Granted By Dazzled....FULFILLED

[Dazzled]

Yes, I'm granting your wishes for you all and joining in the GB.

And, as I'm in a "granting" mood, what else could I offer than this.





Tamiya's classic M3 General Grant tank in 1/35th.

It's certainly a kit with pedigree.





It's 40 years young. So, can I expect a real headache and lots of filling and fettling?

Let's see. I actually started at 12:01 last night. I couldn't sleep, there was the usual sod all on TV so I though I'd break open the box on my recently cleared bench. Before I went to bed I'd indulged in a bit of parts clean up and glued the turret halves together with Liquid Poly.




I was particularly keen to get the wheels out of the way as, if there's one thing that bogs me down on armour kits, it's the wheels. These are cleaned up and ready for paint. Just the job of tyre painting then but I think I may have devised a cunning plan in that department.

Watch this space.

[Dazzled]

Further along from my late night styrene fest, I was back at the bench this morning. I must admit that it's been quite a while since I built a kit that went together as quickly as this.

By midday, with the help of Zap-a-Gap, I was at this stage.




The only modification up to now was to drill out the turret gun. And speaking of guns, this is where the first issue arose although this was with the hull gun. Tamiya have moulded the gun in two parts, a barrel and a separate opened out end. The problem is that they don't fit together so a bit of filler was required.





It's in a cordless drill ready to be sanded down. Unfortunately, it still didn't look too good so I repeated the experiment, this time using superglue.

That gave me something to sand but it did the trick.

The next little problem I spotted came about when I dry fitted the sand shields. Being a "kit of it's time" there are open spaces in the hull above the tracks. I'm not too concerned about this as they'll be well hidden unless I choose to display the model upside down with a light shining on it

Unfortunately, this lack of material stretches to the edges and the sand shields don't meet the hull for a good part of their length so, to rectify this, I added a couple of lengths of 20 thou styrene strip.




And this seems to have worked nicely. I still have to tweak one of the rear fenders a bit but the shields fit much better now.

A bit more basic assemblage has got the model to this stage now.





Another day like the last one and I'll be throwing some paint at it very soon

[jssel]

Now is the time for the "Full Mike Grant", Daz.

[fredk]

Fast work.
This one was to be my main choice for this GB, so that bit about hull/sandshields has been noted.

[Clashcityrocker]

Some Tamiya niceness going on here.

Nigel

[JohnRatzenberger]

I just want to know if you've ever knocked over that wall of paint onto a model

[Molly-new]

Great work so far Daz.

I just want to know if you've ever knocked over that wall of paint onto a model

That was my first though too.

[Dazzled]

I just want to know if you've ever knocked over that wall of paint onto a model

Not yet John.

But, give me a chance. It's only been there for 2 days

[ShaunW]

Excellent and fast work. I've recently rediscovered my enthusiasm for these old Tamiya kits, they generally build up well and look the part as far as I'm concerned.

[Dazzled]

Just a quick update on the last couple of days progress.

I've been concentrating on getting the running gear done and getting those roadwheels out of the way so I've sprayed the offending areas and parts with Tamiya XF-59 (Desert Yellow) and painted the tyres. I used Humbrol matt black for the tyres as it brushed on better. Chucking the wheels in an arbour mounted in a cordless drill made them a bit easier to paint. At least one side of each wheel is presentable anyway

So, here's where it is now.





Hopefully, I'll manage a bit of bench time this weekend and get this up on it's wheels.

[ShaunW]

Looking really good Darryl. The wheels look very presentable to me. With one or two of my armour builds, the wheels look OK at the front and are bodged at the rear where no one can see 'em

[Titan]

Good progress Darryl, I have the Tamiya Lee so I can nick some of what you do here and apply it to my build when I get around to it....I will.
Running gear and wheels are not my favourite bits to paint either, but I will soon be at that stage with the King tiger so with over 100 parts I guess I better start getting into that mind set....

Regards
Mark

[jssel]

Looking very nice indeed.

[Molly-new]

Looking good so far, and nicely painted wheels.

[Dazzled]

No time for much of an update I'm afraid. The wheels are on and I've made some inroads into the tracks. Unfortunately, progress will be at a halt for a while as I'm off to Belgium until Monday. The opportunity presented itself a couple of days ago and we grabbed it.

So, more progress reports next week. Beer time, I think