T28 Super Heavy Tank

Steven Van Dyck
As usual in my builds, a lot of wheels have to be cleaned up. I also posted some comparison views of the hull and tracks to a 13cm broad front view I found online. The ruler shows the degree of deviation.

Slavo Hazucha
That´s a lot of wheels & work... Especially considered only 25% (as I understand the the running gear´s layout) will be - partially - visible on the outer sides... looking forward to see what devilish levels of detail you´ll unravel on this thing...😉

Steven Van Dyck
Under supervision of multifocal eyes I started to sand the suspension parts until I went dark and I had to come in. Various sanding materials were used to remove the seam in a hollow or to remove burrs.

Steven Van Dyck
I had to scratch a piece of bogie I had lost on the lawn. I also decided to adapt the DS tracks manually to the correct width, be it a lengthy job to perform...

Steven Van Dyck
One of 4 track parts corrected, the fit on the plan is now OK.

Steven Van Dyck
The lower halves of the tracks are trimmed and provided with the dreaded track horns. I didn't loathe this like some of the reviewers did, it took me less than a day for the first, visible half. I even consider finishing the invisible side more or less the same. I first thought I could trim the other 4 lengths from the outside in. That is impossible because of the openings between rubber blocks. If I want to tend the lower 4 without having to glue them to the sprockets, they have to be trimmed inside out.
The hull has to be trimmed correspondingly, but the engine hatches have correct proportions. This means the split will be shaped like a Y following the engine armor. To correct the length I will have to remove a section after the first hatches. The angled armour is displaced a few millimeters to the outside, probably to make it possible to broaden the outer sponsons. This will be hard to correct.

Steven Van Dyck
Another problem is the width of the bogies. Because of the exaggerated track width, these bogies have an oversized bearing arm. Of course I had just glued all road wheels firmly in place. Only a handful came off clean, the other had to be torded loose, breaking the axle. That can be replaced. Now all bearing arms are sawn off and reset shorter to the hull.
The under hull is also trimmed on both sides, creating the right hull width. This is easy because there is no underhull detail at all. Only the transmission housing should be spared, but it has to be moved 9,5 mm to the front.

Steven Van Dyck
Each of the 16 bogies is thinned 1 mm and the sprocket hole is moved 9,5 mm to the front on both sides. Due to incorrect interval between bogies (it shouldn't be the same distance thrice, you don't have to stare long to a side view picture to see this) all of the geometry for the suspension parts, rolles included, should be razed and replaced. I also thinned the entire length of the sponsons 1mm and discovered a future problem with the crane support positions. All will be soon replicated on the right sponson, this time before I fixed the bogies to ease sawing and sanding.

Steven Van Dyck
The inner bogies are all fixed and Voyager PE connectors are added. The idler position on the plan I used seems problematic compared to pictures. As far as I know, the idler has no track tension system. I still moved the axle 2 mm to get better result with the tracks. If anybody would have a picture of the hull without idlers, we could see the real shape of the armor plate.

Slavo Hazucha
There appears to be no sag whatsoever in the tracks as seen in pic 75 - did you move the idler & test-fitted the tracks to achieve exactly that?

Steven Van Dyck
I had to move the sprocket forward further than the idler, so I expect I will have to remove a tracklink. No problem as I can glue the DS to an invisible location.

Steven Van Dyck
The sprockets are trimmed 2mm, but now the show really starts with the hull being split in 4 parts! I hope this will eventually be reforged as a 5mm smaller hull.

Steven Van Dyck
The upper hull is reconstituted and fixed on the lower hull.

Steven Van Dyck
The engine deck is fixed after being trimmed. The right hull side is milled a bit to match pictures and to be able to fix the two braking flanges for the trailer.

Steven Van Dyck
The sponsons are corrected according to plan. This means trimming 2 mm from the insides. The step in the oblique armor is removed by changing slightly the angle, hoping that this will go unnoticed in the end result. The second step is removed by sawing off and rejoining the fender front. The transmission housing cover is not secured with a 2nd locator, this is a bit sloppy from Dragon.

Slavo Hazucha
Oh man, you are really being thorough with this one... the complex rework of the upper structure & all the related changes, I guess you like a challenge...

Steven Van Dyck
Yes, Slavo, this remains a lot of work, even if today I almost finished relocating the outer bogie supports. I decided to avoid cutting off the oblique armor. This gives 1 extra seam to polish but it keeps the sponson from disintegrating.

Steven Van Dyck
The mantlet opening had to be increased in size after it shrunk 3mm while the hull was split. I figured out that the circle cutter wouldn't finish the job, it was hampered by the fenders. After the milling was done, I started to slash the remainder of the DS tracks for the extra 2mm width. They won't be visible, but they will tend the track properly.

Steven Van Dyck
The wheel axles were repaired, but were reapplied too soon. Like this, the tires would not fit on the wheels, so all was disassembled again. All PE is fixed, though.

Steven Van Dyck
The toolboxes unther the armor are replicated with styrene. This is a major omission from Dragon making it unlikeliy to build the towed version. They will not be visible but they suport the oblique armor angle. The last of the tracks are being adapted.

Maarten Henderieckx
goed bezig

Steven Van Dyck
Bedankt, Maarten.

Tracks are now primed grey after measuring on the suspension and removing excess links. Also, the suspension area is primed Rustoleum grey.

Steven Van Dyck
Painting has started with the wheels and suspension in Tamiya Olive Drab and the tracks and tires in Tamiya black. Takes a bit longer than the usual tank build.

Steven Van Dyck
All lower hull parts are now painted olive drab. Tracks are masked and sprayed metallic, taking forever to get the thick pigment particles through my 0.20 mm airbrush nozzle. Wheels are combined with tires.

Steven Van Dyck
All wheels are installed definitively and a sludge wash applied. After some rust and oil this can be masked.

Steven Van Dyck
The project had stalled when I discovered that my adapted removable outer tracks didn't align with the inner ones. The fit of the armour was good but the bogie rows were not parallel. I wanted to correct this with a jig that kept the outer rows of wheels at a fixed distance, adapting the armour angle. Therefore two metal angle irons were fixed, one still able to turn to be able to align both pieces. I had discovered some torsion in the side armor and corrected this by breaking the bond and gluing this in a vice. I hope the T28 is back in business.

Steven Van Dyck
Again some five months later I found the courage to assemble the large parts of the tank and correct the errors that resulted from working with a reconstructed side armour. I had to replace one pair of internal struts with a metal axle and then I had to counter some torsion effects in the fenders by making a new seam at the inside. I think now the build will run smoothly again.

Steven Van Dyck
I placed the connection pieces, but most additions had to be refitted due to my hull shortening work. The Voyager PE is sometimes a bit too fine for the plate thickness it needs to replace. The trailer brake flanges should have been partly drilled, not bolted completely if mounted on the hull.

Kerry COX
Steven. ! What a mammoth. !
Just the kit alone is huge, but the images I am seeing on Google and in the posted photos from you say that this will be something special. 👍 👍😭 👍 🙂

Steven Van Dyck
Yeah, Kerry, I did load up on Tamiya Olive Drab jars in the mean time... I have about 4 large ones now. Today you see an update about the hatches and the crane locks. The mg-ring is not very correct in the details, but with some etching tool tricks this can be repaired. The locks for the cranes have to be repositioned and replaced with a composite profile I made out of an ABS H-profile with two ribbons glued in it. This makes the right T-section in the locks, of which you need 32. Dragon only does a square section and Voyager tries to be helpful but in this case they botched it, making the locks too hollow. A pain was the relocation of all locator holes in the fenders. All had to be redrawn from the pictures, drilled 1mm deep and then tediously squared off with a scalpel. Next will come the cranes, but I think these too will be oversize.

Steven Van Dyck
The cranes on the Dragon T28 have indeed some errors, but with the Voyager upgrade and some scratch parts they can be upgraded such that they become fully operational. Swinging the tumbler makes the pinwheel go round one tooth. I had to attach the Voyager pinwheel to the plastic wheel for its thickness and I had to hollow out the whole crane structure to get something like on the pictures of Allied-Axis. I placed the cranes in the front position, but this still shows a bit of the torsion in the fenders. With the gun installed, I hope the skewed position will not be that evident. The Voyager toolboxes were a nicer version of the Dragon ones, so they too had to be decreased in size to fit. Still working on that.

Kerry COX
And the fully operational engine goes in soon. ? 🙂 🙂 🙂
Great attention to detail Steven. 👍
You mentioned the tool boxes too I see. That makes me wonder if the 'Voyager' 1/35 scale German tool box with spanners would be suitable too. ?
"Voyager" Etched brass German tool boxes. | Album by RedRoo

Steven Van Dyck
Thanks Kerry. The T28 has two toolboxes for the regular tools hidden inside its track sponsons, that were rediscovered intact during the recent restoring phase. I don't know what exactly would be inside the PE boxes.

Steven Van Dyck
Making the spare tracks for the left side of the armor. So I had to correct the width again for 12 plastic track pads. I found out the DS tracks are a bit more brittle, they broke at a weak point. Maybe because of the glue content.

Steven Van Dyck
I fixed the cables on the cranes and also attached all PE for the left side hull tools.

Steven Van Dyck
It's not really needed to replace the Dragon .50, but nothing goes above the cold glimmer of a brass barrel. Also the headlights and some clamps are added in PE.

Neuling
Never seen a cal. 50 so detailed in scale 1/35! 👍

Steven Van Dyck
Thanks for al the likes. @Neuling: I even discovered some PE parts I forgot to add to it, so it will look better when finished. By now the main armament is added with the help of a scratch system that keeps the gun elevated. If not it would just droop. The muzzle brake had to be carefully aligned to the hull after polishing away the mold lines inside and outside and reboring it. The figures look realistic but the hollow structure of some of them leads to a suture that is a lot more evident than the fine mold line on them. One of the drivers does not fit in the hatch, being positioned for a Sherman model. I have to remove the arms and find other ones.

Steven Van Dyck
Today, after some changes to the barrel and the engine compartiment, a masking was made for the track part and then a grey primer was used from a Rustoleum can.

Steven Van Dyck
The tank is painted now, but I'm still removing a few gaps here and there.

Steven Van Dyck
The modulation is only visible after the gloss coat. I had to work on the inside of the baffles on the muzzle break, because this was moulded flat and not hollow as on the real one. I learned that if you glue real steel cables, you can't touch the first three centimeters without getting fixed yourself.

Kerry COX
Capillary action. 🙂 🙂 🙂 Surprise surprise. Getting too attached to your work. 👍 -)

Steven Van Dyck
I can't shake it off. And now the decals are done too. I had to replace the T-95 indication with something scratched out of a Churchill tank decal set. The 5 originates from a 2.

Steven Van Dyck
Weathering the tank with dark brown wash and yellow filter was not that hard, but getting these DS tracks around the sprockets made them totally FUBAR. It's like trying to bend a chocolate bar. Because I treated the complete length of the tracks, it should be possible to dissect the good pieces into some link-and-length system and try to get it working. I will avoid this DS stuff at all cost in the future.

Steven Van Dyck
After I have toiled several evenings with small tracklink parts and several drops of CA glue, I have made something out of the miserable DS tracks and I can go on building the crew. At the las moment I found the left side was crooked and I rearranged that from the bottom working upwards.

Steven Van Dyck
I made the base for the tank, so it needed to look heavy enough to support the tank. I will cover the sides and top with different materials.

Steven Van Dyck
For the base I'm trying out some Crackle Paint, it's supposed to look like a cracked mud layer. The sides of the base are clad with Faller stone pattern sheets.

Steven Van Dyck
The tools and figures are now nearly done. Some wash on the buff clothes and the insignia decals are now due.

Steven Van Dyck
I used candle wax to reproduce some muddy footprints for the tank. Then I added mud with transparent paste and pigments. The wax was painted with enamels. I did damage the stone print while masking, that will be repaired.

Olivier
I like the way the various tool handles look. Mainly the ax, hammer and pick... May I ask what paint you used ?

Steven Van Dyck
Thanks, Olivier. The metal is Tamiya Gun Metal. The wood was probably a mix of Gunze Dark Yellow and brown.

Steven Van Dyck
I scratched the initials of the tank onto the base with the same Faller brick cover onto a plastered insulation spacer that got repainted with Vallejo to make the letters look like solid brick stonework. I used magnetic fridge toys as a reference.

Steven Van Dyck
I had to acquire a second figure set because I managed to lose the decals of the first one. With these I could finish the munitions crate.

Kerry COX
That's quite a big body count there Steven. 😉 👍

Villiers de Vos
You are very talented and super brave. Respect

Steven Van Dyck
Thanks for the nice words. i just finished the project, have fun with the pictures!

Rui S
Nice Dio. Great work & figure painting 👍