Cold War Veteran T-62

The box took a major hit during its journey from Poland (Super-Hobby). The interior box did its job and prevented a lot of damage. The headlight cage lost one bar and the drive sprockets had a couple of bent teeth. I was impressed.

I started with the flat-pack hull. The first step is to glue the hull sides to the bottom... It is a very long seam and if you have four hands you might be able to brace it and hold it while it sets up. I could not. So I attached the rear hull plate first which was a nice sturdy joint.

Assembled the turret basics next.

The next day I prepped the sides and engine deck first. I got things lined up using the hull rear plate. I only glued the rear half of the hull sides to the bottom and the engine deck. At this time I also attached the front lower hull plate.

Odds and ends while the rear hull dries. (Just look at the dent in that box...)

The next day I dry-fitted the forward hull-plate into place to hold everything square and glued each hull side to the hull bottom.

I got one good seem and one not so good (it was the one I tried to glue on freehand).

I glue the glacis and forward hull roof in two stages as well.

The idler mount wiggled down nice enough but might be a little rough looking.

High part count detailed parts won't be visible once the road wheels are mounted.

The last part to be glued was the upper hull. Everything looks pretty good at this point. Trying different seem filling methods for the turret.

I like to get the basic vehicle assembled before festooning the sub-assemblies with all the little bits that would get knocked into obliviation if I tried to assemble the way the instructions recommend. (Was that sentence too long?)