G'day everyone,

Well work has finally settled down, as has a bad back and I can finally make a start on a kit I received for review, that I have been anxiously waiting to build, as well as get back to another build blog on the Aeroscale side of things.

It's the Academy 1:35 scale, T-34/76 747(r) in German service.
This looks to be a fantastic kit and marks my first return to an armour kit in 1:35 scale, since my Tamiya Merkava way back in 1983!

I'll be doing a build blog, where I will talk about this kit from the perspective of an everyday modeler and not an AFV expert, which I hope will be interesting to some on here. When its all done, I'll also do a feature article on the kit.

I've already made a start building the kit, but to finish off this first entry, here is a shot of the box top and the box contents.




Dan

Hello Dan,
Welcome back to the hobby! You have selected a nice subject, and the kit does not seem complex.

I will be reading your comments to this model, I have always liked captured vehicles...

Thanks for the welcome Carlos and yes, it is shaping up to be a fun build!

Dan

Opening the box and first impressions are very positive. All the parts are sharply moulded and there is no flash present that I can see. The plastic is moulded in a light yellow, not dissimilar to German Dunkgelb.

Many of the sprue are packed individually, except for those where there are duplicate sprues, which are packed together. A piece of string is in one bag, which I later learn is for the tow ropes and a small bag with some photo etch is included to make the tanks main engine grill.



Decals are packed in their own bag and appear very nice, with sharp printing and minimal carrier film.



One thing that immediately jumps out at you, is that Academy have included three complete sets of road wheels in the box! You get one steel wheel design and two different rubber wheel designs. The wheels look fantastic and certainly many, will welcome the unused wheels in their spares box for other projects.



The tracks seem a nice compromise, between the detail of individual links and the convenience of rubber tracks, with the main runs of track top and bottom moulded in one piece and individual links moulded to go around the drive and idler wheels. Detail looks to be very good on these and will look great with some careful painting. Nice.



The instructions are in two parts. There is a multipage booklet for the assembly of the kit and a seperate sheet depicting the four different markings and colour schemes included in the kit.



At this point I have to make a choice of what version of the tank to build and settle on option 1 which is a T-34 in the 6th Panzer Division in 1943. This is the colour scheme and markings depicted on the box art too.



Overall impressions is that I could be looking at a Tamiya kit, but with more parts. So far the kit is looking like it could be a lot of fun to build

Next post we start on the build itself!

Step one involved the assembly of the lower hull, which is made up of three main parts and additional parts to represent the Christie springs which are the coil springs that sit inside of the road wheels. The solution Academy came up with to represent this is something I thought was really clever.



First the coil springs are glued into their own cavity which will be glued on the inside of each hull side. Giving a very realistic depth to the springs. Lining the springs up correctly is crucial as they will later be attached to arms that hold the road wheels. To ensure the correct alignment, Academy has put three raised dots on the inner surface of the cavity. One dot is less raised then the other two.



This first dot is what you align with the mounting point hole moulded into the end of the spring. The back of the springs is moulded hollow and this allows you to use the other two more raised dots to align the rest of the spring at the correct angle. A simple, but highly effective way to ensure the springs are exactly where they need to be. If you are using a glue like Tamiya’s extra thin, you can just hold the springs with your fingers in the correct position and use capillary action to get the glue to flow around each spring and hold it in place.

Once these are assembled you glue these subassemblies inside of the hull. To assist you with this, you have indentations for the pieces on the inside floor and also raised lines on the sides. When done you have a lovely representation of the coil springs, so typical of many Russian tanks. Nice one Academy!



At this point of the assembly I wanted to leave everything to dry, but I was concerned about alignment of the hull, seeing it was made up of so many parts. To put my mind at ease I bought forward two parts from step 2. First I glued in a T shaped piece that goes inside the hull and helps reinforce and align the side and bottom. I also elected to assembled and glue in place the lower front hull, just to be sure I had everything aligned ok, before the glue dried.

At this point everything was lining up perfectly and the model was sitting flat and square on my workbench. So I decided to put aside the hull for the day and let it dry thoroughly before recommencing work on it.

One thing I noticed while checking the alignment of the pieces, was the nice engraving of detail on the bottom of the hull.



Next post, I finish off the assembly of the lower hull and make a start at preparing the wheels.

I like Academy kits. The newer ones are getting better. A little more attention to detail & they will surpass the big wigs.You have to build a few to see for yourself.

About those bottom of the hull details; it’s kind of funny but the smaller of the two round access plates (I think it allowed for draining the transmission oil) SHOULD be flush with the bottom of the hull while the larger of the two should sit above it (detail wise they’re bass ackwards).
The little strips they’ve placed in front of the fuel/oil tank drain plugs and round covers are, I’m pretty sure, a post war modification (I seem to recall seeing these mostly on Polish operated T-34’s).

Also be aware that no wartime T-34-76 will have the extra track links on the glacis, I don’t even think the Germans added anything like them to their beutepansers. That was a mod that started with the SU-85 and didn’t make it into T-34 production until later batches of the -85. After the war many -76's got them as they were rebuilt/upgraded.

Hi Mark,
Thanks for the info on the T-34. Very interesting. I probably won't bother modifying the bottom of the hull, but the spare track on the front was an interesting observation and a very obvious one. I looked at what photos I could find and as you say, none of them had the track on the front.

Well thats one less part I will have to paint!

Indeed. This has been a really fun build and its no more difficult really then a Tamiya kit. They are certainly getting better.

Dan

Ok. Assembly of the lower hull is done and everything went together very well.

The axles are keyed so they are easy to position correctly so all your road wheels will sit flat on the tank. No moving suspension on this kit I’m afraid.



Here I have the drive and idler wheels on just for a test fit. I decided to paint these separately to the rest of the tank. The springs showing through as they do is a very nice touch to the kit and I think really adds to the detail.



Next on to the wheels.

Step three in the construction is all about the wheels. I decided I wanted to paint and weather the road wheels separately for this build, as I wanted to model a little bit of wear on the steel wheels in particular.

This was also the point where I had to decide what colour scheme I would choose from the four options Academy includes in the kit. My choice was the one depicted on the box top, minus a couple of items. Specifically the light and the front spare track (thanks Mark for the info on this).



Academy includes in the kit three complete sets of wheels in different designs used on the T-34. You get two rubber rimmed designs and one steel wheel design. Academy also includes a suggestion of what combination of wheel types you should use for each option in the kit. I'm not sure how historically accurate these suggestions are, as I couldn't find anything to validate their choices, but I went ahead with their recommendations anyway.



I had to settle on what paint I was going to use for the kit too at this point and decided I wanted to try out LifeColors Easy 3 system, that gives you a basic modulation effect. I’ve never done modulation on a tank kit and only used LifeColor paints once before, but hey you have to start somewhere.

Here is the paint set I got.



The LifeColor paint from my online supplier is actually pretty good value. I can get a pot of LifeColor paint which is 22ml, for about the same price as a Tamiya or Mr Hobby pot which is only 10ml, so you can see the value there. LifeColor also have a good range of colours, so its seemed a worthwhile project to investigate how they would work on this kit.

First impressions is that LifeColor paint seems quite a bit different to say Tamiya, which among others things is thicker paint and also marked as being flammable! On the other hand the LifeColor paint smells more like acrylic paint you would get from an art store or even the acrylic house paint you might get from your hardware store.

I’d read that it is a bit fussy about the choice of thinner and the thinning ratio you use with it. I decided to try a couple of different thinners I had on hand and see how the paint reacted to them, before I painted the wheels. I mixed the paint in a disposable medicine cup, which is my standard practice, as I like to check the paints consistency and adjust as needed and I just don’t have the confidence to do all that in the airbrush itself.

First I tried Tamiya’s own X20A thinner and immediately found they just didn’t get along! The paint got very thick and would have made a thorough mess of my airbrush if I had just poured them both straight in.

Next I tried Ultimate Modelling Products thinner and this did work ok, but I couldn’t help wondering if it gave the best finish the paint could do. Many folks online suggested you could use plain tap water or better still LifeColor’s own thinner for the best result. A quick check online showed that LifeColor thinner, like the paint, was very reasonably priced, so I just went ahead and ordered a bottle of their thinner and airbrush cleaner. I had invested this much money and time in the brand, I might as well give it a fair shake.

While waiting for my order to arrive, I primed the wheels using Ammo by Mig’s Grey Polymer primer. I do see some people online have some real problems with this primer and I did too, when I first used it, but since I don’t like throwing stuff away, I persevered with it and figured out how to use it and get a consistent result.

Here is the secret I found. First shake the bottle a good two minutes. Done that? Good. Do it again.

You can see why you need to shake the bottle so well, if you look at the photo below. The primer probably hasn't been used for a couple of weeks at this point and you can see its ingredients have completed separated.



Next spray a very light mist coat on the model to break the surface tension. Let it dry a few minutes and then follow up with one or two slightly heavier coats. You are done.



While it sounds like a lot of hassle, I think it takes longer to describe in words, then to do and I find this primer dries nicely, can be sanded and is easier to clean out of my airbrush then a lacquer based primer. It also doesn’t have the smell issue that I find with the lacquer primers. My current thoughts on this is I use lacquer for the micro filling capability when I need it or for a primer for gloss finishes like cars, where it seems to work well and the polymer primers for everything else. Mainly due to the ease of cleaning and lack of smell.

Now on to the paint itself. The three paints in the LifeColor DunkelGelb set are basically dark, mid and highlight shades. Using a roughly 60/40 ratio of paint to thinner, I first sprayed the wheels with the dark flash colour.



And then over sprayed that after a few minutes with the mid shade.



The LifeColor paint doesn’t have great coverage, so the secret is two or three thinner coats to build up the coverage to where you like it. This is what I did for the dark base shade, but didn’t bother for the mid shade, as I was happy for them to blend together. I also found I had to drop the pressure on my airbrush for this paint to work best. With some other paints, I might use anything from 17 to 22 PSI, but with the LifeColor I was down to around 14 PSI or so.

Still the paint went on well and for my final coat I applied it “wet”. The thinners evaporated nicely and the paint self levelled beautifully. I was very pleased with the results. This would be an excellent paint for hairy stick modellers, as the self levelling properties of this paint, should help avoid brush marks.



Next post it will be time to start on the upper hull.

For the upper hull, aside from the usual fixtures, Academy give you a choice of either a photo-etch cover over the engine louvers, or if you prefer a moulded piece. A nice touch there.

I elected to build them with the photo-etch so you can see the louvers underneath. There is quite a lot of seperate pieces of photo-etch to glue together as each side of the grill includes seperate detailed pieces of photo-etch with the bolts represented on them.

I am not very experienced with photo-etch, but I do have to say I had a lot of trouble getting these parts to glue together. I tried several CA style glues and eventually settled on a glue for Jewelry called GS Hypo Cement, which eventually settled the parts down in the correct places.





Otherwise the top deck went smoothly and includes the usual suspects you have to glue on, like grab handles etc.



Here is where one of the options for the kit came into play as I replaced the standard drum style external fuel tanks with square style German made ones that fit on the back of the tank. Although these look quite fragile when you are assembling them with only two small contact points with the hull, they proved to be quite strong.

You will have to drill the holes for the fitting of these German style fuel tanks, but the instructions are quite clear about how and when to do this.



The instructions also at this point, have you fit the spare track to the front of the tank and also some spares stacked on the side. Mark Rethoret pointed out in an earlier post that the front spare tracks were not fitted to wartime T-34's and indeed I could find no evidence either.

I filled the holes for the front spare track links with some putty and elected to leave the side ones off until after painting.

Thanks Mark for the tip!

Next it is on to the turret.