Hi all!
Here´s a few first pics of my T-20 Komsomoletsh armoured tractor. The kit is from AER Moldova, and it´s a true piece of junk. I could live with flash and sink marks, but the plastic is so bad that some of the parts brake when cutting them off from the sprue. It also melts very easily. The only possible glue to use was CA glue.
The fit is terrible. The first thing to do is to forget about the attaching guides in the parts. You can see in the picture those nice cabin seams that had to be puttied. Each seam had 1,5-2mm gap...
The instructions had part numbers, the sprues didn´t.

I made my own detail set of wine bottle neck foil, copper wire and spare parts. I added hatch handles, rebuilt the lights and the MG, added some rivets here and there and replaced all axles with copper wire. Passenger seats required some woodwork.

Here it is, just before priming. Note the melted plastic in the cabin area:


Needless to mention, all the stuff in the back is out of proportion...


The wheels have been cleaned, other parts (some broken already), are straight from the sprue. You get the picture about this kit´s quality:


Despite of all this it has been a nice build. At least you won´t feel sorry for anything you do with it. Everything you do is a big plus!
I´m gonna display this vehicle with a 45-mm AT gun on a simple base.

All comments are welcome!



Toni

That's anice build you've done !
You nearly make me want to build mine... well nearly...

that took patience to get that far with it. i probaly would have put that one on the bottom shelf and let it collect dust. hang in there has that rare armor look to it dont think i've ever seen one of these. have to look at my reference poster. nice scratch and patch later TURRETTOAD 13 OUT.

So far it looks quite good! Hope to see the progress soon.
Ciao

Toni,

For a tough kit, your's looks great! I too struggled thru this kit a number of years ago (posted on my Soviet 120mm mortar page), but despite all it's flaws, it was a fun and enjoyable kit to build. Of course, I had no reference to go by when building mine, so I just took a guess at it. Came out good enough for me.

Keep us posted on it's progress... I for one will look forward to seeing that completed!

Toni:

I respect your perseverance with this build.

Building a lousy kit is so frustrating, and the temptation to put it back in the box and on the shelf (where it belongs) is always there.

So you've really accomplished something here---congrats!

Steve

Toni,

I'm looking at the same kit in its Zis-30 incarnation for the Barbarossa build, but resources are hard to come by. Did you find any references, or are you pretty much building it out of the box?

Mika

Thanks for the encouragement!

KKeefe,
your beautiful Komso was actually one of my references.. I like it a lot!

Mika, try http://www.andreaslarka.net/lighttanks.html for reference. There are the only few good pics I came by. One T-20 is located in Suomenlinna war museum.
One more reference pic from a museum leaflet:




Cheers,
Toni

That is so cool, have seen some rare box in the store with that tractor, work with that now you hear, we justhave to see it completed

Was reading a bit in Missing links earlier today and some guys were talking about a Russian magazine and they mentioned.....
yes, I bought a copy and no, there are no other photos of the Csaba.

Some of the more interesting photos are: interior shots of a German command bus, good coverage of the T-20 komsomolets tractor and russian language, color maps.



Link to article;
http://www.network54.com/Hide/Forum/thread?forumid=47207&messageid=1052473244

Might be worth checking out this magazine if references are so hard to find on this little beast.

Stick with it Envar ..... im sure you´ll pull it off.

Looking good Envar, sometimes these problem kits are the most rewarding whan we get them done.

I look forward to seeing more

Thanks friends,
time to post some progress. It´s all primed now.
I built a 45mm AT gun (by ICM) to give the tiny Komso some purpose. The figure is there just for scale:



The gun is built almost OTB, and it´s fairly good kit if you ignore the thickness of the armor plates....
Komso will wear dark green paint scheme with Finnish cross insignias, the gun will be painted with the standard Finnish 3-colour camo scheme. I will try some pre-shading with these, examples of that technique in this site look excellent!
This feels like a fast build, I try to keep it that way and get this finished pretty soon...


Toni

I like the wheels of your canon very much !
This is what you call a Knock Knock cannon, because when one of it's shells hits a tanks armor, the crew says : "who's knocking at the door ?"

I have the feeling that this is going to be a very nice dio again !

VERY NICE MODEL ENVAR AND EXCELLENT WORK - CONGRATULATIONS
ROBERTO

I know your pain. I have that kit as well. Have yet to finish it.

The dio is forming. I got a nice picture frame for a base for five euros.
The situation is definitely relaxed, one of the guys tells a story or a joke and the others listen carefully. Or maybe he is showing them a picture of his girl?
Gotta love those Hornet resin heads. So intesive expressions!
This scene takes place somewhere far from the battle, maybe at training grounds. There could be a corner of a hangar or something visible and some barrels and repair equipment.






Later,
Toni

Toni,

You really like those little AER hunks of junk huh? :-) So do I though since I have 5 of their kits sitting on the shelves at home.

Seriously though, You are doing a great job on this one. That is a pretty hard kit to build and yours is coming out very nice indeed.

What did you use for the wooden seat backs, popsickle sticks?

Adam,
I don´t consider myself much of a fan of these AER kits, I just seem to have many of them.. I have bought them every now and then and I have only paid a few euros, mostly from people who wanted to get rid of them!
I thought that now that I´m into tanks for the first time in my life I like to minimize the loss if something goes terribly wrong. Hmm...there is no logic in there. #:-) I could use my hours of modeling some other way, like building an excellent Tamiya kit and concentrating on all the painting and fun. Instead I scratchbuild half of the parts myself and struggle night after night with a no-good kit. And I´m not even a Buddhist. Actually I just finished a four-hour session rebuilding the suspension from scratch after braking every single piece of it while removing the parts from sprue. AER seems to use more plastic on the sprue than the kit.

I think I bought this Komsomolets after seeing one in a museum; I had never seen anything like it and it was just too cute(here we go again!) to be discarded...The AER kit was the only one I could get my hands into.

For the seats I used free(stolen) sticks from my local cafe. The thickness is just right.

Pictures of the suspension coming up tomorrow. (Like anybody would actually be interested in it... )

Toni

You're 100% wrong there. I for one am certainly interested in it. I have that kit, some Modelkasten Komsomolyets tracks, and the ICM 45mm all sitting around waiting for me to finally pick them up and build them into a little vinette myself so I am curious to see what you end up doing with the kit (it's funny that you did the exact same thing as I had planned with the ICM 45mm). Besides me, I think you have quite a following of people here on the site that really enjoy looking at your consistently nice work.

It's funny that you mentioned that you thought that you would buy the cheap kits and work on them because that is exactly what I have done until recently. I didn't want to ruin a $50 kit, but now I realize that the $50 kit is significantly easier to build and will help me get better faster. For me though the issue wasn't in my builds so much as with my finishing techniques and I realized that building them up faster would help me get better at the painting faster (since I was able to paint them more frequently). On the other hand, taking a piece of crap like that AER T-20 and the AER T-38 (hell, any AER kit) and turning it into a jewel is much more satisfying don't you think?

Adam,

spoken like a prodigy!

:-) :-) :-)

Toni

Toni,

I am sorry for the late reply, this is once again a testimony of your superb building skills. I am not familiar with the vehicle, but looked real interesting. The last few pics are awesome. Now can't see them painted. Good work as usual Toni. (++)

Suspension:

Each piece contains four strips of plastic glued with CA, wine bottle foil was used for details. Still some boltheads to be added.

Frustrating but very rewarding once you´ve done it...



Next: track assembly, priming and then pre-shading...

Toni

Toni,

That's fantastic!! You've got far more patience with your's than I ever did with mine. Please do keep us posted on it's progress!

Awesome!!

Tracks!
T-20 comes with plastic tracks, there are two long sections and some single links for wheels. Actually the tracks seem to be the same as in T-38, along with some other parts like the drive sprockets. Funny enough, drive sprockets are misshaped for BOTH of these vehicles...
I assembled the tracks with CA glue and it was very straightforward. I left the drive sprocket loose so I was able to adjust the teeth simply by turning the wheel in to right position. Here the soft plastic helps a lot. The long upper section was easy to bend so it was possible to have nice amount of sag in the tracks. The front return wheel was too high and the track wouldn´t go through the small space between the chassis and wheel, so I lowered the wheel a few mm. I have also added some boltheads to cover the holes in the suspension.
This one track took about two hours to complete.





Toni

Envar - This is a great thread. Absolutly wonderful stuff. You have got the best taste for wonderful unique subjects.
I've seen your dioramas and they come out great. I personally like the figure with his knee up on top (as in the first photo). His body angle looks more natural. I don't know how the 'interaction' is affected though? Just my opinion

Really cool stuff