Been busy and missed some of the great work here!
Kien - never saw a gloss black primer before, but the JS-2 is looking good! What a beast that tank is!
route62 - sweet winter camo job on the Alanger T-34!! Its going to look fantastic when done! BTW, I love your salad tong model holder for painting!!
Dutch - all right! Great work on the SU-85! 3D printing? That's a whole new realm of model building! Would have been handy for all the parts I've lost/destroyed over the years!
I was rear-ended in a car accident a couple of weeks ago and bench time was very limited due to strained back muscles, but its much better now and I've been able to finally complete assembly of all three models for this GB and primer them:
First, I found this awesome Mr. Hobby primer at the Ace Hardware in downtown Berkeley (yep, not far from famed UC Berkeley). I normally use Mr. Surfacer 1200 which is the finest primer I've ever used, but this 1500 is crazy fine! Cut with Mr. Hobby Color Thinner it layed down the smoothest, finest, tightest coat of primer I've seen. It almost looks like bare plastic, except for the matte finish.
![]()
![]()
I used this primer on the Tamiya JS-3, but primered the tracks with a mix of Tamiya Acrylic Nato Black and Red Brown. I don't like using lacquer or enamel based paints on workable tracks with tiny plastic pins...sometimes the paint is too "hot" and can weaken the pins causing them to break. Never had this problem with acrylic paint.
Same deal with the Tamiya T-62:
Oh, I also found this at that Ace Hardware and couldn't resist:
Now, I have to say that if you ever need the most detailed aftermarket Soviet DShK 12.7MM Mg then get this little kit! But if you're not into tiny, finicky, multi-part assemblies, then skip it!! Here's the assembled/primered mg compared with the kit MG:
Can you believe that this little MG has 27 individual parts?? Some of them are very tiny PE parts that are almost impossible not to bend out of shape or accidentally fling them into oblivion. One of the PE parts just broke in half and I had to scratchbuild a replacement (which turned out MUCH sturdier than the PE part!). The glued attachment points of many of the parts are quite miniscule which makes the whole assembly VERY fragile!
Gamera, apparently this is the exact same MG assembly in your MiniArt T-44 kit...I trust your eyesight and patience are better than mine!!
Finally, the Zvezda T-26. I decided to add the turret antenna and instead of a gray primer, this one is primered with Tamiya Nato Black thinned with their lacquer thinner. I am going to use the "black & white" method with this paint job and see how it compares with my usual method.
Let the base coloring begin!