Today was another productive day with all major construction completed. Picking up right where I left off, I added the wiring conduit from the siren/indicator light down to the main headlight with 0.5mm diameter solder. This was carefully bent to shape and then glued in place with liquid glue. Once that had dried, I added small retaining brackets using the flexible bits on the Eduard frets that are the connection points for regular PE parts that were bent to a curved shape around a piece of solder with tweezers then glued into place with CA gel.
The remaining element from Step 14 was also dealt with by installing the mount for the antenna swivel arm to the hull side. The kit doesn't provide an antenna, so I clipped off the stub that was molded onto the swivel arm and drilled out a hole with a #72 finger drill and installed a Lion Marc 2m brass antenna with CA gel. To protect the antenna, this was only dry fit for the shot to be sure I had the alignment correct for the mount and will be permanently installed later.
The remaining steps deal with the turret and Step 15 assembles the top and bottom halves along with the hatch hinges and interior frames and turret front plate.
Step 16 adds the interior portion of the gun mount and hinge pin covers and can remain movable after installation if you don't apply glue to the hinge parts E30 and E31 where they mate up with the assembled E25 and E26. I also skipped ahead a bit to Step 20 since I am replacing the gun and mantlet entirely with the Armorscale barrel and resin mantlet. Adding it now is much easier than after all the details were installed and some small surgery was needed on the Armorscale resin mantlet to get it to fit. The back of the resin mantlet has mount points and guides that are designed to work with the newer DML Smart Kit and these all had to be cut down and sanded smooth to allow a proper fit to this older kit's mount parts. The mantlet was glued in place with CA gel and there's sufficient stiffness in the pins to support the weight of the gun so for now I haven't glued it down but will after painting to pose the gun at the desired angle.
Steps 16-18 deal with various details including the turret stowage bin. The bin assembles easily enough but the base is hollow so this needed to be blanked off using sheet styrene to avoid it being visible once mounted. Some putty work was also needed at the top portions to create the right seamless look.
The rest of the turret details were added as called for in the instructions and everything was going great right up until it came time to add the side hatches. The kit provides some nicely detailed doors and hinges and the doors fit very tightly together. While I was test fitting one side, the smaller half of the hatch pinged off into oblivion...I spent a full hour carefully searching the work bench, shelves, and floor but to no avail. This required a "Plan B" solution which involved removing the hinge points and using the one-piece hatches provided on sprue F and marked as not for use instead. The detail isn't as good but at least I still have hatches!
The turret lifting eyes were the only parts that required some modifications in these steps...the kit parts aren't really hooks as they are molded as solid knobs. I opened them up by drilling a hole in their centers with a #76 finger drill and the carefully creating the "hook" by cutting into the hole with the tips of my sprue cutters and then carefully removing the base to create the hook.
A test fit to the hull showed everything is playing nice together and the turret fits well into the ring opening provided. I had originally planned to fit a small canvas dust cover to the gun barrel but have decided against that as I don't want to cover up the nice detail provided by the Armorscale barrel. That means this one's ready for paint as the only other thing remaining is the track assembly and I can do that while the paint is curing.
