More Bitsrecycling With The 3D printer

Building a matching tank for Mariya Oktyabrskaya in 28mm is a little pain in the ass. If you are orienting on the picture in this post, the choices of 28mm/1:56 tanks are limited.

I made my decision for the Rubicon model kit of the T34/76, but even when there are two different turrets to use, the turret from the picture I mentioned before was not included.

Since I like the Mickey Mouse-ish look of the hatches I had no other option then to get  my hands on the Rubicon T34/85 kit because the matching turret is included as a bonus in the kit.

And guess what I did...

First let me say, both kids are great. No sinkholes, no flash, and clear instructions. The builts went without any problems. And the finished tanks are looking great. At the moment they are primed with AK Interactive Russian primer, I like this stuff, but it needs some time to dry/harden.

I am still unsure which color I may use, but maybe the 85 model will get a camouflage pattern.

But now the struggle began, I had not only two completed tanks, but a big bunch of bits. Two unused turrets and a almost complete pair of tracks had to disappear in the bitsbox.

As you may know from earlier posts, for me this fact is totally annoying. So I browsed through the files at Thingiverse, trying to find a T34 hull to use with the leftover bits.

And I found this T34 and printed it. At the first try I messed up the scaling, the first print was way too small. On the picture below you see the result of the second print. This hull took 9 hours to print, the fitting parts took two hours to print. The hull is 5mm longer than the Rubicon hull but I do not care about this, it is still looking fine.

Sorry to say that I forgot to make more pictures, I just tried to do, but my camera is out of batteries, and the pics made with my mobile kind of suck.

That is why I split this post in two parts, in the next days the second part will follow with some pictures, to show how I will attach the tracks and the turret to the new hull.

But let me finish this first part with the gained knowledge from this "campaign", maybe I should have gone for a 1:48 kit of the T34 since the Mariya Oktyabrskaya looks a little oversized on a 1:56 tank.