Marder III M

I did have this planned for an April completion.  So I am a few days early.
This is the 1/48 Tamiya kit of a late version of the Marder as mounted on the 38T Chassis.
Since it is a Tamiya, do I need to say more?  Ok. I will.

Of course the fit was perfect and the gun can actually swivel and elevate if you are careful with the assembly. The only detail which I thought needed work was that the  75mm rounds do not actually fit into the ammo slots in the interior. What I did was to cut down the shells and use only the heads. This way I could insert a few into the holders.

I did add some Black Dog and other parts stowage as well as accessories from Tamiya figure sets. The tiny straps are 1mm tape. I do like stowage and don't go overboard with it. Just enough to be interesting. I use ship rope to tie everything down.

I used enamel paints and oil washes with some pigment powders. The camo pattern is airbrushed freehand and blended with the washes. To answer the other question, Yes I do normally fix the stowage to the primed model before painting.  Once I find an arrangement I like, I glue in place and rope down. After finishing paining the model details I hand brush the stowage details.

Vince B.  3-30-20.

Academy Magach 6B

This will be Part 7 of the build of the Academy kit.

This review is of the Turret and fittings steps #9 thru #12.  The major components just fall together. I did find a few items to warn you about.

A) In Step 9 when assembling the Mantlet Armor you have a choice of with or without the Machine Gun mounting. Later on you will discover that part M38 will need to be trimmed to allow the installation of the main gun barrel. This isn't a problem to cut and sand off the flap in step # 11.

B) In step #10, the details on the Coupola.  The small handles are mis-marked  as K21. You will easily figure this out on the sprue. This assembly is fidley and I ended up with a working hatch to allow a figure. You want to make this decision to help with the closure fit of the hatch.  Be careful of the view ports parts E66 as they can interfere with the hatch closure.

C) The Stowage Basket after assembly is a real tight fit on the turret. Keep dry fitting on the turret while the parts are drying to get the best fit.

D) You need to be careful in assembling the 2 piece barrel. If you are there is very little seam clean up needed. Its hard to get between the details for clean up.

I have left off the last fidleys until I have selected and fitted stowage.

Vince B.  3-30-20

MENG MAGACH 6B 4th Part

MAGACH 6B BUILD

PART 4

The steps highlighted here are for the lower hull. They include the drivers hatch and periscopes, the belly pan, the hull deck and the rear portion of the hull.

First, the deck for the lower hull is 10 parts. It consists of two main parts; the forward part consists of the drives hatch and turret ring, and the aft portion is the engine cover. The balance of the pieces are the access panels to the engine compartment, this arrangement allows for tremendous detail to be molded into the individual pieces, so I wasn't too put out about the assembly. First, lets deal with the drivers hatch. On this model, the drives hatch can open, however, the tolerance on the hatch fittings was too tight to allow it to open and close freely. Based on this I decided to glue it closed.

The next thing to deal with was the drivers periscopes. There are clear plastic parts as periscopes that fit into holes around the drives hatch. There is one hole that accepts a stud on each periscope piece. However, the holes were too small and it took me more than an hour to widen them enough (laterally) to accept the periscopes. Before I mounted the periscopes, I used Vallejo Liquid mask on each front facing portion. I then painted each periscope with Tamiya clear blue. Each periscope has a cover so I glued those on after gluing the periscopes to the hull.

After gluing the forward and aft portions of the upper hull, the next step was to assemble the engine exhaust diffuser doors. These are two piece assemblies and are exceptionally molded, with zero fit problems. Once this was complete, the upper hull engine access panels needed to be installed, this was a total of eight pieces, and they all fit with no issues.

Once the upper hull was installed, it was time to install a nose piece to the lower hull that fits onto the lower front glacis plate. After that is installed then the belly pan gets installed. There were 6 pieces to glue to the belly pan. Two of the six pieces appear to be turnbuckles that attach to the rear hull.

To date, I am pleased with the detail and fit of this kit with the exception of the drivers hatch and its periscopes. The next steps will be assembly of the sponsons/fenders. and various upper hull details.

Cheers,

WL

Academy Magach 6B

This is Part 6 which covers steps #4 thru #8.

A) I have completed the lower and upper hull assemblies. As you can see I have primed and painted them. I mixed the Israeli color from Dark Gull Grey and Olive Drab Model Master enamel paints. This will get darker after applying the oil washes.

B) I have already weathered and pigmented the lower hull and wheel areas in advance of attaching the upper hull. 

C) This would have been difficult or incomplete since I had attached the side armor to the upper hull. I believe that the best practice would be to leave off the side armor until later after attaching the upper hull and weathering the wheel area and tracks. 

Next will be to complete the turret assembly and final bits. 

Vince B.  3-29-20

Israeli M51 Super Sherman

While the oil wash was drying on my Magach 6B, I was able to complete work on my other Israeli subject.

Tamiya is the best.  Of course everything on this kit fit exactly as it should. Even the decals seemed to slide right into place without a lot of fiddling. No Photo Etch to be seen. The tracks were glue-able and fit with just enough slack to not bind the drive sprockets.

I used stowage from Legend, mixing the resin bits from both the IDF series stowage and the designated set for the M51.

Vince B.  3-28-20

Academy Magach 6B

This will be Part 5 for the Academy build. I am making good progress and have begun priming and painting assemblies.

A)  Per my previous discussion, I have primed and painted the lower hull, wheels and tracks so that I can secure the upper hull and complete the project.  Below is the upper hull with the fidley bits added after the initial prime paint.  I will re-prime these bits before base color painting.

 B) Below are the road wheels and drive sprockets already painted. These will get glossed and oil washed before adding to the suspension arms. 

C) I am also working on step #9 which is the turret assembly. Be careful to note that there are OPTIONS on which mantlet to use. Werner's research turned up that the 6B had several visible differences within the same designation. So choose wisely. Everything here fit well without surprises.

Vince B.  3-27-20

MENG MAGACH 6B 3rd Part

MAGACH 6B BUILD

PART 3

The next few step involved attaching the torsion bars to the swing arms. After getting the first swing arm/torsion bar assembly completed, I decided to test fit them in the lower hull and I am glad I did. The glue was not fully cured so the swing arm nearly came lose. It was at this point that I decided to complete all of the swing arm/torsion bar assemblies and let them cure overnight. Seeing as the assemblies are composed of different parts as they have to mount to different sides of the hull, they each have a letter designator. In order to prevent myself from getting them confused, I arranged the assemblies as they were completed, by placing them next to the appropriately labeled tape.

The next day, I slid each assembly into its correct position into the lower hull.

Once the torsion bar assemblies were installed I tested their ability to move, and they worked as advertised.

The next step was to install the forward and rear linkages. These linkages are also workable. They were a little fiddly but not too difficult. Note that the linkage assembly includes a shock absorber that snaps onto the swing arm. It is import to NOT use glue on the movable parts of this linkage, otherwise it will not move.

Moving on, the next step was to install the shocks on the remaining swing arms that require shocks. The rods on the swing arms needed to be inserted into the shocks BEFORE gluing the shocks to the hull. This process was a little fiddly, but nothing that a pair of tweezers and a little patience couldn't handle.

Once the assemblies were done, I checked them all to see if they would move, and they all functioned as designed. Now all I had to do was to add the pintle mount and hooks on the rear of the lower hull. Then just attach the previously completed road wheels and sprockets.

One thing I found interesting was that the instructions said not to apply glue to the return rollers, but I found out that I did in fact need to use glue to attach them.

All in all, I didn't run into any real issues here and the lower hull is mostly complete. She is starting to look like a tank. The next steps will be on assembling the upper hull.

Cheers,

WL

Academy Magach 6B

This will be Part 4 of my review and advice on this Academy kit.

A) I completed the adjustments needed to correct my errors. I was able to insert an appropriate piece of Evergreen channel to fill the gap between the armor assemblies on the front of the hull.

 I also managed to make the connections of the side armor supports to get the assemblies in place. Again, I urge you to do the side armor assemblies and attach the supports to them before attaching to the upper hull. It will be much easier to align the parts.

B) I do not have the upper and lower hulls permanently connected at this time. There is a polycap on the lower hull to hold the upper hull in place for now. First I will prime, paint and weather the lower chassis, add the pigments etc before installing the road wheels and tracks.  All of those need to be panted and weathered separately. Once those are completed and in place, I can attach the two hull halves permanently and complete the build. You cant easily install the wheels and tracks if you have the upper hull (with side armor) already in place.

Next will be the tracks, lower hull and wheels primed painted and weathered.

Vince B. 3-25-20

Academy Magach 6B

Well, this is what makes this all worth while.  Finding something to really help out the next guy.
Part 3: How NOT to F*^&K up your model. Better me than you.  I can fix the issues I found. Mostly this is about better sequencing the assembly of certain items.

The wheel assemblies are simple 2 piece with a polycap in the middle. No problems there, but on to step #5. Need to be careful to follow all of the small  notes of details to be trimmed off of the upper hull before continuing. Also I always leave off the fidley bits which could break off during handling such as the stowage bin handles parts C21. These can be added later before painting.

Issue A) Note that there are several small details which need to be cut off and sanded down to allow replacement parts to fit properly. I recommend NOT installing L35, L14, L40 etc. in step #5.  I thought these were additional Fender supports.  They are actually the side armor supports and should be put on later in step #8 to help align them on the upper hull. Best to attach them to the side armor frame first. This will also delay the installation of Boxes M12, M13,  M15 which should be carefully considered how they fit differently.
For M13, you would need to trim down the engine hatch frame. For M12, you would only need to remove the molded in bolts of that engine hatch frame.

Issue B) Frontal Armor for top and lower hull. Recommend Not installing lower hull armor assembly for this until you have mounted upper hull and are ready to match to upper hull plate. I thought I had the lower assembly aligned correctly according to step #4, Once I tried to align the upper plate in step #6, I found ~ 1/32" gap which I can fill with evergreen strip.


I hope this all helps. I will continue with the fixes and remainder of step #7 tonight.

Vince B. 3-24-20

Morser - Loki

This is a project which is consolidating parts from the old and older Hasegawa kits of this subject in 1/72 scale. I had used the rail components of the carrier on another project so decided to use up as much of the remaining kits as possible. Yes there are lots more for sci fi work later.

There were really a lot of fidley bits on this requiring tweezers. It was difficult to find relevant photos of the in action type.  I decided not to use figures on this display, didnt want another diorama.  I used a combination of Humbrol, Floquil and Modelmaster laquers and enamels on this. Washed with oils and did some drybrushing for details. These old Hasegawa kits had hard vynil tracks. Had to heat squeeze and stapel the connections. 

I put on the few decals available with the kit and did some minor weathering as these units were well kept. I did some basic groundwork, sinking the tracks into the earth with heavy trails behind them.

This one was to challenge myself with an OLD kit to see what I could do with it.

Vince B  3-24-20

MENG MAGACH6B 2nd Part

MAGACH 6B BUILD

PART 2

Upon opening the box, I counted 17 sprues. I also noted that the upper hull/engine deck is in 13 pieces. The wheels have separate tires with rims molded in that fit over the hubs. Not sure why this is done, but there it is.

First build step is assembling the sprockets and wheels.

 Each road wheel set consists of a tire, inner hub, polycap, outer hub and tire. That's right folks, five pieces per set for fourteen sets of road wheels. The sprockets were just an inner piece, polycap and outer piece.

Here are the completed sprockets and road wheels.

The next step will be inserting the mounts for the torsion bars in the lower hull.

With the torsion bar mounts installed, the next step is to put on much of the attaching hardware to the lower hull.

So far, things are going about as I expected. Assembling the wheels was tedious, but they are nicely detailed and I encountered no fit problems. There are a fair amount of small parts associated with steps 3 and 4 but nothing that I would consider unmanageable. Be careful not to trim off the tips of the bump stops for the swing arms as they are trimmed from the sprue. I failed to note this until it was too late., but these parts will be hidden by the road wheels so I am not concerned about them being seen.

As Vince pointed out, there are some differences in the way the kits have been designed and subsequently how they are meant to go together. What I find interesting is that we both completed up to step 4 and are at similar points along the build. One of the things that we noted while examining the lower hull is that there are additional details molded into the lower hull on the Meng kit that are not present on the Academy version. I expect to continue to see more of this as we proceed through the build.

Look for more posts as the days pass by. Everyone be safe.

Academy Magach 6B

We are well on our way to compare the Meng and Academy kits. There is a definite difference in philosophy between the manufacturers. Academy has fewer parts for each assembly and less detail where it isnt seen. Thus the lesser expense of the kit. The build sequencing of the instructions differ between manufacturers.

Part 2: Initial Build.
Our first build session was very productive.  5 solid hours brought me through the steps of the lower hull. In comparing instruction steps and details, Werner and I found several differences between MENG and Academy kits. Note the lack of detail around the Torsion housings on the hull. Look at most M-60 kits to see a much different design in this area.

Thus far, I have not had any fit issues or mis identified parts. Everything has been as the instructions indicated. Note that there are 3 types of torsion arms.  The 4 middle ones are identical on each side. The 1st and 6th of each side are a little different so dont get them mixed. All other parts were easily identified and assembled.

Next I will be working on the road wheels and drive sprockets.

Vince B.  3-22-20.

MENG MAGACH 6B GAL BATASH

This Meng Magach 6B Gal Batash will be part of the same multipart review that Vince is doing of the Academy version of this subject. Given the amount of smaller parts included in both kits it is likely that these builds will take some time.

Part 1. In box review of the Meng kit. I have built three Meng kits to date making this kit my fourth. I have had good experiences with Meng kits, they go together well and are nicely detailed. Their molding is superb with no flash, but they have a tendency to contain a fair amount of unnecessarily small parts (heretofore known as 'fiddly bits'). The detail is crisp and there are no issues with part fits.

Notable features include:

• Lower Hull is a one piece tub
• No figures included so I have ordered some resin figures
• Crisply molded sprues with no flash
• Mold lines are imperceptible
• This kit contains a working torsion bar suspension system for all road wheels
• The tracks are workable individual links with pins and an assembly jig
• The barrel is in two halves with a third piece as the muzzle tip
• The turret basket is for individual pieces, but I will be replacing it with an after market basket
• The add on armor is nicely molded and textured
• There is a metal tow cable included as well as plastic tow cables that drape across the front of the lower hull
• There are 10 pieces of photo etch consisting of 8 brackets, on plate cover, and one screen for the floor of the turret basket
• There is a very nice semi-gloss color guide included

Sunday begins the first build session. I am very much looking forward to completing this model to add to my IDF collection.

Werner

Academy Magach 6B, Gal Batash

The Magach 6B is the subject of a multi part series. I am reviewing the Academy kit while Werner will be reviewing the MENG kit of the same subject.

Part 1 is an in box review pointing out important features. In general, I find Academy kits to be near equal to Tamiya, so I expect this will be a smooth build. Here is what I see in the Academy box.

A) Lower Hull is a 3 piece bathtub style.
B) Includes 1 comander and 1 gunner figure.
C) General Sprues are clean with no flash, minimal mold lines.
D) Upper Hull has excellent M-60 detailing.
E) Barrel is 3 part: halves plus Muzzle Break.
F) Road Wheels along with the ideler and drive sprokets include Polycaps.
G) Turret Basket is 4 large rectangular pieces, not the rounded individual tubular shapes of the M-60.
H) Reactive Armor is all well detailed, which has lots of add on parts for the 6B upgrade.
I) Tracks are Vinyl and do NOT glue, need to heat crimp and staple.
J) Details include nylon rope for tow cables and simple water slide decals.
K)  NO PHOTO ETCH, which is why I bought it.

Sunday, we will open the packages and begin the builds.

Vince B.  3-20-20
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T-55 BTU 55 w/dozer blade

This is the Dragon kit in 1/72nd scale, built straight out of the box. It is painted as suggested on the box art and instructions.  It is painted in the multi-color Finnish Army camo. The T-55 has 3 shades of green followed by black. In order of lightest to darkest, the greens are: Polly Scale Soviet Green, Gunze Sangyo H-303, FS-34102 and then Vallejo 086, Luft Camo Green.

This is my first attempt at airbrushing Vallejo, and I am impressed and will use them again!

The dozer blade was weathered with 2 different shades of  MIG European dirt pigments.

You can see the Polly Scale lightest green best here on the back of the turret.

Panzer IV Ausf H with 88mm Flak.

This is a Dragon kit, very typical mix of parts from various other Panzer IV kits combined with parts from 88mm Flak gun. Yes, when it wascomplete I still had half a box of parts left.  Goodies for my scrap building.

 This is a Jon Baker build. Unique, hard to get photos of. The few I found were in a scrap yard.  I included some ammo, stowage and a figure. I was pretty happy with my figure result.

 I did add copper wire for the tow cable. Since the upper hull was cut down, there wasnt enough support to add the armor skirts.  Thats why the instructions indicated to cut off the lower fender supports that were molded on.

 I did have fun with the camo pattern. I suspected that this was a late war cobbled piece of equipment, so used the tan, green, rust combo. Heavily worn and oil washed. I added washes and mud pigments to the lower hull.

Vince B.  Mar 4, 2020