Finished: IV/23

T-34/76 PT-34 mine clearing tank OOB

The model I started in the very late '23 was now complete, a few calendar months later. This time I used a yet another approach to documenting my process so each of the ten posts covered a very varying amount of real time.

Based on the filenames of my photos I had taken 198 work in progress photos to be edited, divided under 8 themes (and posts). I had no way to calculate the amount of actual time used, all I knew was that the hour count had to be enormous, as one post alone usually covered the happenings of a handful of sessions. Finally, I took 15 photos in the light tent with the final model, and editing those took a moment as well.

It could've gone better

This world would be a weird place, if everything went perfectly and nothing needed (or allowed) grumbling after the fact. Of course this project left something to desire, and that was a good thing because it gave myself some feedback for improvements.

PT-34

The mine roller device with its instructions. I was somewhat confused by the instruction sheet at some points while building, and as I wasn't familiar with the way these things worked (or how they'd looked like in real life) I had no real way to trust my own instict. Now the roller discs didn't end up standing straight like I had visualized based on my own expectations, the relatives in the Parola Armored Museum, and the box art.

If I was a diorama person, and I might be one if I had the space for storing such constructs,  I could've cheated by smashing the rollers into the position I wanted with the base. Floating freely it looked a bit silly, as supposedly heavy steel wheels were flopping like conscripts in the waiting area.

Unique identifiers

My tank was left without a unit number, red stars, and a catchphrase. I had even considered using the roundels from the decal set, but the number and texts I'd freehanded myself. Most likely this was caused by the repeated issues with the green basecoat, and as I was clearly hyped about the chipping attempt right after painting the bare steel bits, I simply forgot the order of business here. The white details should have been painted (or decals cursed on) before any fancy stuff.

A couple of years ago I might have just shrugged, added the missing details over everything else and then applied some touch-up weaathering to cover it up a bit. Now I accepted my mistake.

Tanker's smile

The 1,5mm++ -sized gap was truly baffling, because it didn't show any warning signs in advance. Of course I tried to fix it but I clearly hadn't got enough practice on this sort of work, and I most likely also used wrong tools as well. Or I was fixing it too late because I didn't realize my problem in time. So there, skill deficiency, pure and simple, and the only way to improve on it was to practice.

Another really confusing thing about the ravine was that the rest of the model was pretty much hassle-free. Perhaps I had installed the mysterious bits on the rear hull's inside badly, which then compounded into a large issue a few steps later. As an explanation this made more sense than one lonely piece of the model being over a millimeter or two off in one end.

Not going to ignore the successes

After my initial worries chipping was insanely fun to paint, and even in my own opinion it looked neat. I also tried to keep my head cool with the damages, because it was fun and that always increased the risk of overdoing quite a lot. We've all been there.

Working with the oil paints was still glorious and the end result enjoyed a huge improvement. I really couldn't emphasize that enough, because now the "oh crap now there's a crapload too much of that stuff there" was quick and easy to revert with nature's own undo function. Santa and his colleagues the Witch Kings also brought a few more Abteilung oils for me, so the modeler's happiness was going to be unlimited.

Those often-cursed vinyl tracks went on, stayed in piece, didn't (yet) pull the roadwheels askew, nor did they melt away while being painted. The result was also prettier than the unpainted metallic-shiny bits. Of course these were paper-thin in scale, but you couldn't always get everything.

Final thougs

All in all this was a fun build and a fun model to paint. It actually was my fourth Soviet tank (and my second T-34), and my seventh Soviet model in general ([T-34/85; IS-2; BM-21 Grad; T-35; MiG-29; Su-27; T-34/76 & PT-34])  so I wasn't completely stuck into kraut stuff even if I sometimes sounded like it! In this model count I didn't include anything earlier than 2001, such as the unlucky Polikarpov I-16 and whatnot.

Photos

I really needed to get myself a tripod for the photos. These photos that have been taken more or less on the same level were shot with the camera resting on a book (the complete Bone, again).

Now these last photos that were pretending to be something like 3/4 photos I took with the light tent's own monopod but the actual camera was a bit too heavy to be trusted on that one. Maybe I should've used the timer in addition, but didn't think of it in time. Maybe I'd think more the next time.

Exhibit A for the monopod-tripod-manual shooting: the last photo had moved a bit but gave enough of a view of the tank for me to just go with it instead of doing reshoots.

Next in 'Mumblings

A trash can.

Final twists of the screws

The end is nigh - again

After all, I decided to write a separate post of these last changes, so that I wouldn't again end up with an "by the way, I did this too but forgot to mention" sidenote somewhere. Those have been done, probably there were going to be more but not on purpose. All in all the model was almost finished.

Shovel supports

It took me a lifetime but I stole a moment to fix the green metal bits that held the shovels. Fixing them was a bit quicker without the antenna being on the way.

External light

In my earlier models I've consistently painted these driving lights metallic (chrome or steel), if they didn't come with a transparent bit. So for a change I decided to do something else and went with a grey gradient plan. I didn't want to do a strong jeweling effect but something less noticeable than a clear metallic paint or a dark grey bit.

For the base colour I chose my usual grey (VGA 72750 Cold Grey).

With the base drying I mixed some lighter grey (VGA 72749 Stonewall Grey) to the cold grey and painted a small circle to the lower right sector.

I added some more stonewall grey to mix a still lighter shade, and painted a smaller circle into the lower right area of the previous one. To the top left arc I added a tiny line with the same paint.

Finally I poked a pair of an even lighter grey to top the highlights, and plopped the turret in. I was thinking if I still ought to drybrush the top arc with off-white but decided against it, in fear of making a mess.

From this angle it looked lamplike enough to me. Had I been less lazy I'd carved the lamp open and made a lens from transparent thin plastic. I just didn't see that adding much value to the build, so this was good.

Antenna

All that was missing anymore was the antenna that got accidentally knocked off sometime earlier. I spent a bit of time looking for a clue for the actual colour of these things, but it didn't seem to be a popular subject for some reason. Dark grey was good for me, I didn't repaint it and just glued it on again.

For the statistics: the last one was the 198th photo for this project, but I hadn't shared quite all of them.

Tracks, mud and earthy oils

Running gear

First of all I ensured that I had found the 8B graphite pen I had bought in early '23. Yes, I had, it was stored in a place where I could now actually find it.

I used the pen quickly on all the contact surfaces of the drive sprockets, idler- and road wheels, and then simply blended the graphite with my fingers. The idler wheels I had glued in earlier, but luckily there was enough space around them for my fingers.

From what I saw the graphite surface behaved pretty much like I expected, especially when comparing to the observations (and a healthy directoryful of reference photos) I made last summer in the Armour Museum in Parola.

These photos were actually useful, they revealed a couple of forgotten oil wash stains.

At this stage I only treated the inner loop of the tracks. I used the pen on the guiding teeth/horns and a line along the lenght just on both sides of the guides, to pretend they were worn clean by the road wheels.

Looking at my own thoroughly dirtified fingertips I thought that before washing them up, I could use them to do some soft graphite effects on the rollers. I spun those with my fingers, poked around and what got stuck, got stuck.

Installing the vinyl tracks

I started installing the tracks on the right side. Somehow I had in my mind that the vinyl track was going to be annoying to install so I had left all the roadwheels unglued. My idea was to hold them inside the track loop and then just glue all of them in one go, then finish it up with the drive sprocket.

Here I had so much space, unlike with the last tracked model, the Jagdpanzer IV, that I could actually glue them all in and just pull the track into place with the drive sprocket.

Once again using the right side's example I was quicker with the other side. As an entity the tank looked much better again. Had I glued the idler wheels last, I could've made the tracks tighter and look better, because that's how the tension was adjusted but those things were too flimsy for my comfort.

And at this point my homemade antenna finally came off with all the rotatings and whatnot. This wasn't serious damage, I'd just reglue it at a calmer moment. I had to admit that being wary of the antenna had been getting a bit old, I just didn't want to break it off on purpose.

Like I've been lamenting for a while the rear end was going to need an amount of mud to look less horrible. I was so very disappointed in this rear edge, I had difficulties comprehending it. None of this got any better with my crappy filling skills.

Vallejo weathering mud

To mess up the tracks and especially the rear end I used to different Vallejo Weathering Effects. First Mud and Grass (Environment 73826), then European Mud (Thick Mud 73807). Both had gotten a bit thick but got spreadable with a few drops of tap water.

Giving a few days of rest was a good thing for my oil washes, the shininess had gone down quite a bit. Again I took my photos in a different place, at a different time, and with natural light instead of LEDs.

The mud was pretty nasty-looking, as it was supposed to be.

I kept the front of the tank much clearer. Just in case I left the mine rollers pretty much as they were, I was way too much of an amateur with these and getting something that complicated was not something I wanted to even think of undoing of mud.

Road wheels also got off lightly, I poked some mud in to give some extra texture. There was an amount of muck in the sides of the tank's armoured tub but that wasn't going to be really visible behind the running gear.

I did try to collect some crap to the sides and the different mud traps of the roller setup. Here, too, I used the mud materials mostly for surface texture.

 

Just like that I was out of time, and had to leave the mud to dry. Thanks to life being life it took me a good long while before I could continue on the model.

Abteilung weathering oils

Well, I had a few of these weathering -themed oils, from light to dark earth and I started by mixing a bit of Light Mud (ABT125) for my tracks. Maybe I should've made this stuff really thin, to get the crevices more covered, now they just ended thickly mudded.

To go with the dry stuff I made a tiny amount of darker mud and made it wash-thin (ABT130 Dark Mud), applied it as spots here and there. This weird mix I then blended to see how it looked like in the end. Spoiler: it looked muddy.

Checking the next day the tracks looked much calmer. With some more time to dry behind us, I used the graphite pen on the edges and ridges of the tracks. No photos were taken of that.

Then I made some thin engine grease (ABT160) and used it on some of the road wheels to try to get a bit of a lubricant leak look on them. I had pretty few places I wanted to use this on, but to make those bulky boxes a bit more interesting I used the oily stuff on the little things on top.

At this point I didn't go for any dot filtering, but in my mind's eye using some buff (ABT035) on some key pieces on the top worked nicely. I tried to contain myself and applied the buff dots on the centerlines of some engine deck panels, front fenders and the upper edge of the front glacis plate.

After the first blending and an overnight drying the buffed effect was too strong for my liking. So I blended it some more to take it down a notch.

Readyish?

I started feeling that my tank was just about done now. Looking at the photos I took around the tank made me think how much of a difference had I actually made with all this tinkering. I expected to find something else to fix in addition to reattaching the antenna, painting the front shovel clamp and the light. If there wasn't anything else, the next week's post would show the completed model, but if I had enough to work on, there would be a short post in between.

Note to self: fix that grass turd hanging from the left fender

Comparison photos

The angles weren't exactly the same and the lighting conditions were also different, but you could do a bit of a side-by-side comparison. The key changes happened on the overall green, the piece details weren't that much of an important change in a way.