Oh cool Mike, I'm certainly no expert on Russian hardware but I'll say the T-90 does look totally badass...

I am no expert either, but I don't care! lol!! The new T-90's look ferocious and mean! I'll have fun detailing this little guy and figuring out how to display it. Should I go with the LED gun fire effect?? I've never tried it ;)

M. Brindos

I've got this little gem of a kit and I'm going to have some fun with it!  :D:D:D:D

 

Having fun with it? You mean making a diorama and having an A-10 coming in hot with guns a blazing? 

Kevin

Noooooooooooo! lol  Not quite the fun I'm thinking of lol!

I thought the turret armor could use a little defining so I scribed the armor plates on the turret. Not much of an update, I know, but this will help me to make this look a lot bigger in the end.  :D






Well... its a start lol.

Cant wait to see what you do with this small scale tank Mike.  This should be good.

Thank you, I can't either lol. I'm detailing as I'm going along. I've got an idea for a base, but things change as the build progresses, right? lol

I added an armor line too many and since its come up before I'd like to show you guys how to erase scribed lines. Its really simple and you can rescribe over it without problems later.

First, I had this panel line that doesn't exist. Oops. Don't go for the putty!



All you need is to add some of the plastic back into the line. A bit of stretched sprue will work wonders.

Add some LC to the line, add your sprue to it and mush it in. Add a little more glue to seep into the cracks and let dry.



After the glue dries you simply sand away the excess like normal and voila!, No more panel line.




You can see that I've also started carving into the turret walls around the armor plating to give it some dimension. I felt the need to separate the plates from the standard T-72 turret and give it more realism. The armor plates, as I understand it, are cast steel and bolted on upgrades. This means the standard turret resides underneath these plates and none of these pieces should be level with each other. Especially the large added cheek armor. I felt these really had to be separated from the turret.





I've moved on to scribing the panel separations on the upper hull as well. I've done most of the right side, but I haven't touched the left side yet. Maybe you can see the difference, but its not much of a change yet.





And that is as far as I've managed to get so far. Basically just sitting around and carving out more dimensions. I'm not even sure yet, just how much of it will be seen after the other parts go on the turret. I may even whittle those attachment points for the smoke generators and other parts so they look like brackets instead of blocks, but then again, will we be able to see them? I suppose it will make a difference later, so I probably will. Just because I can.  ;)

Have a most excellent Friday my friends.  :)

She's looking good Mike. And thanks for the tip on filling stuff with the stretched sprue. I just use putty but of course when you scribe it cracks and crumbles. I can see where the sprue being the same as the surrounding plastic wouldn't do that. 

No problem. I had the same isue with putty. The edges would crack and the lines wouldn't stay defined. This fixes that problem.

So since my truck doesn't deliver until 2pm this afternoon, I kept at the turret. I turned the attachment blocks on the turret sides into brackets (I knew I could, I knew I could), which ended up with a bit more carving. Since that was a really tight space to work in I couldn't get a sanding stick in there to smooth it back out. What's a boy at heart to do? Texture!

I switched from using Tamiya Extra Thin to Testors Liquid Cement because the Testors has a bit longer drying time (which is why it works better for weld lines and melting sprue into gaps) and stippled it with a hashed old brush I keep around, just for stippling things lol.









You can even see a little of the weld bead I added around the turret ring. I have no idea if any of this detail will show up after I start painting, but its there now.

On with the show!  :D

I finished scribing the upper hull and glued on the big a@@ 125mm smooth bore cannon. I had to sand some of the detail off of it to get rid of the seams, but I added them back with some sprue. I also embellished the mantlet cover as the stock piece was a little bland. I reshaped and scribed the rubber dust covers on the fenders as well.

The detail level on this kit is pretty dang good. Its no Dragon kit, but its not far behind in terms of detail level. Its much better than the old T-80BV kit I did some time ago as well. The details were much thicker on the old kit. This one is much better. Still a little soft in some respects or I wouldn't feel the need to scribe all of these panel lines, but still very good.







Now that I've gotten this cleaned up, its time to add some details of my own to dress this up a little more.  :)

I added some of the ERA blocks on the turret last night. Then I attempted to add the piece that represents the co-ax port to the right of the gun tube. However it decided it didn't want to cooperate and pinged out of the tweezers never to be seen again.

Not that I'm complaining. It just forced me to make a replacement with better detail. Its a bit of a miniature triumph for me as I didnt think I could craft such a little thing without breaking it or utterly ruining it in the attempt lol



I will be drilling this out later.  :)

                                                     
That sprue trick works very well with aircraft fuselages and similar assemblies also.
                                                     

That's where I learned that trick from! lol

Sometimes putty isn't your best friend when it comes to filling horrible gaps and such.

Well here's what's been taking me some time to re-engineer. This is tough in 1/72 I'm sure you can imagine! lol

I've got it figured out lol. No screens. ribs. I found a good picture that showed me the answer. Now its a lot of tiny little bits of sprue to keep aligned. :)

Oh wow, that's neat! 

As to the screens, no idea here... 

lol. A gimick, but yes, a neat one.  ;)

First, my apologies for not updating sooner. I haven't gotten much done really. I've been working on another project for my Dad because his birthday is at the end of this month. Since he likes to browse through these forums to see what I'm working on, I have to keep it under wraps for now. I'm sure you guys will likely think its pretty cool though lol.

Now as for what I've gotten done with the T-90, I basically figured out the answer to my question about how to replicate those screens that I sanded off. Now I'm not sure if these there are cooling fins under the screens, or if this is just another type of Dazzler from the one we commonly see, but I've gone with the fins because I can replicate those. Oh, and they are not IR searchlights as I assumed at first. Many pictures show these lighted up bright red and a lot of you guys already know the IR doesn't light up in the visible spectrum. Anyways, all I've got to show is where I last left off. The Dazzlers are fitted but not glued on yet. I had to work very carefully to get these aligned and they still fit a little wonky. I'm not sure if its because I modified them, or if they just don't line up quite well on their own. Hard to tell since I modified them first.  :/


Fins added but not trimmed or cleaned up.





So that's where I am at the moment with this build. The Dazzlers are just dry fitted, but I think I'll get them sorted out. I had the same issues with the older T-90B kit with the searchlight on that one as well. It just didn't want to line up right without a lot of tedious adjusting and careful trimming - even then, it still didn't line up quite right. I guess this is my own shortcoming showing up with these kits. Just can't align these bits lol.

Well, that's it for this. I'm still working on these things, but I've been working a lot of extra time at work and I'm about burned out. We're taking a little trip to the ocean this weekend so that, I hope, will recharge the ***.

Have a great evening, afternoon, or whatever, wherever you are today.  :)

Absolutely impressive detail youre putting in there Mike. I build the occasional 1/72 armor too and this is amazing. 

Nice work on the fins there Mike. 

And enjoy your vacation. Try not to spend all your time thinking about your project and what you're going to do when you get back. 

Pretty cool with the LED dazzlers,can't wait to see the paint Mike.

Thank you, Allan! I've seen even better detailing done in 1/72 and it was inspiring, to say the least. There is a PE detail set for this kit that does make it an absolute stunner. Seriously impressive stuff and I wish I had the extra cash for such a set myself.

Thanks, Gamera. The vacation was most excellent. It was at least a day too short however lol.

And a big thank you to you, Tojo! Those little buggers are an investment I think I will make again. They are really, really cool! I had them wired up to 12v and they took it like a duck to water. In comparison I have the searchlight on my M-48 powered by a 9v. These Pico lights are just the coolest things I've ever added to any model lol!

As for paint, it may be a while as progres on everything has been slow. Add to that, another move to another temporary living arrangement and its going to get even slower. I'm getting tired of moving around. But when you have crap for credit, finding a solid landing zone is not easy. Wish I hadn't pissed away that part of my life so long ago. Who knew that pretend money you don't have would become more important than real money you do have? I fear for the future where currency may be based on wishful thinking lol.

Anyways, on with the show!

I finished up the Dazzlers this evening. Trimmed, sanded, and mounted. I even added the cables (which I had previously removed from the casting) and the cover plates. I found one picture with them mounted in this fashion and thought it would be really neat to replicate them in this scale.  ;)

Edit; Found it

I also added the mounting bolts for the right side turret stowage box, since I had removed a lot of material from the turret sides to separate the aplique armor plating it no longer fit flush and I had an obvious gap. Not easy to see in this picture, but if you strain you can sort of see them.



And that's as far as I've managed to get for the time being. I still need to get a base started so I can make adjustments to the suspension and get the lower hull under way.

Okay, it's been a week since I could even do anything with this build. Today I've managed to continue adding all of the junk attached to this old T-72 turret lol. Smoke dischargers and a bunch of armor and equipment I don't know what functions they all serve. You'll see I used a bit of Squadron green putty on the gunner's hatch. There was a huge sink hole in it. The worst one yet. Most of the sink marks on the armor pieces are easy enough to sand down and eliminate, but that one was almost a hole lol.





Not much to show, but at least I got to get back into this one. A week without building something probably doesn't seem like a lot of time to most people, but I couldn't wait to get back into it. lol

For the last four hours it seems I've only been working on the modifications to the TC's Machine Gun. I added a couple of other bit to the turret as well, but The MG was just begging for some extra love lol.





I added spade grips to the 12.7mm MG as it added a little more eye candy to it, but with the hatch up there would be no way to access the controls lol. Well, it looks better IMO.

That's all for tonight. Thanks for giving it a peek. :)

Wow Mike that's a pile of detail for a 1/72nd kit. And the spade grips on a 1/72nd MG, I can barely see to add them to a 1/35th one. 

Thanks Gamera! Its all the little things, right? lol

They are what make people pay attention to your build, as you well know, my friend lol. I will admit, adding the spade grips (though completely incorrect) was far easier on the .50 on the M-41. Adding these details to this model is challenging, but I;m reallly hoping it is going to be worth it in the end. My last T-80 in 1/72 was okay. This one will far surpass it.

Alrighty, so going forward with my detailing of the TC's cupola I built the ammo box tray, a belt of (probably oversized) bullets, and some spent brass to the brass catching bag on the left side of the MG. It should all paint up decently. The ammo belt was a PITA to make, but at least I did manage to get it looking mostly like what is meant to replicate. That wasn't easy.





The decision to build the ammo box tray was made because the ammo box itself had a sink mark in it that would've been difficult to repair. Since 99% of modellers out there in the world would add that part anyways this led me to show it in a different way. Not many fellas out there would choose to leave the ammo box off of the tank, and that I believe makes this a little more interesting to look at.

That is some amazing work Mike,,, and for 1/72 scale no less. It never ceases to amaze me what some people can do to these little models. Not sure my eyesite would allow that!!!

Thanks! I'm pushing my skills a bit because I'm in a group build with it. :D

My eyesight is getting strained with this one. I'll admit that. I do have a nice lighted magnifier now, but I keep forgetting to use it lol. Heck, I keep forgetting I HAVE it lol!

http://www.use.com/JoSUM

Just a mock-up with some current progress.

Edit:

There. Fixed it for the link impaired.  ;)

M. Brindos

My eyesight is getting strained with this one. I'll admit that. I do have a nice lighted magnifier now, but I keep forgetting to use it lol. Heck, I keep forgetting I HAVE it lol!

Looks like a very intensive build here.
Hmmm I think I can see it...
surely, when you turn on the lights.
                                

Now that is cool!