T-62 Re-Build

This is one of the first 1:35 scale models that I build after getting back into the hobby in 2019. As you can see, it is pretty...basic. 

The painting was done mostly using Tamiya's Olive Drab 2 spraycan (TS-28), which is fine, I think.
Take also note of the mould and glue lines, especially those thick ones on the fuel barrels. I didn't pay too much attention to those back then and it shows. 

However, everything else is very much "meh." I painted this as a beginner, very much lacking the knowledge about paints that beginners tend to be lacking in. You know, complicated stuff like "you've got to thin your paints!" Which handily explains why the white stripes of the parade color scheme are awefully thick and full of visible brush strokes. Revell enamel colors, by the way. I didn't yet know about the pros of water-based acrylics at the time. 

I did add on a bit of chipping after I saw that in a video from well-known YouTube model builder Night Shift. It might very well be the best part of this thing. 

So, what is the plan of attack here?
First, I am going to get rid of the old coat of paint. I've got my hands on VMS's Clean Slate paint remover, as it is apparently safe to use (safe for the model, that is—don't go around drinking it!) and can get rid of enamel paints, which I used on this vehicle.
Once it is clean, I'll have two things to do: One is to clean up things I should have cleaned up back when I first build it, like mould lines or gaps that need fixing. The other thing is to improve the model with regard to details.
I've got two things firmly planned for this: First, I'm going to add some armor texture to the turret and front armor plate. It will be a bit of a challenge, what with all the small bits already attached, but it will be interesting and improve the tank's look noticeably. Next up, I'm going to replace the gun barrel with a metal one from (now sadly gone out of business) RB Models.
Two optional steps that I am contemplating is the replacement of the big turret handles with new ones made from wire and adding the fuel lines to the external tanks on the fender. I'll have to see about those.
Once everything is done, the T-62 is going to get a brand new coat of paint. I'm not yet sure what paint scheme I'm going to go with, but I do not think it will be a parade one. Luckily, I never attached the decals that came with the kit, so I have some of those at hand. 

I finally got started on this project properly. First step: Disassemble the tank! A few pieces actually broke off during this, particularly the hinge mechanism for the IR search light. There are still a bunch of small details that will get in the way once the paint is removed and it is time to add armor texture to the turret, but those I'll remove once the model is stripped.

I also used the opportunity to remove the barrel—after all, why bother cleaning it up when I'm going to replace it with RB Model's metal barrel anyway? I also drilled the hole I'll need to attach it later on.

Fun fact: The product page for VMS's paint remover is actually kinda lying in the German version. According to it, the paint remover does not give off dangerous fumes and smells nice. Guess what it does? Yeah, of course, it really doesn't smell nice. And it has a big warning symbol and text on the bottle, talking about harmful vapors. I re-checked the page and switched to the English version and that one doesn't contain those claims. I wonder if this is a remnant of an earlier product version? Or maybe it pertains to the version 2.0 cleaner, which is for acrylic paint only. 

And all cleaned up. Okay, a few paint smudges remain here and there, but it is more than enough to continue.

The VMS paint remover mostly did a great job, though you really should just let anything painted using enamel colors soak for something like 15 or 30 minutes, as those colors are pretty tough to get off otherwise. Water-based acrylics, though? They basically fly off the model. And even Tamiya colors (the base color was a Tamiya color spray bottle) was relatively easy to remove. 

And I immediately did something stupid. I started assembly of the metal barrel and was about to slip on the brass cylinder that is the bore evacuator. And, in a case of near-terminal stupidity, I had applied superglue to its inside BEFORE pushing it down the barrel. Of course, this resulted in what had to happen: It got stuck after just a few centimeter down the barrel, well before the place it was supposed to reach.

After mentally berating myself for an appropriate amount of time, I tried getting rid of the superglue by applying VMS's debonder, which normally works great. However, this time, it did basically nothing. Possibly because I was only able to get miniscule amounts of it in-between the barrel and evacuator, and even then I had to wiggle the latter around the former to the best of my ability.

Queue the tealight. My hope was that I could simply burn off the hardened superglue or that, barring that, the evacuator would hopefully expand a bit faster than the aluminium barrel, thus allowing me to slip it off of it. It worked...not so well. In the end, I had to resort to using those metal shears you can just see in the picture as a hammer to hammer away at the small pliers (rested upon the brass cylinder) while using the bigger pliers to hold the barrel itself. It worked after some time, but it left some marks. 

The completely assembled barrel. I tried to get rid of the marks left by my earlier rescue operation by polishing it and it kinda worked, but some of the deeper scratches remain. I'll have to leave them as they are and will hope that they won't be too noticeable once painted. 

The turret with its new armor/casting texture applied, but not yet sanded. 

And the mostly done turret. I still have to add the handrails, which I'll probably fashion out of some copper wire. Never did that before, so it'll be interesting. 

While its attachment is glued in place, the antenna itself is still removable, just to make sure it does not get in the way while painting. 

Next up: The upper hull.

Back when they came out, I bought one of Ammo's new T-55 fuel lines resin kits, just to test them out. Now's the time for that!

This was my first aftermarket resin kit and I really needed to practice. Turns out, getting those tiny fuel lines off their supports was easiest to achieve simply using the nippers, followed by just breaking or cutting off any remains. Sadly, I only found this out after accidentally breaking one of the fuel lines when I tried cutting the supports using my knife.

Luckily, I still had some sprues from my T-34/D30 build out and one of the handles on there had almost perfect dimensions to be fashioned into a replacement part, hence the yellow bend on the left-most fuel line.

Alltogether, I think this resin kit is pretty nice. It doesn't fit 100% on the Tamiya T-62, as the big line from the left tanks down to the hull is too short and needed to be bend slightly in order to reach down to the fenders, but it does improve the looks of the tank. And I suspect that they'll fit better on an actual T-54 or T-55 kit, especially if said kit has thinner fender supports. 

I cleaned up the front plate of most attachments and gave it some armor texture. I'll need to clean off those little lights on the sides and the tow hooks, though. 

Current state. It's slowly coming together! 

I decided to replace the plastic headlight cage with a scratch-build metal one. Another first for me. The process ended up being not as straightforward as I had hoped, but not as bad as it could have been. Sadly, the whole thing ended up leaning slightly to the left, but it's fine by me. 

Finally, after months of family things, I've found some time to return to some modeling projects. This evening, I fashioned some new grip handles for the T-62 turret. I build a little rig to bend the wire to the correct shape. Then, it was a simple process of bending the wire, plugging it into the holes already in place and filling the holes up with superglue. Looks quite nice, if I might say do myself. 

Next up, the tree trunk found on most Russian/Soviet tanks. I just glued it back in place before adding two small copper strips to simulate the straps used to keep the trunks in place on the real thing. 

Next up: tracks. Or the external fuel barrels, where I need to file or fill them properly smooth. Either way, the rebuilding part of the project is nearing completion. 

One short detour before we come to the tracks. JohnR's rather lovely T-55 build† reminded me that there should be some clamps holding down the external fuel tanks on the right fender. I decided to try my hand on scratch-building some and it went...somewhat acceptably? They are not quite all centered and the angles aren't quite right. And, of course, I replaced the central "hole with pin through it" with a simple drop of CA glue, but they are good enough for me right now. I might end up ripping some of them out again anyway, but more on that later, when we are talking about the tracks.

† ESCI T-55 | Album by JohnR (1:35) 

Looking good. 

Now, tracks. Look and witness my pain. I had a box of Miniart OMSh tracks in my stash that I decided to use for this build because I hate vinyl and rather like single-link tracks. What I didn't know at the time was just the insane amount of work this would end up being–and that it would end up not quite as hoped. 

Now, to explain the pain part: The box contains 12 sprues of 19 links each, so 228 in total. Each of these links are attached to the sprues by four gates, meaning I had to snip through a lovely 912 gates. So far, so simple, fast and fine.

But, BUT...each and every one of these gates is placed upon a curved surface, so it wasn't possible to snip them off cleanly. So, I had to clean them up, necessitating at least two cuts with the knife for each gate, sometimes more, for a minimum of 8 cuts per link or 1824 for the whole kit. And THEN I had to sand the link to get rid of any remains and round out the surfaces where I cut off the remains of the gates. Oh, and a few of the links had some flash, so I had to cut that as well. The link in the image actually has that. 

All in all, it took me something between five and six hours of extremely boring and repetitive work to end up with this box of 228 cleaned and ready-for-assembly OMSh track links. Don't get me wrong, they are lovely and due to the gates being placed on the curved, the sides pointing towards and away from the tank are very fine. They also fit together great when dry-fitting them. But I'll be damned if it wasn't a miserable time.

Oh, and I ruined my still rather new fine sanding file doing the sanding. 

So, I got to assembling the first run of track. Due to the aforementioned great fit, I decided to forgo my usual method of placing down some masking tape sticky-side up to assemble the links upon it. This, I think, became the seed of my downfall. 

Once I started to wrap the track around the wheels, things started falling apart. Like, literally, the track kept breaking into pieces. I also discovered that the links don't quite fit onto the drive wheel. I test-fitted them before and, while a bit tight on the teeth, they did fit. However, I just so happened to try it only with the maximum amount of links that would fit–once I started wrapping the actual track around the wheel, the additional links no longer really fit and gaps opened up.

I also had problems wrapping the track around the idler wheel. And THEN I had to discover that the length of track recommended by Miniart for a T-62 track–96 links–wasn't enough for the old Tamiya model, so I had to add additional links to the part of the track halfway hidden under the fender. Which then turned out to have been too many, so I had to rip them out again and insert a shorter version. Which kept falling off when I tried connecting them. And so on, and so forth. Don't really know how many links are now in the run, probably 100 to 102.

All in all, it was a miserable and painful experience. Wrapping the tracks around the wheels is usually one of my favorite parts of a build, as it instantly turns a strange box into something immediately identifiable as a tank. But this time, it was anything but fun or fulfilling, just sad. 

The final result. I ended up having to glue the track to the drive and idler wheel, which I do not like. I prefer my tracks and wheels separate, as to make painting them easier.

Over all, the result is surprisingly acceptable, even though I'm not the biggest fan of how the sag turned out. 

It actually looks best seen from more above, but some of the gaps and seams are still visible. The drive wheel is the worst, but I didn't think of taking a picture of it, so you'll just have to believe me on that.

Still, the whole experience was bad enough that I decided to change my plans for this model. I had planned to paint it as an active vehicle, quite possibly with the same parade livery it carried initially. Now, I think I'll turn it into a wreck.

Some time ago, I saw a video by YouTuber MTspeed_Crafts in which he build a desert diorama of an abandoned tank somebody turned into a shelter†. I had planned to do this with Trumpeter's old T-55 kit, which I had actually ordered just that evening before starting on my track run. I ended up cancelling that order and will use the T-62 instead. Still a bit torn on that decision, given that this side turned out semi-decently, but I really don't feel like doing another one.

This means I'll probably rip the track out again and replace it with a broken one, hanging or lying from and atop some of the wheels. The tank hull will lay askew, half-buried in a sand dune, with the turret having been blown off and thrown a few meters away, the turret ring having filled with sand, hiding the (non-existant) interior of the hull. I'll probably also take off one or two of the fuel tanks and have the intrepid shelterer use them for...something. I'll also have to add some damage to the turret, such as removing the snorkel or bending some handrails. We'll see.

† Youtube Video 

Okay, some updates incoming. I broke the loader's hatch with the AA machine gun mount out of the turret and re-cemented it at a different angle, as if it had been in use when the tank was hit or turned by the turret being thrown out. This will also allow me to later on install some kind of branch or wooden pole onto the MG itself, to act as a kind of improvised crane that keeps things important to our resourcefil survivor away from the ground.

I also removed the commander's IR lamp and added a simple replacement for the molded-in attachment bracket, as well as a loose cable that would once have supplied the lamp with energy.

And, of course, there's the track armor. 

While I've always read that track links used as armor usually turns out to be useless, I am aware that the practice somewhat survived in the Soviet Union. There are pictures of the up-armored T-62M (or T-62 BDD) in Afghanistan were the back half of the turret is completely surrounded by a run of track. And, well, seeing that I just so happen to have quite a bit of unneeded track at my hands, I decided to use some of it for some improvised armor, just to add some more interest to the turret.

However, I have no idea how the track run on the T-62M was attached to the turret. I guess that there probably was some kind of welded-on support structure, but that is simply a guess. Also, this isn't a T-62M, so I decided to go with an even more improvised style of track armor: Just shove it into the handrails and secure it using some wire or rope. I ended up using wire because I had it at hand at a reasonable thickness.

The wiring isn't the cleanest, but I think it somewhat adds to the rather unclean and improvised look. 

Next up: the other side. I started by adding the HEAT shell penetration hole. I still need to add some spalling on the outside, as that seems to be a regular feature of holes left by HEAT charges, bit I do rather like the look of the hole itself. I also squished the backside handrail, as if it was in the way when the turret landed and has been displaced by the impact. 

I then added some additional track armor into that handrail. Of course, I couldn't just add a straight run into a bend handrail, so I pulled it slightly apart at places and pressed the last two links (the ones in the front) into the rail, displacing the other links into a bend shape. It looks quite nice to me, but I'll have to drill open the link connectors later on. I though about adding bent track pins into said holes, but I think they'd be visually lost in the wiring keeping the tracks to the rail. Not to mentions that those pins would have probably been sheared off, not bend. 

And I added in the wiring, which I imagined to be somewhat destroyed due to the links shifting on impact. I'm a bit torn on this; it certainly looks destroyed, but maybe in a fake way? Hard to say what it is that I don't quite like about it. Might even be just how it looks on this picture, as I was quite happy when I was done with it last evening.