Stacking more pieces

The latest advances of this slow-paced project have been smallish. I attached the skirt pieces (I still haven't figured out / found a better name for them, I could call them mudflaps for all everyone cares) as well as the Combat Engineering Equipment Boxes. After the glue had set I applied some Tamiya's Mud stick on the tracks and wherever I felt like.

Bllllooooooood

Now that there were few missing pieces I decided to attack the machine guns. To make them look better with little effort I decided to carve the business ends open. I mean, solid sticks look somewhat stupid.

Because my finger drill's <1mm bits were a bit big for these pieces, I went for my nicely sharp x-acto knife. The plastic piece depicting the coaxial MG in one hand, sharp knife in the other. After a bit of rolling the knife I had a nice-looking machine gun in my fingers. In order not to lose it I glued it in its place immediately.

The commander's machine gun was the next and last piece to be opened. Business as usual, like with the previous piece. At the last moment my hand slipped a bit and I found the tip of the knife in my thumb. Ouch.

Later I painted both of them without any silly accidents. I didn't get to attach the turret-mg before I took the photos so that's why it's missing in these two pics.

Damages

Yesterday evening I noticed that the driver's hatch was missing its handle. I had no clue of when and why it was gone. Despite some frantic searching I didn't find it anywhere. *sigh*. There ought to be a spare piece or two somewhere, I think. Other than that the model seems to be intact and I really can't fathom what have I done, when and how.

Unless anything else comes up, I'll go for the national insignia, the PS-register number, the name of the tank and other details next. I can't even remember when I last used transfers, because they're always a hassle and if you want to lose the shinyness, you have to use this and that. Nah, that's not for me. I'll rather try to do all that myself, at least it'll look a bit more personal that way.
Even if I say so myself, I think I'm improving with those things too, although slooooowly.