This build has a little story to go along with it. So for those of you who want to see the tank, please feel free to scroll down.
Anyway, there is a small military history museum near where I live. It is called Motts Military Museum. My dad is a good friend of Warren Motts(the museums founder)and my dad wanted me to give Mr. Motts a flag that was flown over a palace in Baghdad.
A couple of weeks ago I went to the museum with Specter. Mr. Motts wasn’t in at the time. So we were looking around and one of the volunteers asked us if we wanted to go into one of the garages where they work on the vehicles that the museum owns. We didn’t refuse, after all the times I had been to the museum I had always wondered what they had in them. So Specter and I were looking at the vehicles while the guy was telling us what they were. We noticed a large display case with a ton of AFV models in it. It turns out that a former Army guardsmen had donated his large collection of mainly Cold War era AFV’s to the museum. He ended up building some kits specifically for the museum as well. We were told that he was transfered to the Pentagon and could no longer work on the kits. We were then shown a large stack of plastic boxes full of partially finished kits and spare parts that he left. Specter and I told the man that we build plastic models for fun and we would love to complete the kits. He said that would be great, and now we’re official volunteers at the museum.[tup]
Specter picked up a couple of kits for us to work on from the museum while I was in Washington state last week. I received a complete but unpainted hummer, and the Heller AMX 13. The AMX was about 75% completed when I recieved it. The hull, roadwheels, and turret were pretty much complete. All I had to do was clean it up,add detail parts and paint it. So I did. Here are the pics.
I had some problems with the kit. It had been sitting in its box for some time. The rubber band tracks had twisted violently, and some small parts were missing(like the clamp on the travel lock). I fixed the tracks the best I could, and made due with the missing parts. There was a lot of sanding of the hull and turret. The old glue was in pretty bad shape.
I finished the kit with Tamiya Desert Yellow, and and tamiya weathering kit. I’m about 80% satisfied with the completed product. I wish I could have done a better job. But I guess it isn’t too bad considering I didn’t even build half the kit. Let me know what you think. I’m sure I missed something. Oh yeah, thanks for reading. [:)]
Erik