I’ve read a lot about SKIF T-55 kits and know they aren’t accurate or detailed correctly. SKIF is the only company that made these three variants in plastic so I couldn’t pass these up.
They’ll be OOB without AM products included.
A group build on another site motivated me to start these and I have until May to complete [H]
I started with the lower hulls and they all fit poorly but that’s what putty is for
This also dictates that they’ll be strictly Curb Side models [;)]
Building all three at the same time was the only way I thought I can get them done. If I started and completed one at a time then it would be like starting all over again and again and again.
One of the fender fuel tanks on the T-55C1 BUBLINA was a short-shot cast. The plastic didn’t get all the way into all the corners of the mold on some of the sprues. This part was one of them.
I first tried to make a quick aluminum foil form to melt/cast a new upper part of this fuel tank by melting some sprue chips from this kit.
= Fail
NEXT:
Try using foil again to make a partial patch, then fill in the back with glue and material.
= FAIL because it still leaves an un-sandable layer.
Finally I use silicone gasket material in a tube to make a quick and inexpensive mold:
Then cast with casting resin. This worked and with a little putty and sanding will look fine.
The rear lower hull part was also “skinny” on one of the spare track studs. I snipped off the parts I need from the SLA APC-55 kit to repair the BUBLINA. The i-sheets in the SLA kit says to file off and remove these anyway so it was perfect
The head light brush guard is kit supplied PE and is square instead of tubular material. Very fragile and requires careful clean up. The iSheet provides exact size description. I used basic geometry to make a balsa wood form to bend the PE part around.
The fender support PE is identified in the iSheets for specific positions on the kit hull fenders. These were measured and lightly scribed so I could glue them on top of each marked position.
