My new project with all this time off is Tamiya's Type 16 in 1/48th scale. This is one of their newer 1/48th kits and the quality is excellent. My favorite feature is the one piece main gun barrel.I will be building this out of the box, with some slight details added by me extra. This is my first modern AFV model and am excited to try something new!
The suspension is quite detailed, but is not overly complicated to put together. The instructions call for this whole undercarriage assembly to be JGSDF Olive Drab (XF-74). However, I do not have it on hand, and the shipping will take several weeks, so I will settle for Olive Green (XF-58)
The main segments coming together. I plan on painting them while apart like this, and then gluing them together. The glue points are out of the way, so there should not be any mess to worry about. Turret is well detailed, and the kit came with decals for all the vision ports which I thought was cool.
Now I felt like the machine gun needed a little more detail. This is the before picture. I wanted to drill out the cooling shroud holes as well as make a gap between the gun's mount and the barrel, as there is supposed to be a gap there looking at reference pictures. Before:
After: I used a small pin vise to drill out the holes, and an Xacto blade to help clean them up. Same with cutting out the gap underneath the barrel. I may plan on scratching building a charging handle for the machine gun as well. (But that might be too adventurous)
I also hollowed out the barrel on the .50 cal as well.
Thanks for reading, and more updates to come! Also, this kit came with rubber/vinyl tires instead of plastic. Any do's/dont's with these? I have never used or weathered them before. Thank you!
Joe
