Trumpeter 1/35 T-80BVD: A freak version of a T-80

Good day to you dear readers.. Hope you readers having a good day and all is well with you guys.

Yes, this is the T-80 that I have been building so slowly for about 2 months. Finally took some times off to take photos of this.

For a detail review of the kit, please refer to my review post I made for this - LINK. 

I have purposely taken off the fuel drums as I think this baby looks better without them. I also took off the cables ... well.. just because. I have no reason for taking off the tow cables LOL.

For the Colours, I used Tamiya Dark Green XF-70, Vallejo Air Black and Mr. Colour Aqueous Aircraft Gray H57. My choice of green was poor as you can see very obviously that it is too dark. It would have been acceptable just by itself but after I put on the Black patterns, it interacted with the dark green and made the green darker. Had I known that would happen, I would have used a lighter green or made the dark green a bit lighter. OH well.......

For weathering, I kept the entire vehicle clean, free of chippings and collected dust. Since this is a prototype ( according to what I have read at Armorama ), I wanted to put this in a scenario where they are testing out performance with the diesel engine on a relatively new vehicle. I was tired of making caked and solid mud and earth ( dry and wet ) so I thought of the kind of weathering I haven't done and I figured out that I haven't put on any kind of muddy water weathering. 

Deciding on what kind of setting I want my weathering to show, I ponder for a bit on what product to use and my eyes felled on a half empty bottle of AK earth effect. So, I put some in the airbrush, lightly spray them onto the bigger parts and made a heavy spray near the edges of the skirts and the front rubber flaps. Once dried, I apply some more heavy amount of it by mean of brush to make more convening random effect of a surface stained by muddy water. Once fully satisfied, I took a glance on to the surface and applied some pledge( AKA future/Klear ) floor polish in the nooks and crannies of the ERA blocks on the very front hull to depict still wet waters trapped in them.


I made a full account of the W.I.P in the previous posts and you are welcome to look over at them if you are curious about how well the kit goes together. Actually, let me make a list here for the Work in Progress posts -

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3
Part 4
Part 5

This is one of the few kits that I am absolutely happy with what I did. I did have to nitpick about some boo-boos but the enjoyment and seeing it finished far weight the boo-boos

It's time for the photos - 
(Just click on the smaller ones and they will pop out )

The running gears -

 Some of the mud splashes and splatters- 

Some random close ups -

And as usual, my show case photos from various angles -

 

And as usual from me -

This is not one of my best works but my experiment with the enamel wash only weathering was a bit of a success. I been wanting to try muddy water stains rather than caked mud ( dry or wet) and this is quite satisfactory.

If I have to nick pick - I aboslutely hate that splatter on the left side of the front hull upper slope. It just doesn't look right. I thought it looked right but in hindsight, it doesn't. OH well.. what's done is done.

Learning from my ZSD-90, I tackled the white frosty finish of the infernal Matt varnish by rubbing them of with a brush that is very lightly wet with mineral spirit. Even still, there is some of these stupid unwanted effects still left on some places of the turret and the hatches.

Thirdly, I forgot to paint the convoy light's clear red over their silver base so it looks like the convoy lights are just normal white lenses instead of red lenses. 

Fourth, I am not happy with the condition of the green as I have stated above. 

Apart from these four points, I am really happy with this baby. The vehicles look just lovely and this is a milestone in my skills in applying .  This is one baby I will be proud to have on my shelf or another one shelf should anybody would buy it as I have plans to sell it.

Speaking of selling, I am selling some of my built models so if any of you are interested, shoot me an offer on ebay -
http://www.ebay.co.uk/usr/romance6688
Internationals are welcomed as well but most likely have to be communicated via email and paypal as I did not turn on international shipping on ebay. So shoot me an offer on ebay or from email if anybody's interested.

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Dual speed-build: KV-5 and JS-4 - Part 2

Right.. Update is due on this WIP ....

I will start with the JS-4 for the update -

With the lower hull all done, I glued on the large fender piece with a small strip of P.E. on the front mud flap. The flaps and fenders are all one long piece ( shown with the blue arrow )
Closed up the side skirts after that. Yes, yes, I know.... if I do that, what's that point of going the trouble to have the tracks sagged? I just love side skirts alot.

Learning from past experiences with Trumpeter kits, I drilled holes over the very very hard to find locating dimples for the grab handles that will go onto the turret.
After that, I gave it a coat of just random green that's lying around so that I can tell apart the areas that will not be textured later on. After that, Tamiya putty and revell Contacta cement to the rescue.
As much as I want to use the beautiful metal barrel, I wanted to have my JS-4 in a very menacing look and since my Object 279 was a failure, I just hack-and-slash and voila -
JS-4 now sporting the 130mm. The gun was initially very long and the over hang was too impractical so I shortened it to the same length of its original 122mm gun.
The only draw back of the turret assembly is that there is not Poly cup ( or PC cup or whatever they are called) and even though I'm using a barrel of pure plastic, the gun keep hanging down due to the weight and the very lose gun elevation mechanism. I had to use what I always use for counter weight - two part epoxy -


I put on a touch too much and now, the gun can't depress any more than 2 degree as the huge putty block is touching the turret roof. LOL. Not complaining, I'm happy as long as the gun is not loose and hanging down any more.

After that, comes the fuel tanks on top of the rear hull -

and finished off the read deck with exhaust mufflers and the P.E

Decided to finish the turret and put on all the necessary things ( you can clearly see the different colours of the entire turret)-


After that comes the storage boxes and any other necessary parts on the front hull -
And this is how my JS-4 looks now -
happy with that, moved on the KV-5.
First step is to paint the underside of the rather long fenders -
Glued them on along with the storage boxes and the raised engine intake structures -
If you guys are building this, be prepare to exert alot of force putting on the fenders to the slots, or better yet, make sure you do something to the male pegs or the slots to accommodate a flawless attachment.
After that, I totally go to town on the cast structure on the mantlet -
more cast texture on the mini turret -

decided to roughen up the side walls of the turret as well-





I know they wouldn't be casted but I decided to rough them up to show the low quality of the steel. I believe it is the reason because I usually see soviet armour build with roughed up steel plate.

And to close this update-I painted the entire thing with a base mix for the Russian green. By this point, I have only finished putting on the darker shade of green and lighter shade on the turret. The hull is yet to come.
That's for now. Catch ya all later.

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