Rubicon Models 28mm T-34/85

In the previous post I showed my 3d printed/Rubicon hybrid T-34, in this post I show my first finished T-34 from Rubicon Models. It is the T-34/85 in 1:56 scale, a perfect addition to any 28mm Soviet Army.

Building this thing was pretty simple thanks to the well made instructions included and the general quality of this kits parts.

The paints I used were the same as I used for the first 28mm T-34, except for the wash I used on this kit, this time it was Dark Brown Modelwash from Vallejo, mixed up with some Armypainter black wash and a few drops of water. While it still was wet, I removed some of it with a wet brush.

The white stripe was painted with Revell Aquacolor matte white. I masked its shape with tape, and added it with a paintbrush. When it was dry I added some damage with the cuttermesser.

The decals on the tank came from its box, they and the stripe got a coat of thinned GW Gryphonne Sepia wash before the kit was sealed with glossy varnish.

As next step I had another try with Vallejo pigments. I used a mix of Green Earth, Light Slate Grey and water, which I applied generously with an old brush.

When the pigments were dried, I brushed all of them I did not want on the kit away with an old toothbrush. The remaining pigments were fixed with spiritus, then the model got its final coat of matte varnish, as usual I used Revell Aquacolor matte varnish mixed with water on a 1:1 ratio.

By the way, the base green I used on both tanks can be seen on the right of the picture below. Properly thinned it works well with the airbrush.

A comparison shot of both tanks does not show their small size differences on a first view. A closer inspection shows the difference, but I think it is tolerable.

A new entry for the box. As usual I have no idea what I will do with the finished models, but until I find a proper use they will be stashed away in a box like all finished kits, except for this one. Maybe it is time to get a display case for my finished stuff.

The last picture is pretty bad, even for me, but it shows the first 4 steps of the paint process: primer, basecoat, drybrushing, wash. The first hull shown is not from this tank.
You can see pretty well, that I added some metallic look with a pencil to the engine grills, I like the look and all parts which are overdone can be cleaned by the careful use of an eraser.

Part Rubicon Part 3D Selfprinted 28mm T-34/76

Finally I finished the paintjob on my T-34, built from a 3D printed hull, see this post, and the bits leftover from building two different T-34 made by Rubicon Models. Since there were so many bits leftover, I had do do another session of bitsrecyling.

The kit got primed with AK Interactive Russian primer, then I added a coat of a generic green as basecolor. That green was toned down with grey and used for a heavy drybrush, followed by a dark brown or black wash.

For the next step I mixed some Vallejo pigments with water and applied the thin paste very generous on most of the lower regions of the tank and some of its upper regions.

When the pigment/water mix was dried I removed as much of the pigments as I wanted to with a dry toothbrush. Then the remaining pigments were fixed with spiritus, a method I found at this forum, it worked pretty good.

The next step was to add some decals, I used the decals from the Rubicon kit. I used the method described in this post. The Rubicon decals came in pretty good quality but needed more time than other decals spent in the water.
The slogan above the red star came from Peddinghaus Decals, the decal was very thin, just as the "Flames Of War" decals from Battlefront Models, it alos needed a lot time in the water bowl. The horse on the right came from an AER (?) T-34 kit.
Finally the kit was sealed with Revell Aquacolor matte varnish.

I am very satisfied with the result. Especially the decals look pretty fine. As also the pigments. When I made my first experiences with pigments, most were blown or washed away by the airbrushpistol when the model was sealed.
But now, when I fixed them with some spiritus, after the final sealing the pigments are still visible as desired, which was not the case on this jeep.

One of the Mariya Oktyabrskaya miniatures from Stoessies Heroes, shown in this post, just as size comparison for the tank. The figure got a quick and dirty paintjob to use her at the Rügen'46 game last year. When I will find some time she will be repainted.

And another time the Montagsmaler went rogue on another Saturday. Olli helped me with the repainting of the windmills shown in the picture below which I got from this lot. Their paint was chipped, so I airbrushed them and he dried the paint with my hairdryer.
At least the finished bases can be seen on the T-34 pictures.

These things will be scenery for "TANKS The Modern Age", they will get their own terrain rules:

For tanks they are unpassable terrain but do not block the line of sight.

For helicopters they are unpassable terrain on both altitudes and do block the line of sight on high altitude.
Missiles will also be blocked by the windmills on both altitudes.

Just two weeks left for the Hamburg Tactica 2019 where I will pick up some helis and AA units, then it is time for the NATO to conquer the East.

First Fail Of 2019

Some armoured Soviet vehicles from Pegasus Models. Painted with Revell Aquacolor, followed by a mild drybrush and a decent green wash. The KV-2s and the BA-6s got some metal barrels from RB Models. I built them some years ago and painted them roughly 6 weeks ago.

Yesterday I wanted to finish the tanks. I added decals from the sparebook, but since I was distracted the whole time by various things, I forgot to add some glosscoat before I went on. After the first decals were applied, I thought, maybe this time I could do it without.

A bad mistake, as you can see on the pictures, the decals began silvering. This could be solved with a thin brush and some color, as I did on this IS2, there are no traces left of the silvering decals on the turret.

But then the real shit happened. I read somewhere in the net, that Revell Aquacolor colors can be mixed with ethanol for the best results. I mixed up some matte clear coat and made a testpiece, everything seemed alright.

When I started to seal the models I did not see what would happen next. I had to hurry because I had to work that evening. One layer here, one layer there and soon all kits were finished and stashed aside to let them dry completely.

As result, the clear matte coat got milky, very milky. I think it was because of the ethanol. A very annoying result, it would be no problem to repaint the tanks, but the decals are gone.

The next time I will show them, they will have a proper paintjob.

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.

3Dprinted 15mm Scenery for TANKS, Flames of War and other games

This "kit" came fresh from the printer when I made the picture, the brim element is applied. I downloaded the .stl file for this house from Thingiverse.

It was made in 28mm scale but I scaled it down 60 percent to make it roughly fit into 15mm scale.

After removing the brim elemant and separating the parts I was positively surprised about the quality of this print, even the wooden structure of the doors very good to see.

After a little sanding I used cyanacrylate glue (I hate this sticky shit) to build the pieces  to one whole piece. The roof came from a old H0 model house kit. I am not too satisfied with the door, I think it will be replaced by another door, but the rest of the house is fine. The mini and the tank are made by Battlefront Miniatures in 15mm scale.

I will add a base with some interior before  this model will get painted.

A small update on the printed T-34 hulls, I applied the basecolor. The next step will be a layer of drybrushing before I will add a black wash. Maybe I will do some highlights after it, but I have to see the results of the next steps.

3Dprinted T-34 Hulls

Finally, our secret project started successfull.

My mate Olli and I bought a cheap 3D printer kit from the bay, an Anet A8, because we want to print or own scenery and models. We had to build this thing together but that was not too complicated, even when we made 2 or 3 dumb mistakes.

But now we are making our own stuff, what is very nice. Sure, the prints do not have the quality of an hi-end 3D printer, but for 250 Euros, 150 for the printer and 100 for extra parts/filament, this machine gives good results.

One of the first models that I printed were four T-34 hulls. The quality could be better but I am totally new into 3D printing and I think the printer can do better when it is fully finished. I am planning to use the sparetracks of my Plastic Soldier Company T-34, some other bits/scratchbuilt things and the turrets I already painted for my Soviet TANKS!! squad.

I will also do this for for my US tank squadron, where 4 lonely Sherman turrets are waiting for their counterparts, but then I will have to print the tracks too.

The model is in 15mm/1:100 scale and needed about 60 to 70 minutes to print.

 This is the T-34 fresh from the printer. The support material is still there.

The T-34 hull without the support material. I tried to sand a little piece, but I personally think that sanding is absolutely necessary. The print is ok but I think I can get better results by recallibrating the machine and change some settings in the slicer software.

The printed hull with tracks and a turret compared to a Plastic soldier company T-34. They are almost the same size. Except for the printing lines there will be no big difference if these two tanks stand side by side on the battlefield.

Tomorrows project: Reinforcing my Soviet troops.

15mm Soviet Forces For TANKS By Galeforce 9

An old Lenin button as eye-catcher

My first army for Galeforce 9's Tanks. Well stored in this wooden box are the Soviet forces that can be played by friends of mine to get into a first game of tanks.
And they were victorious the first time they entered the battlefield (against me).

 

Stored in this box the troops will stay safe while travelling to new battlefields. The complete inlay was built with Velux isolation tape and Feldherr 10mm foam tray bottom parts and glued with UHU Alleskleber (denn Modellbau ist kriegswichtig). The red star was cut from red felt.

All models are 15mm / 1:100  scale.

 

The main force of the Soviet troops is the T34 tank, which is playable in the two mainversions of it.  All that has to be done is to change the turret to use the T34/76 or the T34/85. The models are from Plasticsoldier Company and went well together.

All of the Soviet tanks were painted with Revell Aquacolor Olivgrün, then came some heavy drybrushing with Pegasus Olivgrün followed by a lighter drybrush with Revell Aquacolor Olivgrau. The tracks were painted in Revell Aquacolor Rost followed by adding some Pegasus Edelstahl.

The final step before adding decals and sealing the model was to wash the model with a 50/50 mix of  GW Nuln Oil and War-Ter®. All decals came from the sparebook and are 1/72 scale.

(update: I gave the pictures and the tanks a last look for tonight and it seems that I did not use the colors I mentioned above.)

The next two models were build from one Battlefront SU-100 kit with some sparetracks from the PSC T34 box and a scratchbuilt chassis. The colors I used were the same as on the other tanks, the second camouflage color is Revell Aquacolor Khakibraun (or Dark Earth). 

Last but not least comes a big one, Zvezda's model of the IS-2 tank. I cut the old hatch and added one from the sparebox. It is a nice kit but the inner side of the tracks have no details except for their teeth.

Now with the finished Soviet tank platoon it's time to get another platoon finished. My US tanks, 4 Sherman 75/76mm and a Pershing are ready for a paintjob but I am not sure if I have enough paint or have to join my local dealer to get new colors. And my first British Shermans need only some more decals and sealing but the decals I use are so fraking thin and fragile.

Partly Scratchbuilt 1:72 Soviet Recovery Tank

I found this interesting article on the website of Henk of Holland (first part can be found on his website, too) and suddenly I knew whats to build next. Actually the this mod was for an Tamiya SU-122 kit in 1:35, but I used my kit of the SU-100 from AER, or was it PST?

Here are some pictures of the almost finished model. There are only some smaller parts to attach, then the kit will get its sealing.

Almost all parts are from the SU-100 kit, the tracks and the saw are from the Revell T-34, the other small parts (pickaxe, cable eyes, hatches) came from Pegasus. All other parts were build from scratch.

I had to correct the positions of the roadwheels, you can find more about this big fault in the kit in the AER T34 kit review at On the way models.
The crane is made from 1mm steel wire, booth parts were connected with heat shrinking tube. The steel wire is actually made of copper wire and the winch is made from plastic card.

I used the same color scheme on this model that I used for my ISU-152.

The last picture show the model while constuction.

Offtopic:

a) I wanted to rework my links and give them an own site but it does not work as I want it, so this operation is moved to the future.

b) This new Blogspot editor sucks. I have some problems with sizing the font. In my view, the option "small" is too small but the option "normal" is too large. I managed it to get the fontsize that I wanted to have.

If the text is too small to read it, you still can use [CTRL] and [+] or [-] to change its size.

Pegasus/PST 1:72 Soviet ISU-152 With Crew

After two busy weeks I had some time to continue with my hobby. I finished these Soviet heavy self-propelled gun tank ISU-152. The numbers 61 and 62 are fastbuild models by Pegasus Hobbies, but they do not lack as many details as the fastbuild kits from HÄT/Armourfast. The tank with the 60 is a model kit made by East European producer PST, I did not use all parts for this kit to make all three tanks look equal.

The colors that I used for this tanks were Revell Aquacolor Sea green (#36148), mixed 2 parts color and one part alcohol via airbrush, after that I did a wash with Citadel Thraka Green wash (#68-21), then I drybrushed the tanks light with a bright grey color. I sealed them with Revell Aquacolor Clear matte paint (#36102).

The turret number decals were applied with the help of Agama Adhesol. They were included in the PST kit, the propaganda writings on the # 62 came from Peddinghaus Decals, the other decals came fron the spare box.



The track of the tanks were altered with some selfmixed mud, made of white glue, water, coffee and Busch Pine Forest ground cover (#H0 7259). This mix hides the not so detailed tracks very well.



I also managed to paint the Soviet tank crew figures by Orion that I showed in a previous post. Two of the figures were modified, the guy with the flowers got instead of flowers a piece of plastic, looks almost like a gun. The second modification was made on the strange runner. He got a new hand with a revolver from an old Airfix cowboy figure.

The colors I used for this figures were almost the same that I used for my Soviet infantry troops. All I have to do for these guys is to get them a better decorated base.

Update:
Instead of ISU 152 I called this tank ISU 155. I changed the numbers to delete this mistake.

Scratchbuilt Handlebars For the Pegasus T34/85

The T34/85 made by Pegasus with some handlebars added. They are made from plastic bristles of a broom. These are easy to bend and gluable with any polystyrene modelling glue,at least the ones I got.
It took about 20 minutes to equip four tanks with these bars.

Italeri 1:72 JS-2 Tank

I just finished my first batch of Soviet hardware. The upper picture shows 2,5 of the tanks of the Italeri fast-build kit of the JS-2 tank, which contains 2 easy to build models. I found them at MACO Modellbau for a great price.
In the background you can the the AER model of the T34/85 with che commander cupola of the Pegasus T34/85 and an Aber Aluminium barrel. That kit is a mean bitch which needs a lot of putty to fill all gaps on it. More on this kit soon when it's finished.

The colors I used were Revell Aquacolor Sea Green (#36148) for the upper structure followed by a black wash. The tracks were painted with Tamiya Metallic Grey (XF-56), then I used a selfmade wash (made of Revell Aquacolor Rust (#36183), GW Chaos Black (# 61-51) and, of course, water) on them.


I did only two minor modifications on it, the first was to drill the muzzle of the barrel. The second modification was that I made three handbars of 0,5 mm steelwire on the tower.
All tanks were sealed with a coat of Revell Aquacolor Clear Matt color (# 36102).

In the next days I will order these decals at Peddinghaus that will be applied to them.

A Zvezda 1:72 T34 Tank Is Coming Soon

(picture with friendly permission of Modellversium)

This picture from the Nürnberg Toy Fair shows the coming T34 kit of Zvezda. I am no expert, but I think it looks like an earlier version of the T34 tank.

Russian producer Zvezda has announced some 1:72 WW2 kits for 2010. Beside this kit, which looks great, they will bring some more interesting WW2 kits this year. I do not know when they will be on the market but I am waiting for the following kits:

5001 T34
5002 Pz.Kpfw.VI “Tiger”
8077 Soviet Infantry
8078 German Infantry

I hope these kits will be soon on the market, I can't wait to integrate the new infantry figures in my Soviet army.
A big thank you to Tim of the great German modelling site Modellversium who gave me the permission to use this picture in my blog.