Grant Canal Defence Light
Final drive assembly with cast texture added. This is putty applied thin, then quickly wetted with liquid cement and stippled with a stiff brush; after drying, it was sanded to reduce the resulting texture again.
Main pieces for the armoured radiator cover that seems to have been commonly fitted to CDLs. The numbers are the thicknesses of the card used.
Basic shape of the armoured radiator cover assembled.
Armoured radiator cover finished with all its details, and in place on the model.
Rear right stowage box scratchbuilt from plastic card (because Takom missed half the boxes that were commonly on CDLs).
Front mudguard stowage bin, another that Takom forgot.
Stowage boxes on the engine deck finished.
Left-hand side of the stowage boxes on the engine deck.
Night-driving light and three brackets added to glacis plate, again details that Takom omitted (though oddly, the etched guard around the light is provided in the kit).
Bullet splash guard around turret ring added from a strip of plastic card. Glued in place as a single piece, with the gaps cut afterward to make sure everything lines up.
Right front view of the finished but unpainted model. Figure is from MiniArt.
Left front view of the finished but unpainted model. Antenna mounts on turret roof are from the spares box, as Takom (again …) missed them almost completely.
Left rear view of the finished but unpainted model. Tracks are still loose, assembled into a couple of lengths, for ease of painting. The etched sand shield mounting rails have been hand-painted with Mr. Surfacer to prime them before painting,
Right rear view of the finished but unpainted model. Fire extinguishers were replaced by Asuka ones, as they seem slightly better.
Painted in SCC 15 olive drab, mixed from Tamiya acrylics: 5 parts XF-81, 1 part XF-58 and 1 part XF-71.
More painting done: panel highlights sprayed with Mig IDF Green, then a wash from thinned (about 1:1) Army Painter Soft Tone, and once that was dry, a drybrush with Revell Light Olive.
Wheels and tracks painted.
The wheel rims are bare metal because the track teeth often rubbed the paint off them in the real world.
Markings from the kit added, though not all that it indicates (the census numbers it tells you to put on the front and rear are unlikely, the bridge classification disc on the rear is just silly) and the blue square seems to be spurious, but I only found that out after applying it.
Model dirtied with an earth-coloured wash, not too much as it should look as if it’s not been in service very long, and tracks added.
The finished model from here on.
Comments
28 16 February 2023, 11:47
Robert PodkońskiQuite a lot of work. Really good work, as can be expected from Jakko.
16 February 2023, 14:40
Jakko Thanks 🙂 TBH, the kit is basically sound, but I feel they dropped the ball in some areas. The stowage bins are apparent in most photos of Grant CDLs, for example, and the radiator cover as well as the canvas cover over the gun. Also, Takom tells you to fit the gun barrel with an external armoured shield, which was common on the American version but never seen on the British one.
I get the impression they started making a model of the American CDL tank, and then said, "Why don't we also release the British version?" but didn't do their research well enough to find all of the differences.
16 February 2023, 18:27
