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Building a B1 Centauro

The second series turret
The Centauro of the second series has a sligthly different turret from the previous one. It has a different type of smoke grenades launchers (80mm) and they are mounted not at the sides of the turret but externally in front of the railings at the back of it. This is a minor modification who took not more than a couple of hours to be carried out using plasticard sheet, bars and tubing. I had to remove one of the two cylindrical stowage boxes on the side of turret too. The complicated task was to correcly reproduce the extra armour plates that all of the second series turrets have. The first attempt I made involved the use of copper foil, but after spending a couple of days doing them for both sides of the turret  I went back to the drwaing table to come up with a new idea. After another day or so I decided to create the prototype of a single armour plate and to make a mold out of it and then to cast resin copies. The prototype (actually I made three of different dimensions) were made out of 0.5mm tick plasticard sheet on which I glued some silver paper from the inside of the cigarette's packs, that in my view was the only one thing with the right scale pattern I was looking for. I also created a template to keep in place the bits and bites of the prototype during its assembly, and  I completed it with a section of plasticard tubing to match the armor plate profile.
Once I completed the three extra armour plates plates prototypes, I passed them on to a friend of mine, Siro Marzetti, who made the molds and the resin copies of the plates (I run out of silycon rubber for the molds and time was every day more tight too) and in a couple of days he managed to give me something like 30 resin plates, ten per prototype. Thanks a lot Siro!!!
Once received the plates I started to work to the armour plates supports to be installed on the on the turret. This was quite a quick task to be performed using 0.5mm copper wire and a pair of pliers to bend it to the right shape. Bits an bites of plasticard strips and tubing gave the supports the right look and feel. I then started to cut and shape the individual extra armour plates. I needed ten of them to complete the project and only two of them were sharing the same dimensions and shapes. All the others had to be shaped and dimensioned individually with the aid of a motor tool and a set of files.