KV malenkiy bashniy
This turret will not be used for this project, but I assembled it anyway to see how this monstrosity looked.
The two bent strips on the inside of the gun mantlet must be trimmed down to match the contour of the mantlet, otherwise the mantlet will protrude slightly, whereas it should be flush with the reinforced armour plates left and right of it.
The opening in the gun mantlet for the tube must be enlarged a little so that the collar at the base of the gun tube fits through.
This is the turret I'll actually use (New TMD 35-3006). The turret roof is sligthly twisted, so I'll try to correct this in hot water. For now it's only dry-fitted. The fenders and stowage boxes won't be used - I'll replace them with PE parts from Voyager.
That gun mantlet was hard word. The underside was more or less completely filled with excess resin, which had to be removed with a Dremel. Then the resin tube for the gun had to be fitted in. All parts were then glued with Black Widow. The trunnions will need some putty around them, but it looks worse than it is due to the black glue.
The gun mantlet seen from below - quite messy with the black glue. I measured the length of the gun barrel protruding from the mantlet from a 1/35 drawing and marked the turned aluminium barrelt from Aber accordingly. The periscopes are from the kit, the episcope covers and the turret roof from TMD. It correctly lacks the mounting for the AA machine gun, which was introduced later.
After fixing an issue with the turret roof - it was sitting to high on the right-hand side - it was time to add some weld beads.
That is the reason for the long hiatus. These PE parts almost drove me nuts. But now with a better soldering iron I'm finally making some progress. The leftmost support bracket was first misplaced and could not be moved with my old soldering iron.
The LH fender is taking shape. Now the front and rear lips are added. I loathed this part, as Voyager did each of them in two parts: one that lies flat on the edge of the fender, following its contours. And one which has to be soldered at a 90 degree angle to that. It went easier than expected for once!
I completed the big turret although it won't be used here. For this I put some texture on the turret sides and added weld seams.
This is the small turret for comparison. The fender not yet attached, because it would otherwise be difficult to paint the lower hull and the tracks.
Finished the second mudguard (not shown) and started with the first stowage bin. The dreadful part, or so I thought, are the hinges for the lid. But it's actually doable.
One of the hinges.
Hinges and handles attached. Note that the initial stowage bin lids had no reinforcements on either side and no handle.
All three finally finished.
That's how it will look like, but as now nothing is glued in place. Note the stowage bins on the early KVs were on the number 7, 8 and 9 positions. Later on the left rear one moved to the other side, the number 10 position.
Tow cables from FB Modelling and shackles by Aber. The latter are the same as on the LKZ, but the cables are the earlier design with grommets instead of cast ends. The pins for securing the shackles are made from thin wire (included).
The tow cables attached to the vehicle, which is now ready for painting.
As the tank will be painted in monochrome 4BO green without any markings, I feared it to become very boring, so I tried something new, for me at least: so-called pre-shading. So I painted the whole vehicle with Vallejo black primer and then practised camouflage painting with Vallejo white primer and a brand new airbrush needle. It was a nightmare: in spite of copious amount of thinner and a couple of drops of Drying Retarder, the airbrush kept clogging again and again. The same with dark yellow Vallejo air. Next time I'll try AK Real Colors for camo painting.
After the first layer of 4BO green by AK Real Colors, thinned 50:50.
After two more layers.
The final result before weathering. The effect is quite subtle, as intended.
On the engine deck it's a bit more pronounced. AK Real Colors are very flat, but I'll apply some satin varnish later on.
The spare turret (bolshoy bashniy).
Road wheels "on a stick".
The link-and-length tracks were first painted in German grey. I tried the lacquer paint by MRP to test it. I'm very pleased! After AK Real Colors, I'm now convinced that lacquer paints work better for me than plain acrylics. I read some people complain about the smell of the MRP paints, but I don't agree. It smells a little, yes, but enamel thinners are much, much worse in my opinion.
Then I applied some track wash, but the tracks got much too brown for my taste. I wanted to obtain brownish dark grey to imitate burnished steel, not plain dark brown.
Next I applied some pigments to the underside of one track to make the look more interesting, but again that's not at all what I wanted. This time I wanted relatively fresh tracks, only slightly dusted. So I repeated step one.
After a fresh layer of dark grey, I repeated the second step with the track wash, but this time much more diluted with odourless turpentine. That gave a much better result, at least to my taste. Next I'll apply some light dusting and finally some metallic effects where appropriate.
While tryping to put on the RH track a little disaster happened. On 4 different spots, the track came apart, because it was under a slight tension for some reason. When I fixed one spot, it would separate again at a different spot. So I held the track together with bits of copper wire while the glue set.
Everything OK, apart from some collateral damage elsewhere: the headlight came of (nothing broken) and one tow cable broke off beneath the grommet. I'll fix the latter only when the mudguards are attached.
Viewed from above: the dusting was done with pigments, and the metallic effect was done with AK True Metal wax "steel". On the inside of the tracks, I applied VMS black pigment - which really seems to be graphite powder BTW - with a rubber brush where the road wheels polish the track.
评论
24 21 June 2022, 07:22
Jean-Christophe ZeusSo far the fit is very good. For fitting the short piece of aluminium tube from Magic Models, the small guidance lip on the Trumpeter part must be removed. The weld line along the turret armour front plate will be replaced by a self-made one. The big turret won't be completed before I can source two periscopes and the hatch from another kit.
21 June 2022, 07:27
Jean-Christophe ZeusI was aware of that. 🙂
Actually I'm going to add the small turret from Tiger Model Designs later on, only I wanted to build the big turret from the kit also, as it's such a beast. I bought two turrets from NewTMD, which took almost exactly four months to arrive from the USA. They both have the L-11 gun, but one is the initial turret design with the bent armour plates and the other one is the boxy design. The mantlets are also sligthly different: the early one has a bolt on the mantlet front, a groove on the right hand side and an open slot beneath the gun barrel, all of which the late one doesn't. The early turret will be used for this project, whereas the late one will be used for a KV-1 model 1939, which I'll build based on Trumpeter 00356.
22 June 2022, 06:27
Jean-Christophe ZeusI didn't look forward to the PE stowage bins, as the hinges for the lid are tiny and should be workable. But for once, it went better than expected.
To prevent the tiny parts from flinging into oblivion, I fixed them to cutting mat with two narrow strips of masking tape. Then I bent the "fingers" - two on one part, one on the other - slightly upwards, just short to vertical. After inserting a short length of 0.3mm copper wire, I completed the bend with the tip of a pair of tweezers. Finally, to fit the wire completely, I used the Tamiya bending plyer.
To prevent the wire from moving out of the hinge, I'll apply a tiny drop of superglue before cutting off the protruding lengths.
4 May 2023, 06:22
Jean-Christophe ZeusThe stowage bins and the mudguards finally done, a breathe a sigh of relief!
13 May 2023, 13:10
Bruce HuxtableImpressive metal-working skills 👍 Learning lots from your work and explanations🙂 Great progress!
7 August 2023, 11:17
Jean-Christophe ZeusFinally, I'm approaching the finishing line. I did lots of detail painting and weathering this weekend, so I hope I'll be done this week. After that I'll do the LKZ KV-1 with the simplified turret, which will get a little diorama.
7 August 2023, 11:29
DoubtingmangoExcellent perseverance through adversity! Can't wait to see the finish on this one
7 August 2023, 13:18
Album info
Early production version of the KV-1 tank, when it was still called KV "small turret". Also building the big turret included in the kit, pimped with the very nice turned aluminium barrel from Magic Models.
