I've had this kit in my possession for a very long time; it's older than my son who turns 16 on March 1st. I bought it when I was stationed at Redstone Arsenal PX right after Christmas of 1996. It was on clearance for 75% off (original price of $21.99). It was a smaller PX and the toy aisles became the lawn & garden area during spring and summer. I wasn't familiar with Zvezda back then, but had built a lot of Testors/Italeri kits during the 80s and at $5.50; the price was too good to not buy it.
The kit was very crude compared to real Italeri kits I had built before. I wasn't familiar with the IS series of tanks and after opening the kit, I stuck it into my stash for another day.
Almost five years ago, a modeler was selling the Tamiya JS-2 link & length tracks for $5 on Missing Lynx. I bought them and stuck the padded envelope inside the kit box. It was postmarked May 14, 2008.
A year ago, a modeler from Australia offered the Tamiya JS-2 suspension parts for free to the first taker. He sent me two of the untouched "A" sprues. They included the entire road wheel, idler wheel and drive sprockets, the gun tube, fuel tanks, lifting hooks, road wheel arms, support rollers and various other detail parts.
Sometime along the way, I ended up with the CMK aluminum gun tube and resin mantlet as well as the Eduard PE set for the IS-2. The gun tube and mantlet are miniscule compared to the original Zvezda one and the Tamiya one, both of which appear to be identical in dimensions. I chose to use the Tamiya gun tube because it looks better than the Zvezda one.
I began by removing the molded on drive sprocket and support roller mounts. I've drilled out the road wheel and idler mounts to accept the Tamiya parts. There were other molded on locating squares I removed. They were similar to the molded on lines for the driver's sight that is visible on the front slope of the hull below the main gun and on the lower front hull for the tow hooks in the above photo. I removed those lines after I took the photograph.
More in progress photos with the majority of the turret completed with Tamiya detail parts and Eduard photo etch. Squadron Green Stuff putty was used to fill seams and add weld marks around turret fixtures.
Liquid cement was stippled on the gun mantlet to add texture and Grandt Line conical head rivets were added to replace misshapen molded on ones.
The open sponsons were blanked off with scraps of Evergreen styrene. New track adjusting idler links were scratch built using the molded on detail as a guide. Nothing fancy, just enough to get by.
The Tamiya fuel tanks were detailed with the Eduard PE set.
