hi guys this is my 1st post here. i am mostly scale model aircraft builder but also have some interest in armour as well. served my army days with a M113 battalion.
this is trumpeter's 1/35 offering of the t-54a.
i bought this kit for dirt cheap, and it was supposedly a static version of a motorised kit. it is typical early trumpeter, horrendous flash, sink marks, ejector pins marks..
there are many extra parts in the set, because trumpeter made the mould for other series, such as type 59, t-55, type 69 tanks. only very little difference in extra sprues and small parts.




check out the muzzle flash.. its all over the place too on other parts


so i began .. and off i go with the upper hull 1st. many little pieces of flash and mould lines had to be sanded off, and the little parts that go on top too had lots of mould lines in them. plus there was a slight problem with the rear radiators, that need to be filled with putty later.





this is clearly not a kit for beginner noobs, i wonder why being the most used tank in the world and involved in so many recent wars, afv or dragon havent come out with a 1/35 kit of this tank. the only available now is the tamiya t-55 and the esci version, which require some work to remake into a t-54 proper, or the MIG conversion sets to make the burnout iraqi t-55 diorama..

I have one of these also, I shall be closely following your progress, looks good so far did the mesh for the engine deck come with the kit? Mine does not have it. You convinced me to start mine .
Best wishes
Charlie

the mesh is provided as seperate piece of black nylon mesh. that i cut according to the length given by the instruction and then super glue it onto the frame. it is similiar to the mesh given by other trumpter kits, and some tamiya kits. if you have spares from those, you can use it too. hope that helps. anyway this tank will be done in a little diorama, but i have to get working on all the faults of the kit first..

Nice work Kevin! What type of tracks are they?

Martyn

I build the same kit some years ago, it was a nice build, I got a AM gun barrel from Jordi Rubio, it was a nice piece.
Plenty of extras too, it is a nice kit. SKIF got a "B" version out too, but it's a little hard to find around here.

Interesting project, I'm working on that kit too, but I'll use spare wheels and will convert it into a Peruvian T-55 model 1970. You're right, the flash is awful and there are some fitting issues, even the plastic only can be glued with cyanoacrilate. There are lots of accuracy issues as well, but that part if for another thread. Good luck with your project, I'll have an eye on it. Best regards.

José

the hull is made. too many gaps to fill later on.




badly misfitting driver wheel housing, obviously intended for a motorised model.



just look at the flash that need to be cleared in the hole for the road wheel suspension to be inserted.



the turret too, is horrendously moulded. i intend to replace the hand grips, and the hatch bolts with wire and brass rods.

they give rubber tracks, and they are slightly warped and react only to heat and supeglue (cyanoacrylate)

and the most laughable part are the toolboxes.. it is moulded with sprues that jut from angular parts. dfficult to remove



some of the smaller toolboxes need their alignment pins modified to fit!!


and here is the great joke! the ammobox needs to be mounted on the flat surface, and there is locating pins to help. but then the locating pins are moulded on the WRONG side of the box(ie the visible side) so they have to be removed. more work for nothing..




testing the fit of the hull and upper hull. more putty!


- edit. i just realise there is a subforum here for modern afvs of other nations. if i am building this soviet desgined tank in the livery of a People's Liberation Army scheme, would it qualify here or will i have to shift my posts to that thread. sorry, i'm very very new to this forum..

Nice progress, thanks for answering my question!

Martyn

I recommend you to follow this steps:

http://www.ruedasycadenas.com.ve/articulos_mejoras/tips_det_soldadura_hull/art_detalles_soldadura_T-55.htm

http://www.ruedasycadenas.com.ve/articulos_mejoras/tips_det_guardabarro/art_detalles_guardabarro_T-55.htm

In Spanish, but I think you can follow the images, I'll use those tips for my T-55 build. Best regards.

José.

Nice work so far there Kevin. Tough going having to clean up the flash and fix the molding discrepancies, but makes it that much more of a challenge and will be appreciated more, that's for sure.

Keep at it, looking forward to seeing more. Cheers -

Tim

while the paint and the superglue dries on the other stuff, i puttied and sanded down. primed the t-54

putty round the wheel rim, and the rear hull with mix of tamiya and epoxy putty





filled up the holes of the road wheels with putty too. though they will not be visible in the finished model..



priming revealed some major gaps, i wont fill all of them..

mounted the chassis hull to the upper deck. it is not pretty. the resulting gap was filled by expoxy, sanded, and then refined by another round of puttying with tamiya and sand.





mounted all the small little parts today




putty and sealed the cupola hatches..



and of course, putty the nasty ejector pin marks.

mounted all the small parts, primed it in tamiya medium grey!!




and, what if i told you, in secret, i have been building 4 ?? so can you imagine all that headache of fitting and sanding, multiply 4 times??:lol:



preshade in black...



and camoflage paint scheme sprayed. still lots to touch up because of overspray.


now, i'm thinking, what kind of joker will do 4 t-54s in different camoflage schemes?? the answer lies out there....

now to do the roadwheels.. all 64 of them.

so i cut and glued the road wheels of the t-54. each side of a t-54 has 6 road wheels, 1 driver and 1 sprocket wheel. trumpeter gives all of them in 2 halves. which means per tank, i have 32 halves. 4 tanks? 128 wheel halfs. and they are BLOODY difficult to make. all the excess flash, mould seam lines make gundams look like a precision assembled swiss gold carat watch..



but anyway, i ploughed through. and amassed them for group spraying session in blackish green


in addition, i casted 3 extra sets of 105mm guns to replace the 100mm type given in the kit.


i also added muzzle covers and mantlet covers from tissue and white glue.



the mantlet was nesscary as i lifted the barrel elevation to 15 deg more than the kit, which was straight ahead.


i also use the same method to do the HMG gun cover


next update?, 8 rubber tracks get the treatment!

A few years ago, when I was just getting back into modelling, I bought several Trumpeter 1/35 T-54s and T-55s from eBay very cheaply, to practice on. I had a lot of fun putting them together, and surfing the web looking for interesting markings and paint schemes. Good luck with your kit.

Hi kevin,

I know where you're going with this, one would have done, what are you going to use for a figure?

Craig

a converted 1/35 general eisenhower from tamiya. ( i needed the pants and shirt, and i am not to good with figure sculpting..)

Blimey. Either these kits are worse than I thought, or ...

I've heard that these old kits are made of ABS instead of polystyrene. As ABS is actually acrylonitrile butadiene styrene, I'd have guessed that polystyrene cement would work on it, but it would seem not. How about Pro-Weld? That says on the label that it's suitable for ABS - has anyone tried it on a Trumpeter T-54 to see if it works?

I ask because one of the many odd things in my stash is their Tiran 4/5 kit ...

typeing error! should be 5 roadwheels.

the plastic material is not ABS, but it is still more brittle than the common polystyrene plastic. might be a cheaper grade mix of both..

Ah well, look on the bright side - now you only have 112 wheels to do! If I count the sprockets, idlers, and return rollers, my 14 Leopards make for a total of 616 little wheels. I may not do them all at once ...

If I remember, I'll test Pro-Weld on the Tiran over the weekend and we'll see what happens.

Kevin I thought you were a brave man taking on one of these kits, then I found out it was four!!!
You are doing a very good job so far, I like the PLA camo schemes.

It wouldn't have anything to do with a certain "Square" and a young man standing in front of and stopping a column of approaching tanks would it ?

Alan

I couldn't possibly say Alan, although this has been discussed before.

Craig
Singapore did get more news coverage than the rest of us