A while back I purchased this Tamiya ChTZ T34/43 on sale at Squadron Mail Order.
The kit went together well with only some minor filling and seam removal required ... the fuel tanks being the worse assemblies in the whole kit.
I determined to build this kit straight "Out of the Box" and have so far .... except for the addition of a styrene rod antennae which may or may not stay, I've yet to decide.
I use cheap ($1.00 / 4 oz. bottle) craft acrylics and mix my own colors. I have been doing this for the past several years and find that the resulting finish is as good as anything I ever bought pre-mixed, if handled properly. I use regular rubbing alcohol to thin it for my airbrush and as you can see, get a pretty good flat finish out of it.
I wasn't happy at all with that first mix, so re-formulating with the addition of some bright leaf green, I came pretty close on the second try -
This particular T34 has a fairly narrow white, air recognition stripe atop the turret and this was achieved via 3M painter's "No stick" tape as a stencil, masking off the remaining surface and spraying three layers of really thin white -
As you can see, I pre-shaded the engine deck area and rear plate with some thin, brushed on black paint. This should facilitate the final shading process in this area -
I took the point of my #11 Exacto blade and "Chipped" the recognition band around the hatches and randomly here and there. A very light wash of dark green was applied over the stripe to simulate the tanks base coat showing through wear spots. Finally, I reapplied some white via brush in between the chips to accentuate the original white color.
Here is the T34 with two progressively lighter shades dry-brushed over the dark wash -
Got the track base coated and attached - I'm not concerned about making a "Sag" in the track as it will be displayed "In Motion" :
I started out to build this one OOB but I couldn't sleep nights if I didn't add a handle to that rear hull access hatch! Fashioned it from a bread bag twist tie wire -
Still needs a bit of "Weld" (filling) on the rear plate but overall, she's pretty tight. Washes will be added as the fine tuning continues - I got a bit liberal with the rust on that "Borrowed" fuel drum in the foreground.
rb