Hi to all! A few weeks ago, I dug from the stash an old Italeri/Zvezda SU-100 I bought from a guy in Miami (that will be important later) via flea-bag/bay for $10…delivered! here is the stash at present
The model when I got it looked Ok to me, but I compared it to some walkaround pics that were floating on the net, and I saw that this early/mid-90’s kit lacked alot of detail, so I took the advice that I saw on here and some other places, and added weld beads, and also I “painted” the hull in Tenax to get that wavy-steel look of Russian equipment of the time (note: If I would have known how tuff Tenax is getting to procure, I would have used Zap instead! OTHER NOTE: I think I would have been better of to buy the DML mak-daddy edition out right now!)
You can also see the work that I did in the set of pics, using stuff from my local hobby store (LHS):
and
OK, so now it is looking pretty good, right? Well, better than expected. Unlike many of you, I do all spraying on the back deck, so I have to pick a time that it is warm enough to do so, and with at least less wind, or non-blustery enough that I can shoot between gusts. My life is pretty busy, so I do not the luxury nor the time to get to a “man-cave” (darn it) such as Moon Puppy enjoys on a frequent basis. Thus, I hand brushed the model with the finest grit Mr. Surfacer, and my LHS carries floquil/pollyscale, and I bought “Russian topside green,” and on a day when the temp was about 50 deg. F, and I gave it a base coat.
POLLY SCALE ACRYLICS ARE THE BOMB! It mixed fine and sprayed on great! I thus was up and going. I really thunked it looked good, but still lacked that certain something, so I saw an FSM article, on Post-Shading, and decided to give 'er a whirl. I got more Polly Scale (does it ever end?) and re-read the article a few times, mixed the dark and the light, and sprayed the corners/edges with he dark, and the centers with the light.
I don’t have too much time to spend on kits and can only work on them 1-2 days per week at mst, and only for short periods of time then, so progress is VERYs slow, and here is why I have little free time:
worth it I am sure you will agree (and a DARN FINE excuse at that!)! Note that this pic does not have my son, my cats, MP, my work or my guns in there, so like I said - not much time!
Ok, so anyway, here is the post-shading stuff:
and
The camera, while a good one, I guess just is not enough to get the subtle shades out of it. Again, the pollyscale paint came out great! The model at this point looked so good, I just needed to basically assemble a few things, and clean up the bottom hull, right? Well, not quite. I decided to test-fit the upper and lower hulls - remember I said it came from Maimi? guy said he stored it is his garage. Here is what happens when you do that to plastic in a like 100 dgree/99% humidity environment:
Well, here it is - turns out the only tracks that really fit was one Tamiya Vinyl that came out looking well (I could not for the life of me find that other track!), and one Zvezda. the “Z” was like trying to bend a plastic spoon around the wheels! It only came out so-so on that side, but ironically there are some pics on the net that support it more so that you might at first think! Anyway, the tracks are really going to require work now, 'cause one is black and the other is gray! The body is just fitted to the lower hull, no glued or anything. I will work the “lower” to get it looking right, the and attach the upper, hopefully by the weekend, and see how it looks from there
Hello to all! The missus was all into her “Smallville” episode last night, so I got full hour of work time - and made the most of it! I got alot of work done,! As you can see, I finally got the top & bottom together! Also, I did some initial painting and “mudding” of the lower portion - here is how it worked out:
In looking this over like a hundred times, I decided to make a pair of flanges on the inside of the hull of the tank using some sheet styrene, in order for the model to have something to grab on to at the front. After some dry-fits, I decided that I could have no noticeable gap in the front and huge one in the back…or the other way 'round. I chose to “split the difference” and the flanges made that a bit easier. A little application of Tenax, let the front dry, then back at the rear, and she is at last together! now MP can FINALLY know what I did to fill the gap! In the pics, there is an unpainted portion at the rear, and that makes it look incorrectly joined, but when I get that paint-matched up, I should be OK. I added a small styrene strip to the front underside to completely fill the gap, and I distressed it a bit (though it does not show in this pic) to make it look a bit like a weld seam. I am going to paint the rear and then see if I need to do something similar there as well. Once through with weathering, I think that both will be fine.
Before that, though, I did some initial mud application to the tracks and lower hull. I am not finished here in terms of mud and especially paint, but here is the initial work. I used two different colors to give the mud depth, and may yet finish with perhaps chalks to give it some dust as well, but as you can see, it appears to be off to a good start!
