Looking very good

That's looking fantastic Larry! Oh dear, this means a 42 will have to be purchased to accompany the 43 and 44. Oh dear

This might be the end of my marriage ....

Hi, Thanks for all the good comments folks. Yes, this model is somewhat addicting to build. And with so many different vraiations to these AFVs, not only between model years, but also between the different factories they were made at, there are quite a few different alterations that can be made to each and every one of them to make them all different. Am hoping that Trumpeter will bring out one or two of the SU models of this T-34 kit as well. Also it's great building practice to try to make some of the details for this kit rather than hoping some after-market firm will come up with it.

Been having quite a time with those built in gas tanks on the rear, but am continuing to see it through and I think I have the problem on the run now, I hope anyway.
I just forgot to dry-fit something before even thinking about altering it to being with. Ha, ha!

MrMox: have been doing some practicing on the painting of the numbers and such on some old models like you did and it's not too bad. Now I'll just have to decide if I want to try to add a scuffy winter whitewash to it before I decide what color I want the numbers to be, either red or white. Such decisions. Ha!

Thanks again and take care, Larry

man when is this post gonna die!!!!!!!!!!! lol
ian

HI Guys
I have put my T-34 on hold to do an entry for the local show. I don't want to rush the T-34 so I'm doing something else.
But I'm still keeping up with the thread. And stealing ideas from you all.
I even have this thread bookmarked so I can come directly here
Keep up the good work.
Chuck

I have finished installing engine and transmission and right now I´m working on an extra ammo crate since the kit is one short ..

It will be openable to show the 2 spare granades from the ´42 kit.

Other than that, I´m looking for something to work as the rubberfloor - what did you use Larry ?

Hi, MrMox: For the 'rubber floor' over the ammo boxes I used a stuff called FIMO. I picked up at the craft store. It's sort of a soft modeling clay I've seen used for all kinds of hand-made items used in the doll house hobby. It comes in all kinds of colors and is basically used right out of its little plastic packet. Once you have molded or modeled it to your particular satisfaction, you pop it in an oven for 30 mins. at 265 to harden, or cure. Am thinking about getting some different colors of browns and trying my hand at making some traps, bedrolls, etc. just to see how they will do for that. (Or more precisely, if I can carve something that looks realistic enough to pass for one or two of these items.)

If you decide to make and mount that electrical box thingy in the middle of the floor for the pipe/electical cables that go up to the turret area, you may consider wanting to reposition those ammo boxes, as I think by the pictures I've seen of this area that this 'box' sits right in the middle of the floor, so I'm assuming the ammo boxes would be put in differently, or maybe this open space in the kit is left this way for the addition of this 'box' unit too.

Take care, Larry

Thx Larry, I have found a similar product, just another name, I´ll have a try

I´m more or less finished with the interior, not the best in pictures, but here goes:

Engine



And the new ammocrate with homemade lid .. not room for the 3x 3 granades thats supposed to be in it ... but thats will have to go. I´ve made the central connect to the turret electricity - but no cable.


:-)

Hi MrMox, nice build, very nice build. And weathering too. Really good upclose photos that shows your weathering techniques off to it's best advantage. And the ammo boxes and 'cable box' too. This gives me a real good shot of how one of these 'boxes' looks. Super work all the way around!

Been just fooling along on mine doing a little here and a little there. About ready to prime the bottom of the hull and start on all that detailing that I've been collecting pictures of here and there. Ha! Going to be quite a job.

Take care, Larry

Hey MrMox,

Great stuff! It's hard to tell if those are pictures of the model or the real thing.

Well, as official golddigger, I struck SU-100 gold. Take a look at these 30 iinterior shots...
http://www.kmk-scaleworld.be/WalkAround/SU100i/index.html

Here's a sample...


Here are 30 exterior shots from the same site...
http://www.kmk-scaleworld.be/WalkAround/SU100e/index.html

For the rest of you, here are 10 shots of a T-34-85, 5 interior, 5 exterior...
http://www.kmk-scaleworld.be/WalkAround/CDTZCH/34/index.html

Here are a few more SU-100 pics with 1 interior...
http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/mrigby/armour5.html

Sample...


And, right below it some very interesting shots of a pristine white T-34...


That one looks like something you'd take out on a saturday night.

Here's another site...it only has three pictures, but one is of a rather trashed interior. They're down at the bottom of this page...
http://mailer.fsu.edu/~akirk/tanks/Mongolia/mongolia.html



And one last one. The main page is...
http://www.britains-smallwars.com/suez/David/page1.html

The picture...


Good luck with it.

Superb stuff Mr Mox, I'm particularly struck by the textures for some reason. Great researching colo artist, you're saving me from weeks of fruitless searching!

Keep 'em coming folks.

Have added a few shots to my on-going gallery:

http://uk.pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/[email protected]/album?.dir=b326&.src=ph&store=&prodid=&.done=http%3a//uk.pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph//my_photos

Obviously still a way to go yet

Looking great Mahoon, i like your enginebay a lot. One of the things that strikes me about this tank, is the great variaty i colours. White, blue, oxide red, gray, green etc. - really makes a lot af possibilities in the same kit.

It seems you forgot to drill out the holes in the fueltanks in the crewcompartmet for mouting the "readyrounds" (Granades) ?

Looking good guys
I also like the textures, especially on the exhaust.

Thought I'd post a couple of pics to show how I did the open engine deck on my 43 version.
Wish I had thought to do it like MrMox did, it would have been much easier than cutting it all off and having to make the brace in brass to try and add some strength back.
Alas, I did this about 2 months ago and the project has been on hold ever since due to this 1/15 M113




Carl

Hi majorproblem: I looked at your M113 the other day and was totally floored by what I saw pictured! I can't get over that by looking at the inside of this vehicle that this is actually a model! Fantastic!

Your T-34 looks really great too. I like how you represented all the mounting areas and such all the way around the areas where you cut the top off. Very ncie. I might try this on one someday, I think. Ha, ha!

Take care, Larry

Hi Major Problem, fantastic work on the t34 and allso on that m113!

I love the way you have made the supports for the enging deck. The reason I retained some of the deck, was that i was afraid of instabillity since my upper and lower hull is not glued together.

Seeing your model really makes me wanne go back an redo some of mine - including fixing the upper hull.

Updated with new pics in my gallery and here

Hi to all, I've read almost everything in the forum on this new T34 but still wanting to hear about pitfalls during construction. In particular, are the shocker shafts slightly short, looking for any info on trouble shooting during construction. Appreciate any replies.

Hi tanksagain, Welcome to the site. As far as ptifalls with the kit are concerned the only one I can think of at the moment is those plastic brake linings--C-33 -- and wrapping them around the brake hubs--C-35/36 and C-34/36. One or twice is all you get to do it before this plastic begins to crack. Some modelers have put these parts in warm or hot water for a certain time before wrapping them. So far I've been lucky in basically fitting them on fairly quickly without the soak in water.

Once I have them glued on I hold them rather tightly and wrap a rubber band around the whole thing, being very careful not to break off either of those 2 plastic tips on top. This isn't really any big deal as long as you know what to expect when you get to this area.

About the only other 'pitfall' to this kit is all of the detailing you see that can be done to these models as you go along in order to make them more accurate to your own taste. Of course there are many small things on the kit that are not 'accurate' to the real vehicle, but these are trival things that only those who have a real bend for accuracy look for.

I built the /43 OOTB and now am attemtping to do a /42 and trying to do my best to do a lot of the details other modelers have shown on their kits and this one has sort of 'taken on a life of it's own' due to this fact. Ha, ha!

But all these additions has added trememdously to the overall knowledge of this vehicle, what went where, and how it basically worked in conjuction with all the other systems in the tank, not to mention it's overall reputation as one of the world's best designed tanks of the period.

You might also check into the group build going on over on FSM. There's a lot of new information on this tank and kit being posted over there that may be of some help to you as well.

Good luck and take care, Sgirty

Its kinda wierd, now I have spent all my modelingtime the last many weeks on this lady, and now its all over ... I´m desperatly looking for things to do, but it all boils down to being restless...

Well, I have ordered Dragons Su85M, so with all the fantastic material supplied by Colo_artist i´ll start working on that project - it should be possible to make most of the conversion while I wait for the kit ...

MrMox...so the Dragon SU85M is just the preliminary for the main event...a conversion of a 1/16 T-34 into a SU-100, right? :-)

Anyway I look forward to seeing more of your work.

Hey all...Archer Fine Transfers has relesed more sheets for the 1/16 Trumpeters. There's two more for the T-34/76's and five for the T-34-85's...


http://www.archertransfers.com/

Better hurry, I already put my order in.

HI. Spent some time this week end putting together what has turned out to be sort of my first true scratch-building project--a set of battery banks for Trumpeter's 1/16 scale T-34 kit. I did build something of a set last week, but between dealing with the grand kids and other things, once they were basically done, I got to thinking "I can do better than this." So this week end I picked up some 'angle iron' plastic rod and some .020" and .030 inch plastic sheet and tried it again. Lot of measuring, cutting, sanding, filling and more sanding, but I think they turned out a lot better than the first try.

Only bad thing about it was once I had put them together as best I could, I had to take the dremel tool and 'beat the crap' out of them to make them look somewhat used. Oh well. Such is the hobby.

Anyway I thought that I would at least take a photo or two of them and post them in my gallery while they are out and sort of 'naked to the world' before they evetually end up hidden and almost totally covered up by the bulkheads, side walls, engine, radiators ,etc. You may see holes in the front sides of these things. This is for the wiring. Yes, it makes no sense to put in all this time making the boxes without adding the wiring going someplace or other, of which I will figure out later once they are ready to go in for the final time. Again such is the nature of the beast I suppose.

Without a doubt working with these kits has been the best and most enjoyable time spent since I got back into this hobby a few years ago. Thanks Trumpeter for a job very well done. How about a couple of T-34 SUs built on this same kit?

Take care, Larry

Hey Larry,

I'm with you. These are great kits. I'd go for an SU version. My preference would be an 85 rather than a 100 simply because of size. I'm calculating a SU-100 at 1/16 would be a whopping 24" long. An SU-85 would be around 20", same as the T-34-85 version (the T-34-76's are around 16")

Karl

Tanxheaven just posted a new page with 12 pics of an open-air T-34 engine...

http://tanxheaven.com/ludob/t34engine/t34enginelb.htm

That particular picture shows where the tube from the air tanks would connect (right in the middle of the piece, part A9,with the blue air injection lines) and also where the tach cable would connect (at the bottom of the part at the end of the left valve cover).

Here are some other engine links I've found...

http://tanxheaven.com/t34-85/t34-85dux.htm (down near the bottom)

http://www.thetankmaster.com/ENGLISH/AFV/V-2-34_01.asp (a beatup tranny is on page 2)

http://www.colorado-artist.com/t34/ians/

http://www.alexfiles99.narod.ru/engine/v2/v-2_engine.html (this one takes a long, long time to load, but has 10 great pics.

http://www.malyshevplant.com/images/products/bg97.jpg from the Malyshev Plant.

http://membres.lycos.fr/barkmann/document/red_army/moteurt34.html 6 color pics of a cut-away engine...cool stuff although the pictures are a bit dark

Karl

Hi. Thanks colo_artist for all of this information. When I first got into this kit(s) I wondered just how much information there would be out there and thanks to all your digging, there seems to be plenty.

I just intalled the wired up the radio in the /42 I'm working on and am now busy re-working the two side panels up front into a more correct /42 configuration. This area seems to be where the most changes on this kit has to be done at, but so far, it's coming along pretty well. Used some thin sheet plastic to cover over those 'dents' in that are for the /85 and am going to make some other changes to it as well from some photos a modeler over in the U.K. sent me who is building a /42 himself and is a very, very accomplished modeler.

Once I get these forward panels done the way I want them, I post a couple of photos in my gallery.

Good luck and take care, Larry