches and patterns, I always study the colour plate or master diags and get a good memory of what goes where - before I paint. I also keep my pattern diag close so as to refresh what the patches and pattern look like and how patches are sized on the subject tank. Sometimes this actually works for me! .

Cheers!

Bob

hello,
Here is the kit that I will do for this campaign. T 60 rpm with German color.
steph

Hi, all fellow flag-swappers!

It's a scary time! The Great Pumkin is near, and it's Hallowe'en!

The Italeri mini-bear (oops! I really meant to sat "Semovente L6/40 da 47/32, but... ) gets a little closer to being called "done". I finally made it through those tracks... . After quite a bit of sweat and a little rough language, they are done. Actually, despite my complaining, they do look OK - better than I thought they would come out. Word of advice to any who go either this or the Italeri L6 tank kit: really consider going with some AM "shoes", or take PLENTY of Valium or whatever gentles your soul and allow about 3x as much time and frustration as one should for, say, a Magic-Track set for a Dragon Pz. I.

Now it's on to some details (scratching a tilt and frames, put those side-steps on, add on some tools and jerry-cans and a tow-rope, toss in a little personal gear), paint on a couple of insignia, add some fade washes, and dust it up! Oh, and yeah, touch up a few little bloopers, like that black patch on that front hatch... I hope this all will happen tonite .

Here it is, with tracks (PS: pretty much emulating the vehicle in the instructions pic behind - generally confirmed by a few photos).





Comments and suggestions are of course WELCOME and desired!

Cheers! Bob

Hey Bob,

Looking good !! I see you don't paint your wheels standard black
(very common for modelers). What color do you use?
I use Vallejo panzer aces color rubber. Because you have to buy this color in a set, i searched for a ''standard'' color and found that greygreen (also available in the air series) was the color that comes close. I sometimes add a small amount of black to darken the greygreen .

@ Steph- I like the T-60 . I want to make this tank in a winter camouflage near the Moscow front in 1941

Fellow threat heads,

I have finished the building proses...On to the painting proses (thanks for the tips bob)





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