Zvezda 1/35 T-35

[Guest]

Thanks gents.

[Steve Jones]

Wow! Terrific work Andy. Great looking wheels and the springs have turned out well also. Keep going mate. Its gonna be epic

[Guest]

Cheers Steve. Not sure I'd go that far but thanks for the encouragement!

[Mr Bowcat]

Just caught up Andy, very nice work so far mate, bogies looking good.

[Jim R]

Hi Andy
Nice neat work on the bogies.
Jim

[Guest]

Thanks guys.

Just having a break from wrestling with the L&L tracks. I knew there was a reason I didn't start out doing armour! :smiling5:

[Guest]

Hi Andy I just come across your little gem your making a terrific job of this beasty comrade Race will certainly be jealous of this .
Will follow along from my comfortable bed keep up the good work.
Pete :thumb2: .

[Guest]

Thanks Pete, glad you're feeling well enough to pop in.

[Guest]

So the tracks are fitted. As Dave said earlier they fit really well, but trying to juggle so many pieces and get them to sit right all the way around was a bit of a struggle for me. Masking tape was my friend. Lots of masking tape!

Before fitting, the individual links were formed around the front idler as per instructions, then everything got a coat of black primer, 2 light coats of Burnt Iron, then a light rusty wash to start off the weathering.

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10 glued joints in this picture (I think), much better than my last attempt on the T-28

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And they are still, just, removable. I still haven't decided what I'm doing about weathering them so thought it'd be easier to have them separate until I decide. Despite exhausting YouTube on the subject I'm still no closer. Too many different options and techniques! :confounded:

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Between the various stages of the track work I put the main gun together. The sprue scars you can see are perfectly smooth but it seems to be a property of this Zvezda plastic - no matter how smooth the surface is you can always see the light & dark spots.

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Nice attempt at moulding in the rifling on the barrel.

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Tell me to stop if I'm putting up too many pictures!

This part was fun to clean up. Plenty of attachment points around the outside then this inner reinforcing ring with gates in the high & low spots.

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But it cleaned up ok in the end, apart from the aforementioned discolouration, and turned into a handy on-board cocktail bar

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This was supposed to fit inside the main turret, but here's where we run into yet another damaged part.

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It might possibly have pulled straight when glued to the other parts but didn't want to risk it, so held it above a hairdryer to get it as hot as my fingers could stand then gradually tweaked it back into shape

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That's it for now. Back on shift tomorrow so there won't be much progress until Monday, but I'll leave you with yet another picture, this time for scale against my Universal Carrier. It's a big brute!

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[scottie3158]

Andy,

Nice work very neat.

[Steve Jones]

You really are forging ahead with this one Andy. You must be enjoying it. Great to see the comparison shot.

[Guest]

Thanks Paul and Steve.

Trying to get it all neat and tidy before making it messy & grubby with weathering lol

[Jim R]

Hi Andy
Good job with the tracks. Nice idea to have them removeable for painting/weathering - hope you can get them back on ok :tongue-out3: Well done with the hairdryer trick to fix the warped part. Seems to have worked well but heating plastic is always nerve racking. Certainly a big beast. Some plastics do discolour when stressed around the sprue attachment point and it can make sanding difficult.
Anyway carry on :thumb2:
Jim

[Guest]

Thanks Jim. The tracks are obviously a bit fragile as they are but hopefully they should be ok so long as I don't use any enamel products, as that's when things start to fall apart on me :smiling5:

[Guest]

So the tracks survived my ham-fisted attempts at weathering and are now fixed permanently in place. I also did some work on the bogies and lower hull. Quite a bit of it will be hidden but at least there's a "base layer" back there and I can do further work on what's visible later on.

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It was a busy day what with Zoe's car getting towed away by a breakdown truck :unamused: and a roofer coming to look at how the rain was leaking into the kitchen, but I also finished putting the main turret together.

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Tomorrows jobs are to get the upper hull fixed in place, attend to any gaps (dry fit looks promising) then maybe start splashing some paint around. It's probably a strange way to do things by weathering the lower half before I've even primed the top, but with the way the tracks and side skirts fit it seemed a decent way around it.