My brother has been asking me to build an Abrams for him for quite some time, and I had the Academy kit in the stash for a few years so I figured there’s no time like the present. I’m not much of an armor modeler and I’ve read a few reviews of the kit and from what I’ve seen it’s not too accurate. That’s fine because I’m not a rivet counter and neither is he. Plus, this is a good chance for me to get in some practice with armor before I tackle the more complex armor kits in the stash. Here’s the box art:
I also found some decals for a Desert Storm tank from the 2nd Armored Division.
And here’s where I am so far; the wheels are assembled, holes in the bottom hull are filled, and the back of the lower hull is together. There is a hole in the back above the exhaust, I’ll probably put a sheet of styrene in there to blank it out.
Unfortunately the instructions aren’t all that great, and I’m not sure how these rings should look on the drive wheels, any suggestions?
Lastly, there are no clear pieces in this kit so I’ll probably have to cut some out of clear plastic for all the hatches and viewports.
The worst part of the kit is the barrel. It is way too short and hugely exagerated in its diameter, esp. the bore evacuator. You should really get an AM barrel for it. You need to look for an M256 barrel. With the kit barrel it will look very toy-like.
By the way, there is no hyphen in the name. It is simply an M1A1.
Agreed. Then paint a couple coats of clear red and a couple coats of clear gloss over them and they will look like the correct anti-laser film coated optics that the real tank has. The optics should not be clear.
Glad to have you along Bruce! That’s one thing I love about the forums, there are so many people here that are willing to share their knowledge. I can’t begin to describe everything I’ve learned since I joined up.
Nice! So it might not be up to current standards but you’ve got the kit so you might as well build it while correcting the most obvious issues, thanks for letting us follow along.
Too true. I looked into getting an AM barrel and unfortunately it’s not in the budget for now. I have the OIF Academy Abrams in the stash, so I’ll save up and get it when I build that kit, and use this as a learning experience.
Actually, in the “Iraq 2003” Academy kit, there is a new sprue that has a corrected barrel and a bunch of other updated parts that make it a pretty good kit in the end. It is almost worth getting the kit for just the new “J” sprue, almost. It still has the bigger problems of a too short turret (as all Academy Abrams do since the turret is a copy of Tamiya’s original M1 kit and never corrected for an M1A1) and the old style T156 chevron-block tracks that have not been used since the early '90s.
Progress has been a little slow. It seems like every little part has some kind of ejector pin mark on it. It’s a long processs getting them all filled in and sanded. I have the turret just about done, all I really have to do is the basket along the sides and back.
These are the styrene blanks I put in for the optics.
Looking good so far. The blanks on the optics look great. One thing you may want to adjust is teh smoke launchers. They should point up at about a 45 degree angle.
Thanks! I can’t believe how many there are. I sat down to get started on the turret basket and every part of except for three had several pin marks. So I had a short session of filling them and waiting for the putty to dry.
OK, finally some progress to show. It was incredibly tedious filling and sanding all the ejector pin marks on almost every single piece of the brackets. Each piece had between 2 and 4 marks. I took a good look and I don’t think I see any more on any of the other pieces. I also attached the upper and lower hulls together. I didn’t bother filling in any blank areas since they won’t be seen once everything is together. Hopefully next week I’ll be able to get some painting done.
Since I last posted I’ve gotten paint on the tank, wheels, and tracks. I still need to do some drybrushing for the details though. I also got some bits and bobs put on and gloss coated and applied decals. This is taking me way too long. Part of it is that I put off painting all those wheels and the tracks, it’s way too repetitive for me.
And nice work on the tracks, I airbrushed a Sherman’s treads years ago and then brush painted all the exposed metal bits. Never again! I’ve cheated and just airbrushed the whole blasted things with a muddy brown from that point on.
Btw: I paint my wheels dark rubber grey and then use a circle template from the art store to mask the wheels and spray the centers.
