Squeezing a few hours every night and one sunny morning resulted in the tank being ready for base painting. After priming with grey and another round of light sanding, all the sub assemblies were sprayed dark green. The road wheels were primed black then sprayed dark green. I wanted a heavier look to the wheels so they got a different color primer.
Here's the hull with my conversions below. As usual, you can click the pix for bigger versions.
My reference (Osprey Modelling Manual 16 : T-34/76 and T-34/85) says that the T-34/76 tanks made at Krasnoye Sormovo Zadov N 112 (Gorki) had characteristic features specific to that factory. These included the installation of numerous handrails, splash guards, different light mounts, applique armor, etc. I decided to try my hand in scratchbuilding only some of these features. I substituted metal handrails instead of using the plastic ones supplied in the kit. I had trouble estimating their location placements though but the pictures I have at had shows that different tanks had different numbers of handrails and positions. So I just eyeballed the locations for these.
This picture below shows the splash guards around the turret base. The splash guards were made from 2mm triangular plastic rods from Tamiya's pla-plate line and affixed with gap filling super glue.
I had a hard time replicating the weld beads and seams and I'm afraid I made these either too non-uniform in appearance or too thick and out of scale in some areas. I guess I'll chalk it up to the haste the Russian factory had to deal with in fielding more of these tanks in the shortest time possible. Good welders take time to train, right?
The external fuel tanks received some creative denting -- I presume these were made from thinner metal and thus prone to deforming and other wear and tear -- as well as some rivet/screw details. Their brackets were also detailed with little rivets and weld beads.
The road wheels presented another problem with the rubber areas needing to painted black. So I cheated and used a Sharpie instead. The gloss sheen will hopefully be dulled out by the time I finish weathering.
And here she is with here base coat of dark green.
Here's the hull with my conversions below. As usual, you can click the pix for bigger versions.
My reference (Osprey Modelling Manual 16 : T-34/76 and T-34/85) says that the T-34/76 tanks made at Krasnoye Sormovo Zadov N 112 (Gorki) had characteristic features specific to that factory. These included the installation of numerous handrails, splash guards, different light mounts, applique armor, etc. I decided to try my hand in scratchbuilding only some of these features. I substituted metal handrails instead of using the plastic ones supplied in the kit. I had trouble estimating their location placements though but the pictures I have at had shows that different tanks had different numbers of handrails and positions. So I just eyeballed the locations for these.
I had a hard time replicating the weld beads and seams and I'm afraid I made these either too non-uniform in appearance or too thick and out of scale in some areas. I guess I'll chalk it up to the haste the Russian factory had to deal with in fielding more of these tanks in the shortest time possible. Good welders take time to train, right?
The external fuel tanks received some creative denting -- I presume these were made from thinner metal and thus prone to deforming and other wear and tear -- as well as some rivet/screw details. Their brackets were also detailed with little rivets and weld beads.
The road wheels presented another problem with the rubber areas needing to painted black. So I cheated and used a Sharpie instead. The gloss sheen will hopefully be dulled out by the time I finish weathering.
And here she is with here base coat of dark green.
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