The D7 tractor has been produced since 1938 at the Caterpillar industries and is part of a family of which is in the medium type. Being produced in various configurations and models, it has been used both for civil purpose and in the army.
The D7 tractor is capable of a 25ton work due to it's diesel de 200hp Cat 3306T engine.
Miniart's model reproduces with high detail this classic tractor in it's more simple configuration as a prime mover. The model is made out of quite a lot of pieces and builds itself without complications thanks to a manual that shows the steps clearly and amusingly. The excellent detail of the pieces is constant and soem of them, as the multiple levers, are so delicate that will require all of our care to handle without breaking them.
The model has a lot of details that are hidden once the building is finished, however, Miniart offer us the possibility of showing most of them due to the multiple parts that can be put aside or simple fixed in different positions.



The engine is quite impressive due to the many components, I decided to start painting very soon before I could be unable to reach some parts with ease.




I used an Olive drab primer to paint the different elements as I added them.






The tracks is the most boring part of the building, each link is made out of four pieces that you must align properly and fix with car in order to let them articulate and move freely. This process will allow us to palce them perfectly atthe boogies and reproduce the typical sagging on the upper links.



After painting all the parts with the olive drab primer, I applied some filters with the airbrush with lighter tones to produce some lights.





I painted the chipping with a mix of dark brown and black colours using the stencilling technique.




For the towing cable I used one made by myself with copper wire twisted with the Dremmel tool.
http://www.fcmodeltips.com/2013/06/cables-de-arrastre-towing-cables.html



I used many pigments over an acrilyc wash moistened surface to create a rust texture and colour look.




The graphite pigment is perfect to imitate the polished metal.



The accumulation of different earth colour pigments is perfect to imitate a dry mud texture overthe tracks, just fix them with white spirit or ant special pigments fixer.



I added a Life magazine and a "mines" wood sign to break the general olive drab tone and created a simple base with a couple of anti tank obstacles to show the finished model.

Great-looking dozer! What do you mean when you mention "stencil technique" for chipping? I've not heard of that before.

Nice tractor Federico!

I'm still waiting for the Armored Cab version. And as far as I saw in your tread, I cam buy it without any "fear".

Great!

Cheers!

Marco

As with Mirror Models' D7, you don't see the word 'Caterpillar' anywhere...copyright issues. But, with the wire rope motor/hub, you see 'Hyster'.

Oh yea...nice looking work!!!

You can see caterpillar written on the engineblock.

Outstanding work

My bad... ...and I'm an Inspector in real life!

Thank you guys for your words

mark, stencilling is a very simple and old technique that consists in using a brush ( I prefer and old one ) and hit the surface of the model with a perpendicular movement, the key here, as with the drybrush is the amount of paint, not as much as with regular painting and not as little as with the drybrush, it works for many effects but it's a bit difficult to control, I advice to practice before with an old modelor a toy.

I will post a tutorial in my blog soon.

best regards

Federico

Fantastic job. I'm getting the dozer version but I hope mine turns out as good as that.

I'm slowly working on the Mirror D7 Dozer right now. I'm impressed with the detail, but unimpressed with the sprue layout and numbering. I've got about ten hours into it and only have one side of the engine done. I spend more time trying to locate parts and dry-fitting than building. Without the Ampersand D7 book I wouldn't as far along as I am. I doubt my results wil be as realistic as this, but I will enjoy the process regardless.

I'm glueing my tractors engine too in the moment, but it's horroble to clean up this very small Miniart parts without losing or breaking them...




Michael

I'm not cleaning up some of the smallest parts. You'd almost need a microscope to see them.