I am building an AFV M-10. I have noticed so much flash, excess plastic, and some of the fits are tough and need cutting and filing.

Is this common for AFV kits?

Plus it is my first time using photo etched parts and wow...that is tough. I was laughing trying to build the gear shifts using these parts. Holy Mackerel!

photo-etch can be a lesson in futility S.B. You need the right tools, lighting and glue and A LOT of patience!

Upload some pics. I have an Academy M10 duckbill that is partially built. I just picked up the Aber interior set for it. Hopefully within the next couple months I can get back to work on it. AFV kit, do you mean AFV Club kit??? I have a couple of their kits and some of them like the M59 Longtom and the M115 have a little flash on a couple of the parts. The M113 and the Sd.Kfz.9 Nebelkraftwagen had no flash on any of the parts. The M10 kit could possibly be an old kit or something, I don’t know. Good luck with the photo etch.

S.B.

You should start a build blog as I'm sure there are more who would watch the progress. I was thinking of getting an M 10 or an M 36 from AFV Club this coming weekend and will watch your progress with interest.

Steve...I am kicking myself for not taking a picture last night before I primed the interior. I always see pictures of progress with regards to photo etched and resin add ons and have been very impressed even before the first coat. The thing about the M-10 is you have to finish off the whole interior before you put the hull and turret on. SO last night I did finish the interior including the photo etched part and thought...

"Hey...this looks just like the pics on Armorama."

Then I primed it with Tamiya gray primer.

Another thing I noticed that after I did all of the detailing with photo-etched parts I checked on the hull fit and a lot of details will be deep in the interior. You will need a flashlight! I am not complaining as I am having fun doing it and learning about photo-etched building. I actually laughed after spending a good 5 hours adding photo-etching in the interior and checking the hull fit to see the details pretty much concealed.

I will take some pics and post them up here.

Yes it is AFV Club kit. Lots of work. The date on box is year 2000 so it is an 8 year old kit.

It's always good to actually compare the PE replacement part with the plastic part it is intended to replace. Often-times, the PE two-dimensional part lacks the plastic ability to represent thre-dimension items, such as hand-wheels, shift levers and knobs, etc. My personal experience is that I'll use about 50 % of the PE, and sharpen-up the provided plastic parts. Your call. I'm 52, and the exercise in futility in handling some of the microscopic PE leads me to improve my prep work and painting to compensate.

I agree. I have matched every PE part with the plastic parts and have also come to the conclusion that PE parts aren't always the best. Some PE parts will remain unused and I am going with the kit parts. In the case of this particular kit there were not any kit supplied gear shifts so the PE did give the model that extra feature. As time consuming as it was the kit now has something that it would not have had w/o PE.