After finally finishing my last build, academy's M113A1 (I got it for myself for christmas two years ago. I built it, and then put it in the box for a year), I quickly plunged to the next one. When I saw dragon's new (it was new then, 2003) at the model expo a couple of years ago, I knew I wanted to build one as a Finnish captured vehicle. I got an eduard barrel for it and waited until I got myself some more aftermarket to make this project possible.

As the topic suggests, I'm building this tank a tank with ps-registry number 245-3. The 245 part is the code for a T-34/85 and 3 is the number of the individual vehicle (there were a total of seven T-34/85's in use of the Finnish army). After I got myself an engine grill by aber and the right headlights from js-models, I started building this week. I promise I won't bore you to death with basic construction pics. I'll only show pics from areas that have interesting things going on. :-)

Here's the headlights and the engine cover with the aber mesh installed. I assembled the aber PE cover but to my dissappointment, it sat too high on the dragon hull, so I just cut away the solid grill from the dragon part and glued on the mesh. The headlights will be installed to the front fenders with the wires in a metal tube going inside.

Here's a shot of the front hull showing the clipped fenders and a weld seam between the front armor plate and the fender. The fender will soon recieve headlights with their fittings and a strip of styrene to the front edge.


There's a couple of shots of the turret. not much detail to add here. I only replaced the rain shield plate with a bigger one with weld seams around it. The seam between the turret halves is done the same as with the rain shield, by glueing styrene rod and then applying liquid cement and shaping with a knife. With the turret halves, I scraped the outer edge of the halves before gluing to make a groove. It was then easy to glue the rod in place.

Now I'm working on the suspension & wheels and the upper hull. The wheel require special care and elbow grease to fit correctly. I use only one of the road wheels supplied with the kit. The real tank has only one spider wheel, the rest being of the early style. So, I got myself a set of maquette wheels. These are fine, but the axel hole was too big. I filled the holes with styrene rod and drilled holes to accept the kit axels. I used sprue styrene for this and the ends where I drilled the holes weren't level and I ended up with 5 wheels with holes in the right places and 4 with not-so-good- holes. I had to enlarge the holes in these wheels to get them aligned properly. I think I'll have to use epoxy glue for the wheels and take time to get them on staight.

After thinking about it, it would have been better to buy another T-34 from dragon to donor some wheels. The aber mesh cost around 8€, the extra wheels 10€. If a another T-34 with perfectly fitting wheels and a PE engine grill cost 25€, I would have bought that instead of these maquette wheels.

Well, there's no going back now. I'll post more pics when I make progress. Next I'll have to scratch-build the Finnish custom-made storage boxes and the notorious-looking frame box. It looks like this: http://www.andreaslarka.net/ps245003/2004_24500339.jpg
Any ideas to ease building it?
What does my project look like so far? Comments are welcome, as always.

Edit: Sorry if those pics didn't show a moment ago. I had a problem with imagecave. I accidentally put a too large pic there. I deleted it and tried uploading a smaller copy, but it refused to show me a small pic. I put these pics in photobucket and they should be working ok now.

That is a most interesting build. Are you going to use any AM tracks too? You did a good job on the engine grills. But there are some glue spots on the edges. ( but it could be the photo )

I think the storage boxes shouldn't be that difficult. Just cut some evergreen to the right sizes and put them together and I think it will look really great.

Keep up the great work and keep us updated!

Jurjen(almost finished his captured T34)

Yeah, there truly were glue spills on the grill. A few quick passes with sandpaper took care of them. I also noticed that the grill is not 100% straight. you can see it on the first photo. But I think that's not that serious. And ripping the grill off to reposition it would probably get the separate sides and crossbeams to loosen anyway.
I'm sorry I can't post pics this weekend. My dad took it with him as he went to see how our summer cottage withstood the winter.

Now I have started working on the big storage box made from metal frames. I've completed the bottom square now and I really hope I don't break it while handling as it's quite fragile. Photo-etched brass would be ideal for this subject, but I really doubt any companies would want to produce such an esoteric subject.
Anyway, I have been working on the front hull. I've made and testfitted the cables that run to the headlights. Additionally, I added a few rivets to the front fenders.
The turret is now about finished. I added the correct casting numbers and two grab-rails, as on the real tank. But after glueing on the grab-rail on rear, I noticed that there's supposed to be two vertical grooves on the turret side, which aren't molded in the kit. Now I have to live without them, or try to carve the grooves to go under the grab-rail, which could be difficult.
I'll post some more pics as soon as I can.

Hi Eetu,

I can't wait to see any pics. I really wouldn't reposition the engine grill. It looks great anyway!

From what material did you make the storage boxes? Evergreen? Maybe I will try it sometime myself to make a Finnish variant. How did you make the castingnumbers?

Keep us updated.

Jurjen

You asked about the tracks in the first reply, I'm going to use the kit tracks, as they look great and fit together well.

I'm making the boxes from evergreen (or was it plastruct?) styrene. I bought a sets of strips and angle profile to make the frame box and hexagonal rod for the nuts that go to the bolts on one side of the upper hull.
I made the casting number by carefully cutting loose some part numbers from the kit sprues. They tend to curl when shaved off so I flattened them and glued them on with small amounts of regular styrene cement. After the numbers were attached to the turret, I brushed some liquid cement over them and when dry, I carefully sanded them to blend them to the rest of the turret surface.

Lol, why didn't I think of that. Just brillant

I agree with the kit tracks. As long as there are indy-links supplied with a kit I don't buy any AM tracks. (unless they are really horrible ) Don't forget to fill the pin marks

Jurjen

The good thing about the kit tracks is that they don't have any kind of pin ejector marks. But they were connected to the sprue at both ends and clean-up was quite tricky, as the links with guide horns have two small bolts on the ends of the links. I had to be carefull not to damage these bolts while cleaning them; I didn't want to replace every single bolt as one guy (If I remember correctly, it was at missing-lynx) who sanded the bolts flush and then made and glued on new bolts.

Hi Eetu,

You don't have these pin marks on the tracks?The right pic.
pin mark

That link didn't work for some reason, but is this the pic you meant? http://www.perthmilitarymodelling.com/reviews/vehicles/dragon/dr6092l.htm
Those tracks (from kits numbered 6092, 6205, 6185) and indeed have pin marks, but they're from the earlier T-34/76 kits. My kit is the later T-34/85 (number 6203) which has different pattern tracks. They look like this: http://www.perthmilitarymodelling.com/reviews/vehicles/dragon/dr6203l.htm
That pic only shows the front, but they don't have any pin marks. My kit is from year 2003, and to my knowledge this is a re-issued kit. (I remember checking out reader reviews at finescale.com and they had a review of a dragon T-34/85 from year 1997. They changed the wheels and some other details, as mentioned here: http://www.perthmilitarymodelling.com/reviews/vehicles/dragon/dr6203.htm

I now have the wheels fixed to the lower hull. With some wheels I had to enlarge the holes to get them sit right, so I used epoxy to glue them on. The wheel hubs were fitted earlier, which was a mistake. I noticed that all the hubs didn't line up perfectly right. It might be the wheels, as the detail inside wasn't 100% round on all the wheels.

So, if you're building one too, please spare yourself from the agony of filling the holes, drilling new holes and fitting these wheels by getting an early T-34 kit to get the wheels from. That's a different thing if you got the right equipment to drill the holes perfectly straight and to the right place, I drilled mine freehand. If not, just get a wheel donor kit. You also get a PE engine grill with the newer kits. The only really necessary aftermarket accessory is then just the gun barrel. The kit-supplied two-halves type barrel seems almost impossible to get right and seamless.
And you can then use the late-style wheels with the early kit as wheels were used pretty mixed with Russian armor.
Cheers

Okay. My dad just came back and I rushed to take some pics of my progress.

The wheels have been glued on with epoxy, as the fitting holes on some of the wheels had to be drilled larger, because I drilled some holes badly.

Maquette wheels were a touch thicker than the dragon's kit-supplied ones. To make the tracks fit from the drive sprocket to the roadwheels, I removed the small circular bit from the drive housings.

Here's the turret with grab handles made from copper wire and casting number cut from the kit sprues. I don't know if I should try and make the two grooves that go under the rear handle, though. I might damage the handle.

That's frame box in an early stage of construction. The bottom rectangle is done and the upper one is missing one side.

That's a shot of the rear hull plate with some details added. The hinges' lower portion is scrap PE. The originals were fine but I removed them as I cut off the pipes that go the smoke canisters. ¨

And finally, a shot of front hull with the headlights and their power cables dryfitted.

I'll post more pictures when I make more progress.
Cheers

Okay, now I've finished the two large boxes and a smaller cage-type thingy that goes to the right fender.

The large frame box is still in progress. That's the hardest thing I've ever built from scratch.

Here's a better shot of the two large boxes that go on the left fender. These things are actually fun to make. I'm starting to get hooked to scratch-building!

As always, comment are welcome.

Eetu,

This is a really nice build you have going - I have one question on the front hull though. Should there be a notch on the cover of the headlight guard, so when it's flipped back it won't sever the power cable leading to the light?

Mika

Here's what I mainly use for reference: http://www.andreaslarka.net/ps245003/ps245003.html
The photos show a small metal plate with a notch on the headlights. I think you mean those? Actually, that copper wire is not the cable itself, but a tube which protects the power cable inside.