Hi Joe,
You're most welcome. I'm glad this thread can be of help to you (and anyone else), and I'm glad you got your copy of the kit and that it has impressed you.
So without further ado, here's the latest: first, I 'rusted' the exhaust system. Sorry for the lack of in-progress pics here, but my process was to first give it a coat of MM Italian Dark Brown. Next I dabbed a wash of Cotman's (Windsor & Newton) watercolor black over the whole thing. I had attempted to produce spots, but I got the watercolor too thin and it ran, leaving tide marks. This didn't look particularly encouraging at first, but in the end simply became part of the corrosion spectrum.
Next I cracked open some recently purchased Wilder oils: rust brown, faded yellow, and winter white. This stuff is thin right out of the tube, so for this application I used it as-is. I mixed each of the yellow and white with the brown, and randomly dabbed the brown and each of the two mixtures in places along the entire length of the exhaust. The colors didn't seem as vibrant as I wanted in this case, but certainly- subtly- varied the tones of what was underneath.
Between each of these steps I allowed a day of two of drying, and three in the case of the oils. So now I wanted some vibrance to the colors, so back to the Cotman's: burnt sienna and raw sienna. I thinned these a bit with water and just a speck of dish soap, then with a pointed brush proceeded with my dabbing technique. Now I was getting spots or any other shape I wanted and the variety of tones was really coming along. I let this dry for a couple more days, then dry-brushed Testors flat black in the pronounced bends and the tailpipe, and being careful not to make each bend look identical.
I'm still fooling with adjustments on my Nikon Coolpix L3 (yeah I know, not the most sophisticated camera), so here's a couple different pics to hopefully give you an idea of what this thing looks like:
Next up were the .30 gun cradles, J25 and J26. These two parts represent two halves of the cradle, and there are no positive location devices on either. I simply figured out how to carefully hold the two halves together at one end while super-gluing the other end, then super-gluing the first end when the other was dry. Here's what they look like, and the end I initially held (yes, a bit of tedious work here):
I also finished up the crew compartment save for a couple parts, like the antenna mount which I didn't want to accidentally snap off:
At the lower rear where the side panels and the rear panel meet, there is a small gap. I could have avoided this by sanding a little where the rear panel meets the back end of the compartment tub, but alas it's easily delt with:
So that's it for now. Thanks for looking in and for your comments!
Dave