Bill you are very busy this days. Looking good this one:-H

Gregor

Thanks Gregor, I try to keep projects moving although at times that can be a challenge all by itself. :-)

Looking good so far Bill, as for the tracks.....mmmmm,look here,

T-35 left T-28 right,the 35's are a lot bigger
The 35's are Friui's the 28's are the kit ones
One thing you need to check is the fit of the turrets,mine were very,very tight,allmost split the joints,I had to open the base holes up quite a bit to get them to fit.
Look forward to seeing the monster done,I'm looking to build another in the near future
Andy

Andy,

I stand corrected! Makes sense when seeing them side by side like that...the T-35 is truly a monster!

I've already encountered the same problems you've noted about the turrets, both the main turret and the smaller MG turrets don't fit onto their rings properly. They all wil require a little different approach to get them to fit, combination of sanding and cutting as the case requires I think.

Picking up from yesterday's efforts, I focused in on the lower hull and dealing with the warped lower plate. Step 8 provides the first means of addressing the warp in the form of the engine mount and transmission. The transmisison links up with the engine, and while the transmission is raised on two support posts, the engine mounts directly to the floor, providing a central point to "lift" the sides somewhat. Since all the hatches will be closed up, I was more concerned with using this leverage to get the hull to be square than with neat assembly, so a liberal dose of liquid glue was used along with finger clamp pressure to get it all set in place.



This only partially solved the warp though. Next step in Step 9 involved building up the hull sides and sponsons. I started by glueing the front and back but leaving the longitudinal areas that mated with the floor unglued. Once those had set up, I worked my way down the hull using liquid glue and finger pressure until it was all glued down and allowed to set up. As a last step, the interior square firewall panel was inserted and glued down. It wasn't molded perfectly square and I had to remove part of the front of the engie for it to fit properly, but it served its purpose as a stiffener for the hull sides.



Once that was taken care of, the sponson sides were installed on both sides and again each one was carefully secured with liquid glue to further remove the warp and keep the whole construction as square as possible.





While the interior bulkhead bows slightly at the top, a test fit with the hull top shows it won't interfere with the final assembly when that time comes.
Step 10 begins the next nightmare...and it's made even worse by how deceptively simple it looks at first glance. This step deals with the installation of the suspension and running gear and I confess that I didn't get all the way through it tonight. I started with the actual suspension itself, this consists of 6 posts per side to hold 4 wheels each. The posts are designed to sit inside a socket with a semi-circular support that's very shallow, allowing some play to the final position. I placed them all in position, tweaking their alignment until satisfied, then flooded the posts and mount holes with liquid glue and then up-ended it so it would rest evenly with the hull and let it set up.



While that was going on, I started in on the no less than 48 roadwheels required for this vehicle. These have a nice level of detail but each has a rubber rim...so a quick test fit showed I could install them and still get sufficient clearance to use a circle template later on, so I will install them in place. Before that could happen though, each one needed to have its hub cleaned up to be accurate and remove a sink hole as well as have the seam removed. After 2 hours, I'd had enough and left the actual installation for another day.

Great tread. I will follow this one with interest

Quite extensive interior and engine compartment.

Thanks for sharing and looking forward to the next post.

Thanks Jesper! All of the hatches as provided in the kit are solid molded but with a little adjustment could be shown open for either the engine itself, the cooling fan, or the transmission housing at the rear to be visible. For those inclined to super-detailing, the engine provides a nice foundation as well. Only thing missing are fuel tanks and such but that could easily be scratchbuilt with plastic card I imagine.

I decided today to take the plunge and try my hand at soldering. The Eduard set provided some very nice front fenders as a replacement for the molded on styrene items and there was just no way I could use them with CA and get the right look. I'd been intending to jump into the world of soldering for some time now, and since I had all the equipment to hand figured this was as good a time as any.

The replacement was going to require some substantial surgery to accomplish. The fenders are integrated into the hull top and so some careful trimming and sanding was necessary to get the right dimensions to accomodate the fender. I used my normal sprue cutters to remove the bulk of the fenders and then cleaned up with sanding sticks for each side.



I annealed both fenders using the gas burners on the stove in the kitchen along with locking tweezers, this allowed for them to be curved into shape and also bent up a bit both during soldering and afterwards when mounting to give it a beat up look. The fender hinges/bolt plates weren't quite the right dimenstions for the ICM kit, so some cutting and adjusting were needed there as well. I used some gap filling CA to place those and will correct the slight gaps that remain with some putty before painting.



With that accomplished, I stepped outside the instruction step pattern to join the upper and lower hulls together. The instructions leave this off to the very end and having done a dryfit, I knew that some traction was going to be needed to get a good join and all the stuff on the hull in later steps would just get in the way. A combination of regular and liquid glue were used along with several good strong rubber bands to get the two together.



Returning to the work with the roadwheels/suspension, I mounted the sprockets using the MK included adapter that would allow the sprockets to freely turn once installed. As I've discovered with most of the parts in this build that have round holes or pins, the dimensions of the sprocket hole didn't quite match the diameter of the mount arm and the sprocket opening had to be enlarged to fit corectly. The MK adapter was then glued in place on both sides.



To round out Step 10, I assembled the 8 return rollers after sanding down their mold seams and installed them dryfit onto their mount arms. The idlers and their tensioning appartus were also installed and the roadwheels dryfit as well to see how it would all look later on. I opted to not install the roadwheels permanently so it would be easier to paint and detail them, but man there's a lot of them!



Moving on to Step 11, the upper hull details began to take shape. I hollowed out the siren horn with a drill bit and also elected to install the headlights in the stowed position. They have very nice interior detail including hollow lamps, but lacking any suitable lenses to put in them I decided to stow them. The driver's two-part hatch was also installed along with the left side hull panel and rear light, also with its cover in the closed position. The light had a deep sink mark in it that I filled with putty to correct. The engine access hatch was assembled with its armored ventilation cover and this one was a tough fit to get into place. The hull cut-out doesn't match the hatch dimensions so some careful trimming on the long edges of the cutout as well as careful sanding of the hatch itself were needed to get it to fit properly. The twin exhausts were also assembled and installed with their prominent join seam sanded down on the exposed rear face. Last but not least, the hull storage box was assembled and installed. The box is a multi-part affair and the fit of the box panels wasn't very good, requiring some putty work to correct as seen in the pic below.



I also started in a little bit on Step 12. One of the disadvantages of trying to use a PE set made for the AER kit on the ICM is that many of the parts aren't the same dimensions, so some of the parts end up with great detail but are unusable as a result. Fortunately one of the parts that were useable were the radiator fan cover hatch doors. The kit parts are molded solid but the Eduard parts create the slotted open look perfectly. I was very pleased that at least this part was usable even though the side grills for the same section are not, it made it worth it IMHO to get the set just for this. It's a 10 piece construction and fits perfectly in the designed space without any modifications required.



Tomorrow will likely see the completion of the remaining construction steps and maybe, just maybe, the start of the painting process.

Nice t-35... :-)

Private Joke!

Good one dave!

Good job sofar Bill!

How did the soldering went? I discovered it recently and I'm totally addicted to it now. So much easier and stronger then to use CA.

Jurjen

It went very well, although I had to experiment a bit at first. The key was having the right flux, the best was some stuff I got from Micro Mark called "Tix Flux", it worked like magic. The solder flows beautifully with it, unlike the Aber Solder Helper I tried...which didn't do anything except produce a nice sizzling sound. :-) I picked up a soldering "extra hands" type of thing from Radio Shack and that helped immensely. It's definitely something I will continue working with, just can't beat that welded bond vs. CA.

Made great progress today, continuing on with Step 12, the remaining upper hull details were added. I had a sort of comical incident which plays up the reason why PE sets are made for specific kits. I wanted to use the Eduard replacement intakes because the kit supplied items were just solid molded pieces. I dutifully soldered the frame of one together without comparing it to the kit part and when I went to test fit my latest joyful soldering creation, I discovered that the Eduard part is substantially larger than the kit part. A quick check of the references showed that the ICM part is the right dimensions, so the AER kit must be waaaay off in this area.



I was able to at least use the grill portion from the PE set, although it had to be cut down to size, it's still better than the molded on piece.



The rest of the details went together pretty much the same as with the opposite side. The storage box again needed some trimming and putty help to get it to the right shape and fit and I installed the fan grate cover as well. I'm leaving off the pioneer tools for later, but I did install the spare roadwheel suspension after opening up its holes (a common occurrence throughout this build) wider to be able to take the roadwheel hubs. The side panel on this side had a worse fit vs. the opposite side and some putty and sanding were necessary here as well to close up the gap.



Step 13 brought the moment of truth. Since I've got the T-35 on order (couldn't resist!), I decided to save the antenna mounts and frame antenna since it's in very good condition in case I need it for the T-35. This meant that I needed to fill in the molded in mount points around the turret with putty. The straight antenna and pot were installed on the roof of the turret to complete the step.



Step 14 calls for the installation of the three turrets and since I'd been forwarned about the fit, I made no assumptions and dealt with each turret individually. The main turret needed two modificatoins, the first being the turret ring in the upper hull requiring the "ear holes" to be widened to take the ears on the turret bottom. The second modification came in the form of having to sand down the inside of the turret ring itself. The dimensions are close but not perfect and to allow the turret to tun freely, several passes with a large sanding pad were needed before it would fit. It's snug but not forced and can turn easily enough.

The MG turrets had a different problem. This time it was the turret diameter that was too small to fit on the rings on the hull. Their ear holes were also widened and since the turrets are small, I used a sharp #11 blade to trim down their inner diameters until each one would fit and rotate properly.



This step also calls for the installation of the tracks, since I'm using MKs, these will be done later. This was also the point where the instructions wanted the upper and lower hulls to be joined and I'm glad I didn't follow this path...way too much stuff all over the place to get knocked off, banged up, etc. in the process of trying to get a good join. Last but not least, the rear hatch for the transmission was installed and for some reason, the hinge points weren't completely formed, so I used some styrene rod to scratch a semblance of the missing parts.



Step 15, the final step, calls for the installation of the front tow pintles and the tow cables. The method for installing the cables is a true feat of contortionist tendencies, calling for the straight molded tow cable to be bent and shaped around the MG turrets and connected up to the tow pintle. I tried mightily to get it to work and after about 30 minutes of struggling, gave up and just installed the tow pintles in their "normal" position.



Tomorrow's a three day weekend for me so I might just get some painting done, have to see.

Sometime back a couple of weeks I'd started on the MK tracks and worked on them off and on while watching TV in the evenings. I've found that's the best way to work on them, just a little here and there to break up the tedium! This particular set of MKs behaved a little differently than what I was used to. The jig provided in the kit took 10 links at a time, which was nice because each track run consists of 118 links. The jig was a tight friction fit with the links so it held them nice and firm, requiring a slight snap pressure to seat them properly but without damaging the links. The tracks are handed, with different types of pins for the interior and exterior sides of the track and MK includes different pins on the same post. The whole process begins with the tracks and pins in this condition:



Each of the links needs to be removed from their sprues and attachment points cleaned up. I use a series of 3 glass bowls for this, 1 bowl to hold the sprue debris since I'm working in the living room and my wife doesn't appreciate bits of styrene all over the place, 1 bowl to hold the sprues once 118 are counted out, 1 bowl to hold the removed links.

The jig is loaded up and the #1 pins inserted first. I touch just a spot of glue to the top of the pin and insert, seating the pin firmly.



Then the handle is twisted off and the #2 pins inserted in the same way on the other side. I've found this works better than trying to use sprue cutters although a little bit of cleanup is sometimes required with a #11 blade once all the pins are nice and set up.



Each new run of 10 links is joined to the preceding run using the same jig and pin method.



After doing this 11 times, the tracks are assembled and fully workable. The MKs had more detail/definition than the kit supplied links and even though there's so many, it's worth it for the flexibility in painting/finishing and added detail IMHO. The set has an extra 5 links and pins left over (not counting the pins needed to assemble the final runs together), so a little margin for accidents/errors is there, but not much.



Finally of course, there's all the debris left over from the process!



With that out of the way, I started the painting process as well. The vehicle was broken down into components with the turrets removed from the hull along with all the return rollers, idlers, and sprocket outer halves. I left the roadwheels in place for the first paint stage but they'll come off later on for their own detailing process. Two of the return rollers were stubborn and actually ended up breaking off their support arms in the process of removing them...I may have gotten some glue on them earlier and not realized it since none of them were force fit for the dryfit test a week ago. The spare wheels for the fenders were secured to a strip of masking tape to make it easier to paint them and it was off to the garage for some time with the AB.



I laid down a primer coat of Flat Black to get a nice even coverage over the whole model and to spot-check the many areas that had received putty and sanding treatment earlier. The Flat Black is perfect for this and it revealed several areas that had looked just fine earlier but once painted were less than expected. The area that needed the most touchup were the frame antenna mount marks on the main turret. All of them needed more putty and sanding work to get them to the right look. I also needed to touchup a couple of areas on the smaller MG turrets, most noticeably was a very large semi-circular mold mark that showed up in the outside light plain as day but somehow I missed at the workbench. These will be repainted with Flat Black tomorrow before the painting process continues.

I also started the track finishing process, priming them with Flat Black and then following it up with Non-buffing Metalizer Gunmetal. I've found this is the best way to insure the laquer-based metalizer doesn't attack the styrene and weaken the pins, causing the runs to fragment. I had a bad experience way back when the first time I used MKs where a set of tracks literally fell apart in my hands so this precaution is always a must for me since then.



Tomorrow the touchup will be done and then an overcoat of Deep Yellow applied as the foundation for the green coats to follow.

Hi Bill!

Thanks for the interesting photos and text. This is really helpful. Can't wait to see your next update.

Jurjen

Thanks Jurjen, appreciate the comments!

The weather today was absolutely gorgeous and perfect for painting out in the garage. I certainly needed it, spending the full day working on the paint finish and enjoying the whole time.

First up after yesterday's Flat Black primer coat was an overlay of Model Master Deep Yellow enamel thinned for the AB and applied with the gray Aztek nozzle (the General Purpose one) at about 25 psi. Since the overall finish is a green tone and the Russians used yellow chromate or similar paint for their primer, it helps IMHO to approximate a closer finish color plus adds some underlying variation for the green tones to work with overall. For this step, I dismounted all of the roadwheels and was once again reminded that there are 48 of them (54 counting the spares!) when it came time to paint their rims using a circle template and lots of patience! Thy were painted on both sides to allow me to choose the best ones later on to be "outward" facing vs. the others that would be "inward" facing. Somewhere along the way I managed to snap off the rear MG barrel for the main turret but fortunately was able to locate it on the concrete floor after some very careful searcing on my hands and knees. Knowing that there are many more opportunities to come for it to be broken off again, I stuck it on a piece of masking tape and will attach it later.






Next step was to apply an overal coat of Green Drab as the base green tone. This was done with the same nozzle and pressure but with much finer passes, slowly building up the green on the different surfaces and areas and interacting a bit more with the yellow undercoat. Once again all 54 wheels were given the similar treatment...and again, I managed this time with one of the MG turrets to snap off yet another MG barrel, which also got stuck to the same piece of masking tape for later reattachment.






The final step for the day came in the form of spot applying some Olive Drab to lighten/vary the green tone some more. This was applied at 15 psi using the tan nozzle for the Aztek and very close up, barely depressing the trigger to add the paint in various places. The idea was to produce variation and retain some of the earlier darker green as shadows, etc. From the few color photos that I've seen of KV-1's and 2's it would seem that the early war/pre-war Russian tanks were painted more in an olive vs. the standard "Russian" tractor green so that's the type of finish that I'm aiming for with this color application at any rate.




Next up will be the reattachment (permanently) of the roadwheels, fitting of the remaining details and tools, etc. before the weathering process begins in earnest. At some point I know I'm also going to have to sand/scrape the paint away from the turret rings on all 3 turrets so they will be able to be mounted and rotate properly since an early test fit revealed the need for this as well.

I continued work on the paint and finish stages today with the first item of business dealing with adding some more variation to the green finish by drybrushing in some Deep Yellow to various surfaces. I used a #0 brush and lightly made several passes and then coming back in some of the heavier areas and drybrushing some Olive Drab to even it back out. I also installed all the wheels, drybrushed the sprockets and idlers with Steel on the wear areas, and began the detail work with the pioneer tools, muffler/exhaust, and spare wheels.







The pioneer tools were a bit tricky to get installed, all of their mounting holes needed to be opened up further and the shovels in particular were a very tight fit.



With all of that taken care of, I applied a coat of Future and allowed it to set up for a couple of hours. While that was going on, I weathered up the tracks by drybrushing Steel and applying a light Rust wash followed with some drybrushed Burnt Umber. My original intent with this finish was to do the 1939 Leningrad markings with the red band around the turret and side hull numbers. The kit decals didn't cooperate...first the turret band disintegrated into several pieces...and even when those pieces were coaxed into proper position, they refused to respond to the Solvaset and conform to the complex surfaces, so they were scrapped.

I forged ahead with the hull side numbers and manged to get them to snug down ok...but then a strange thing happened...a reaction with the decals, Solvaset, or something caused the decal to eat into the paint, despite the presence of a Future coat, and I ended up having to scrape them off and hand-paint over the square left behind, truly bizarre...I've never had anything like that happen before and am at a loss as to why. I almost gave up on the finish at this point, in fact came very close to hurling the whole thing against the wall I was so burned...but decided to forge ahead and attempt to use the kit supplied markings for a captured T28 in the Finnish army. My rationale, after doing a quick check online about the Winter War, is that the former Soviet markings were painted over and the Finnish style swastika slapped on the turret. This one won't be going to any contests so that's my story for now at any rate.

I also installed the MK tracks and discovered that the 118 links per side worked only for the right side...the left side needed another link, so it was a good thing I had a couple extras left still.



After letting the hand-painted recover dry, I applied the Finnish markings to the turret sides. I'm guessing due to the European legalities, the swastikas have to be assembled out of 2 separate decal parts and again I had to look carefully at some online examples to be sure to get the alternating white/blue arms in the correct positions. It was a challenge, but eventually worked out.



I'm determined to see this one through to the end...it may end up only being a testbed, but I at least need to complete the experiments I'd started with this kind of green finish and see how the weathering combines with it. As if to add to the frustration level even more...I broke off the last remaining untouched MG barrel from the smaller turrets so that now makes it a perfect score with the MGs at 5 and me 0.

Very good job Bill it looks awesome
Im looking forward to see you doing the weathering

By Gregor

Thanks Gregor, appreciate the comments.

She dont look half bad now Bill with green paint on, tough about the decals though, its never happened to me either, will definitely watch out for that with my '35 when I get around to it. I've taken a look at the kit and mine shows a bit of warping of the upper and lower hull parts but not too badly, theres not a lot of the mould release agent to be found either so I must be quite lucky.

Very nice build. Sorry about the machine guns. I was able to add mine through the turrets after I had finished painting the turrets. They are very delicate in any case. As far as the tow cables go, after bending them to the snapping point, I cut the ends off and used another material from my spares box for them. Again nice job!
capnjock

Looking great so far Bill.

Mark,

Sounds like you've got a winner to start with! The lower hull warpage can be corrected with the hull side panels, at least if it builds up the same was as the T-28 (I assume it does). Be wary of any mold release it does have though...stuff is sticky and has a tendency to hang around in inconvenient places.

Capnjock, I thought about doing the same thing but in the end just left them off. Kind of glad I did too given all the other problems I've been having...it would've just been one more thing to break off or get damaged along the way I think.

Dave, thanks for the encouragement.

The experiment continued today with the weathering approach I'd originally had in mind for this beast. I began by spot applying some Forest Green and then using a thinner dampened brush, converted that into a filter.



Since the size of this monster is significantly larger than the usual model, I worked in sections. Next step was to spot apply some Gunmetal to compliment the previous application.



This was all worked together to produce this effect. The same thing was done to the rest of the vehicle in stages. Afterwards, I went back over various areas and adjusted them as needed.





I applied a pin wash of Burnt Umber and tweaked that in some areas after it had dried due to some unexpected and undesired tide marks that got left behind. The missing MG barrels were reattached one more time and everything was given a coat of Lusterless Flat in the rattlecan. In what continues to be a series of unexpected outcomes/twists...the dull coat caused a great deal of the previous weathering effects to disappear or blend in so much that it might as well have. Very strange since all of the weathering so far was done with just thinned enamel paints, not pigments. Still, I'm reasonably happy with the result so far, and will continue next weekend with the pigment weathering approach and see where that leads.



As a postscript to the last update...turns out the decals silvered despite all the safeguards and is a fitting coda I guess to this whole effort...so this build is over and done with since the time and effort required to finish the pigments won't change the fact that it's got a serious fundamental flaw that I can't fix. It's got a nice "factory finish" to it in the paint department and will go on the shelf as is. Just goes to show I guess that not every build can end up the way you want no matter the effort put into it. It still proved useful though in terms of trying out various techniques and gaining some insight into future attempts at Russian green finishes. Onward and upward to the next build, who says you cna't learn from mistakes, right?

Hi Bill

very nice T-28 you got there one small thing about the swastika, look at this link remove x

http://www.andreaslarka.net/ps531008/purhonen_53100808.jpgx

to get more info go to this webpage

http://www.andreaslarka.net/

Best Regards Kimmo Siika