Shaun's Cold War Builds

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ShaunW
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Shaun's Cold War Builds

Post by ShaunW »

Here's my initial effort for the CW 2016 SMW build in the form of a pair of Revell Leopard 2 A4 kits. The kit is now discontinued and I sourced this pair second hand from Kingkit. The kits are in very good condition, one had clearly never been opened and still had the factory seals on the box and there are no parts missing from the other - price was good, delivery was swift and thus there are no complaints from me. I have a feeling I will be using Kingkit's services again in connection with the CBK display effort as they have a decent range of older kits.

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Here's what is in the box(es):

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Decals are for a pair of German vehicles and, as you can see from the copyright date, the kit has been around a long time.

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Surface detail is quite acceptable for the scale but I am not a fan of moulded on tools and the like although I accept that is more or less par for the course in small scale AFV kits, certainly of this vintage or older.

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Tracks are link and length, which is not a type of construction that I have any experience with - hopefully they will go together OK but I've been in this hobby a long time and can't help having visions of some cursing and spilled liquid glue ahead! Alas there are the ejector pin marks on the inner faces of the tracks, which will require cleaning up:

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Onwards and upwards then. I intend to build both kits together and will hopefully make a start on my day off tomorrow.

Thanks for looking.
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Dazzled
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Re: Shaun's Cold War Builds

Post by Dazzled »

Doesn't look too bad Shaun although moulded on tools are a bit fiddly to paint. I've built a couple of armour kits with link and length tracks and I prefer them to conventional rubber band tracks. The trick is to paint and weather them first, adding more weathering powder as they go together in order to hide the inevitable glue stains. It's a small cheat that works every time :grin:

As for the ejector pin marks, just clean half of them up and hide the others on the inside 8-) .
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Stuart
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Re: Shaun's Cold War Builds

Post by Stuart »

Good Tip Darryl - They look really nice Shaun, I'm looking forward to seeing them go together!
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ShaunW
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Re: Shaun's Cold War Builds

Post by ShaunW »

Cheers boys and thanks for the tip re the tracks Daz.

So today I made a start. The two kits arrived in different styles of box, the contents of the kit I photographed yesterday was in a lidded box, which Revell hasn't used for a number of years, whilst the other kit came in the more familiar end opening box. All of the artwork etc on the two boxes was identical as indeed was the 1995 copyright date. What became clear when I opened the plastic bag of the end opener kit is that Revell has indulged in a spot of updating. The hull top of the end opening box and presumably the newer kit, has additional detail in the form of what I reckon to be a set of gun cleaning rods mounted in front of the turret ring:

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The sprues also contain additional parts. Firstly there are these parts, which include the distinctive German pattern angled smoke dischargers together with tow hooks, grab rails and driving mirrors:

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And there is also a set of tow cables:

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On to the builds and I have now completed the lower hull and inner road wheels. The lower hull is in four parts, namely, bottom plate, rear plate and two side plates which required careful alignment in order to avoid potential problems later on and furthermore the bottom plate of the older kit was warped which required the use of very hot water and a steel rule to correct. The inner halves of the road wheels are moulded in one long length per side, with stub axles to locate into the side plates. I rather like this idea as the inner wheels are all nice and straight and much time was saved over separate wheels, which would have required careful alignment to avoid any wobbly ones. Further, only tiny tweaks of the side plates were required to ensure that all of the wheels touched the ground together.

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I will leave the upper and lower halves of the hulls separate until after painting, which should help in fitting the tracks and in addition, the rear mudflaps look a little thick to me and I will have a go at scratch building some thinner replacements before committing to clipping off the moulded on items. As is my usual practice when building armour kits of any scale the outer halves of the road wheels, the idler wheels and drive sprockets will all be painted on the sprues, together with the tracks.

Thanks for looking.
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Stuart
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Re: Shaun's Cold War Builds

Post by Stuart »

Coming along nicely Shaun - following with interest.

Interesting also to have two releases of the kit - at least this way the won't be completely the same.
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ShaunW
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Re: Shaun's Cold War Builds

Post by ShaunW »

Cheers Stu - at least this demonstrates that Revell is a company that is willing to revisit its older toolings and upgrade them.
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Clashcityrocker
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Re: Shaun's Cold War Builds

Post by Clashcityrocker »

Nice start Shaun. They look to be a nice pair of kits.

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ShaunW
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Re: Shaun's Cold War Builds

Post by ShaunW »

Cheers Nigel.

I spent some time this afternoon building up the turrets on the Leopards. There was nothing untoward here really and the turrets went together quite well with only a touch of filler being required at the rear of each. Most of my time was spent in cleaning up the parts after removal from the sprues. The main issue was the fit of the hatches as they were a little small for the apertures and easily fell into the turrets and the sit of the hatches was not too good either. I sorted the problem by inserting off cuts of plastic tube into the hatch apertures (I happened to have some tube of the correct diameter) onto which the hatches then sat. Other than that, the gun tubes were fiddly to clean up. Although the guns were moulded in one piece, there was a seem line running down the centre of each and also the remnants of the sprue mounting points to be eradicated. The muzzles were moulded solid and therefore I drilled them out using a succession of micro drills held in a pin vice.

For the purposes of the photos showing the turrets in place, I have mocked up the hulls i.e. the hull top and bottom parts are not yet cemented together. The older kit is on the left and updated tooling on the right:

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And here is one of the differences between the older kit and the revised tooling. The revised tooling on the right features a cable reel, which is not present in the earlier kit:

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OOB, the earlier kit's turret is now complete save for the antenna mounts. The later turret also features grab rails and smoke discharger tubes on the sprues, which I aim to fit tomorrow.

Thanks for looking.
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Stuart
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Re: Shaun's Cold War Builds

Post by Stuart »

They both look great Shaun, and it's really interesting to see how Revell has updated the kit over the years - great stuff.
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Re: Shaun's Cold War Builds

Post by Dazzled »

Really nice Shaun. I love the fact that you go the extra yard with the small details like the gun barrels. It really makes a difference 8-)
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ShaunW
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Re: Shaun's Cold War Builds

Post by ShaunW »

Many thanks for your interest boys.

Well, I've gone a bit further today Daz. The smoke dischargers didn't look right to me OOB. I have arranged them more or less as Revell intended in the pic below and it is clear that the bottom row of barrels would discharge their smoke grenades straight into the upper row. Mmmmmm...

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I therefore had a look on Google Images and sure enough, the arrangement on the full-size is somewhat different. Firstly I made up some replacement "shelves" for the barrels out of thin plastic card and filed down the over thick OOB "shelves" down to a minimum on both rows. The upper row was then mounted to the replacement shelf as is. The lower row of barrels were carefully removed from the remnants of the OOB shelf and transferred to the new shelf, being repositioned in the process to look more like the real thing. Using photos on a G.I. as a reference I also made up a stay for the lower shelf out of Plastruct rod. All this was repeated for the other side of the turret. 1/72 is a small scale for AFVs and this was a fiddly PITA of a job, but I got there in the end!

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Moving back to the hulls of both kits, I decided to do something about the mudflap arrangements as I found the OOB ones to be overly thick and very stiff looking. I scratched up some replacements out of two thicknesses of plastic card with the thinnest being used to make the actual mudflaps. The mudflaps were bent around a piece of thin plastic tube to give them a bit of life and thin plastic card strengthening strips were added before the whole lot was mounted onto the hull. The OOB flaps were removed using sprue cutters.

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From side on, the replacement mudflaps are considerably thinner than the moulded on efforts (I should've done a side by side shot for comparison purposes but forgot, soz). They won't win any awards but should look OK under paint.

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I have an additional day off tomorrow and hopefully I will be able to put a bit more work into this pair.

Thanks for looking.
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Stuart
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Re: Shaun's Cold War Builds

Post by Stuart »

As I said in your WW thread - great work Shaun! I'm taking notes!
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Re: Shaun's Cold War Builds

Post by Dazzled »

Wonderful stuff Shaun. Just brilliant 8-)
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Clashcityrocker
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Re: Shaun's Cold War Builds

Post by Clashcityrocker »

Nice flaps :shock: , and smoke dischargers :grin:

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ShaunW
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Re: Shaun's Cold War Builds

Post by ShaunW »

Many thanks for your kind comments boys.

Today I decided to remove the moulded stowage in the rear turret bin as it looks a bit lifeless and in any event, given half a chance, I like to make a model uniquely mine with scratched up additions. Photos of these tanks show various amounts of kit stowed in these bins, usually covered by a tarp presumably as there is no lid and some bins empty. Therefore there is a wide variation in appearance between vehicles. This is a bit of a risk with the model as I might not be able to achieve the final look that I am after but, hey, that's how we get better as modellers. Or so I'm told :ha: Anyway, it's too late to do anything about it now as the plunge has been taken. Most modellers with an ounce of common sense would have carried out this work before fully assembling the turret. I, on the other hand, quite often make these rash decisions and of course make additional and/or harder work for myself as a result :roll:

I decided to approach this madness by using chain drilling. This is a useful technique that can be used to open up things like hatches on aircraft as well as vehicles. Firstly I started with a small drill bit, 0.7mm IIRC, held in a pin vice and drilled a series of holes into the part, keeping back from the very edges so as to avoid damaging the sides of the bin and thereby making cleaning up much more difficult:

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After that I moved up to the largest of my micro drills, a 1.6mm bit and drilled into the holes made previously:

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Thereafter, I used my modelling knife to complete the process of breaking through the drill holes:

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I then used various warding files to finish off and there you have it, one open storage bin:

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The macro lens makes the bin aperture look like 1/35th, in reality it's pretty bloody small I can tell you! I aim to fill the void with a load covered by a tissue tarp along the lines of various photos that I've seen. All being well :ha:

Thanks for looking.
Doing - Tamiya 1/35th Universal Carrier.

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