Model: Trumpeter 1/35 KV-2
Out of box: (braided thread for tow cables)
Paints & Washes: Coat d’Arms acrylics, Golden acrylics,
Golden and Liquitex mediums. Vallejo washes.
The Kit:
For a variety of reasons I’ve spent the last six months doing
models from Dragon, Eastern Europe or the “classic” UK. It hasn’t
always been a delight and I was determined rest my mind with a
Tamigawa something or other. Didn't quite get there, but close.
Finescale has a Group Build on the Eastern Front and I did Dragon
Pzkw 38(T). I wanted to enter it with a compatriot. The 38t was a
handsome, efficient and advanced model in 1940. So what better
contrast than a Soviet KV-2, a tank that was ugly as a wart, big
enough to be called “Dreadnought” by its crew and one of the new
generation Soviet tanks that saved the USSR from defeat in late 1941.
The kit itself is very good and available for a very low price.
The part count is about 200 with no options (beyond the tracks) so it
won’t challenge a new Dragon for detail but is still considerably
better made than the earlier Tamiya KV-1 still out there. I wouldn’t
say the fit is as clean as the best from Tamiya but it’s very good.
Trumpeter gives you the choice of using nicely made vinyl tracks or a
kind of hybrid-independent track system. I assembled one of the
plastic tracks and it looked okay, but the advantage of easy removal
of the vinyls (which are very good for their kind) got my vote. Of
course I knew what was going to happen to them. I saw very few KV-2
photos that showed any markings so I stuck with minimalist decals.
Some gaudy Rooskie phrases are there, no doubt penned by Marshall
Stalin himself. (I read on Armorama that some of these big white
cyrillic phrases are very bad Korean or Japanese Russian. Take that
for what it’s worth.) The box art is very much to my liking –
reminds me of a Sgt Rock comic from my boyhood. The only real problem
was self-inflicted and not, alas, for the first time. Next time for
sure, grab handles will be the absolutely last thing to go on the
model. They are very easy to knock off during handling and I got
pretty good at that.
I used my water based acrylics again and I’m getting very fond
of them. When you start getting used to the mediums required, it’s
really easy not to miss thinners and most of the solvents required in
model building. (Still use lacquer thinner for airbrush cleaning.)
You can thin these things with milky mediums that dry clear and spray
an extremely thin paint/medium ratio. Worked very well for panel
shading, dusting etc. Possible to paint for extended periods at very
low psi on your compressor and just brush the tip off with water
occasionally and no nozzle clogging. Can’t let the guard down
though. These paints have very fine pigments and because the mediums
have polymer in them (over 25% water and the paints will break down:
the effect is very obvious) it is very important to keep your
airbrush clean. (I think this is why Future gives some people
problems: it’s so easy to work with and is clear so one could
forget this is liquid acrylic and will dry like a plastic. Same
things with artist acrylics. If you don’t remember and it gets
clogged a good cleaning in potent solvents will fix things easily
enough.) Coat d’Arms has a color they call “military tank”
which I put a little khaki into. A little “greener” than most
“Russian greens” but as I understand it, Rooskie armor had a very
wide range of colors - as long as it was some kind of green.
As noted this kit was designed from the beginning to represent a
Russian tank fighting during the “rasputitsa” (roughly quagmire)
in the fall of 1941 when rain, sleet and early snow melted and turned
Russia’s unpaved roads into mud bad enough to slow or stop the
Wehrmacht immediately after their great – and last - victories of
the campaign at Vyasma and Bryansk in early October. (The condition
is well illustrated by a famous photo from outside Moscow in 1941
below.) When the ground finally froze in mid-November the Wehrmacht
was quickly faced with arctic temperatures, improved Soviet defenses
at key points near Moscow and ultimately Zhukov's counter-attack.
Hitler's only real chance to achieve complete victory in WWII ended
at that moment.
Assembly is so smooth with this kit that it would make a terrific
“weekender” if you gave it a nice coat of green and a decent wash
and left it in “delivery day” condition. That wouldn't do for a
monster brawling in the rasputitsa though. So it was heavy weather
time. I have the Osprey “Modeling the T-34” book which includes
efforts by weather gurus Mig Jimenez and Adam Wilder. Wilder's effort
was covered with mud, streaking and rust – just the ticket. I
suppose many people will look at the kit the way people viewed
paintings by Jackson Pollack – a monkey could do that. Actually it
took quite a while to wreck the model. Four filters, three washes and
quite a bit of dry brushing. And about a pound of Doc Martin's and
MIG pigments to make three types of dry mud and one batch of wet. I
used a kind of polymer plaster that removed the need for any kind of
resin or white glue for mud. It thins nicely with water and worked
well for splattering the stuff on the upper hull with an airbrush
blowing high psi air through a brush loaded with mud. I also used
Wilder's suggestion of applying streaks with buff paint heavily
thinned with water. Also found out that Golden gloss varnish worked
very well for wet mud, wet streaks and grease. I hit the tracks and
wheels very hard. Judging from some of the photos, not hard enough.
I didn't put on the large amount of rust Wilder recommended. I
just don't see it on the photos. A holy mess no doubt, but not rust.
(I did bust up one of the fenders a little just for fun. Didn't have
the courage to cut a big gouge out of it.) However, I did try to
emulate hits taken from 40mm, 37mm and 20mm guns. I wish I could have
found more photo guidance on damage: lots of tanks knocked out but
not just whacked around. The Germans found out the hard way that a
37mm anti-tank round wouldn't penetrate the KV-2s armor, but I'm
betting it would have done more than scratch the paint. I followed a
tip from the neat armor boutique site Ausfwerks (very good place to
buy after-market stuff and Vallejo paints: very good technique
articles). You take the Xacto and dig a hole. Surround it with red
oxide primer paint and fill in with oily steel – only way I know to
make a gash in three dimensions.
So the result is an awkward and ugly model. Actually it turned out
about the way I wanted it to. Let's not forget that the most
beautifully done KV-2 is still going to be the ugliest tank that ever
went into battle. Pics below.
Eric
