As I've said in here before, I'm a total noob with armor. Excited to see this build though. Looks like a sizable undertaking. 

Neat, I had to go look it up- original issue in 1958!  

Pretty cool to see someone build one of these vintage kits, good luck! 

TheMongoose

...Getting ready for primer...

Throw any advice my way for the build... 

Why are you priming the parts before assembly?  Usually, with armor and other land vehicles, you assemble the whole thing leaving off a few parts (such as wheels, tracks, tools, barrel & carriage, any other small items that get painted a different color from the hull) to be painted separately and added after the hull is painted.  This is due to glue not adhearing to paint, having to scrape paint at attachment points, sanding seams, etc.  It is just easier the above way.  Maybe it is differnt with aircraft, but in my experience, you usually paint the cockpit and any interior parts, then build the rest and paint it similarly as described above.

Raulduke

I take it you don't have a cat or dog

 

That would be a disaster in my household :)

Too funny! No animals here. I was more worried about my poor dexterity resulting in a Squished part 

I have never had an issue painting complete assemblies.  No issues getting paint into all the nooks and crannies.  You can build subassemblis of larger parts if you need to.  It is too much of a hassle to paint everything first for me.  To each their own though.

Gino, that is an appproach completely unique to armor.

Aircraft not so much, ships no way.

So it may be an approach by the modeler.

Here's my initial progress on the frame. It's primed with citadel chaos black. Its used for figures and i like how thin and smooth it lays down. This section is probably 14" long. No major issues with assembly. All the parts fit well so far. The sprue attachments are probably the oddest. I have about 40 parts that just fell off and the others have really heavy attachemnts which are hard to deal with on round parts as i hate to end up with flat spots on round pieces (pet peeve).

Nice progress. 

I never cut parts off the sprues until I'm ready to use them and I still end up missing a bunch of parts from everything I try to build. If you can keep up with stuff like that you're a way better man than I! 

Looks like it is coming along well.  Here is some further inspiration as you continue.

http://www.mil-mod.nl/atomic-annie/

Ok, more progress during tonight's rain delay. Been painting between innings...which has forced me to wait betw coats like I should. Not the best pictures. I will have to put more light on it tomorrow.

I'm working on the cannon tonight. I've sanded the barrels smooth, using the primer to show low spots. Last night I put all the tires together. Maybe later I'll do the hubs. 

The one major decision is whether to put the machine gun on top of the tractor. Looking at the websight and some research, online and from the writeup in the IPMS magazine, it sounds like there may have been only 1 unit built like this. If i do add it then i need to cut a hole in the roof. That's actually what got me started in the research, it just didn't seem right to put it up there and have no way to get to it. So i went looking for pictures and found limited info on whether it was set up with the gun. 

i also got to talk to someone who was on a gun crew. Heard some great stories of their deployment to europe. These were showpieces so minimal weathering it seems like. Good for me because I haven't done any yet. Need a lesson in the next 2 weeks because i want to show it at our monthly club meeting.

Are you building the original kit or is this a rebox that I haven't heard about? Here is a picture of the real thing that I took at Aberdeen Proving Grounds a few years ago. Sorry for the poor quality. I really miss that place.

It's a rebox. They redid the box and maybe the decals but the copyright on the parts is still 1957 so its old tooling. Speaking of which check out the club hand on the army men. Also i know someone was having fun at the office when they did this design because I'm sure he's sticking his tongue out!

I just need to add the decals and then apply some dullcoat and a light wash to finish this up.

Overall it went together nice. All the gears work like they should. The main gun doesn't quite go down far enough to get the locking pins in. Seems to be just related to normal variation in the molded parts because nothing is out of place. I will pose it elevated and then it won't be noticable.