actually two days left Karl. I dont go back to work till tuesday at 6pm. I started it friday after work

Matt dont you have that beautiful T-55 to finish
for the plumbing on the drums I replaced the crummy little copper wire with .020 stainless lockwire pre bent into shape. and it was still a pita. and nope no extras

primed and ready for some colour

Hunt it down and build it Karl, it's one of the best kits Tamiya ever made, the moulding on top hull is fantastic, and OOB it builds into a very good model, a very very underated kit, and gets alot of flak over accuracy which in my opinion it does not deserve.

If you do a money spent, time spent, fun gained ratio on this kit, its a winner.

Orders received Cap'n !

got some work done on the tracks

primed with tamiya Kure grey



then a wash of Mig's brown mixed with thier rust effects


I am probably going to have to do another coat on these

well I got some paint on it tonite.

the skirts masked with parafilm


first a base coat of the olive green. I used the Valejo air paint mix for post war russian green. 50/50 mix of 017 green and 024 khaki. that gave me an almost exact match to tamiya nato green
I found an old bottle of aeromaster faded olive green in the paint stash, i just poured it in untill the colour looked ok




preshading.. wow does that look stupid



then with the final colour





it looks a lot more yellow in the pictures for some reason. anyway a filter and some washes will change that .

I may have to ammend the title of this thread to "3 days for assembly and paint"
I do want to get this done but I dont want to ruin the paint by rushing.

Great work!
Really like the colour and the effect of preshading
Look forward to the following steps and the finished work
Yang

That is some top-level pre-shading right there Dylan. I think that has come out very nicely.

thanks yang

I have seen the future and its shiney.
here is where the built grinds to a standstill. the future needs a MINIMUM of 6 hours before i can put on the 2 tiny decals. then i need to seal them after they dry, and give that coat at least 24 hours before i start putting washes etc on it.






the lower parts of the hull and running gear can be worked on but for the most part all that is left is an overspray of dust. and the tracks only need some drybrushing and they are done


so can you build a tank in three days? almost.
I still have tomorrow off so we will see how far i get by the end of my "weekend"
D

You achieved a real nice look with your green

Dylan, very nice pre shading and color! Very well catched the look of that green.

Go ahead!

Andreas

I got the stickers on today, if you look close you can even see em.



here. let me zoom in



afer those dried for a bit i shot a bit of future to seal them. now i wait while it dries

Tick tock, tick tock,

Somewhere, a clock is ticking,......

well the clock is running down for sure, it wont be 100% done but it will be close.
the running gear and lower hull have sprayed with a layer of dust. and the upper hull and turret have been given a wash of raw umber mixed with olive green. the track will get some highlights then its ready to go on.

getting closer

got the flat coat on. and i found a figure that i might use. I'm still not too sure how it fits

I was looking for some reference for weathering and i noticed that in about half the pictures of T-72's the smoke grenade launcher caps have been painted green. so in the interests of accuracy and laziness I am going to leave mine green





also i came across a picture on a news site that had this labeled as a kenyan forces tank in action at the Somali border. It looks a lot like a model to me.
a good one at that




anyway on to my tank

got some drybrushing done, then added the driver and his hatch.
lessee whats left to do
add exhaust staining/rust
paint the lights
add the spare track links on the rear hull
some more dust on the lower hull
finish the turret machine gun

well I think I am going to stick a fork in this one and call it done.I still need a couple of figures for the turret hatches though.
I had fun building it, and i hope you all had fun watching.
let me know what you think good or bad






















I am happy how the exhaust and turret MG turned out

Very nice... I just purchased that kit, but it will take me a lot, I want to buy some aftermarket goodies, like tracks and PE parts... At least an Eduard Zoom set or something to replace the fender boxes' straps... And of course an aftermarket barrel, I heard that the kit's is a bit short. Thanks for sharing. Best regards.

José.

Dylan,

really cool and amazing effort in such a short time! You´re the man!

All the best,
Andreas

Well, official consensus of the contingent here in Omaha is...

Looks good!

Nicely done.

thanks all, I had fun building it.
Now if I could only decide what to build next

Great build !!
What are your options for the next build ?
Reducing stash ? New kits ? Unfinished projects ?

For such a short building/finishing time this is a complete stunner. Weathering is subtle and not overdone- allows the details to show through nicely.
I think you really knocked this one out of the park Dylan, congrats.

As Karl said, considering the short build time (lets call it 4 days instead of 3), its a fantastic job, looks very good.

Very subtle dry-brushing which is good, dry-brushing got a bad reputation and fell out of fashion due to people doing it very badly and ending up with all that stark, massive contrast nonsense.

The dust misting on the side skirts looks good as well, breaks them up a bit and adds some life to them.