I have had this project on my bench since 2February and I initially only envisaged a month and a half to build. I wanted mostly out of the box build but I eventually ended up roaming the  internet for stuff!

I have been waiting agesto finish this as the only things I had to do was to paint the tracks and as Xtreme Metal is a funny paint to deal with when it comes to humidity then I had to wait until the weather broke, which it did a couple of days ago with a thunderstorm that rattled every window through the house... and most of the downstairs ones are armoured because of their size ( building regulations requirement).

There has been some frantic activity as paint was thrown about and onto tracks. The tracks have had a two coat treatment with no primer.  A Layer of Extreme Metal Burnt Metal was put on followed by Xtreme Metals Gunmetal. This gives a darker steel look than the steel in their range and lighter than Vallejo's Metal Colour Steel and is just right.

I had to go searching for cables as the ones provided in the kit just didn't fit Too thick! This was another delay as the right diameter to fit with the parts was sourced through Ebay and was sent by slow boat from China!! These cables are actually Steel (1.5mm for towing and 0.8mm for the track cable) and took some fixing on through the mounts etc as they are not as flexible as soft metal copper wire. Quite a bit of naughty words issued from out of the build room which had the paint shop hiding, such as "Stay put you.. (insert favourite naughty word)!" and many more. Finally with the aid of superglue they were fixed and due to the springiness of the steel they look really good in place and don't need painting!

Dodging the great Yorkshire weather to get the photos has been not exactly fun as when the sun comes out and I go out of the house it starts raining on me and then the games ensue! But eventually I got the pictures I need.

I was not happy with my original exterior paint job and re-painted the exterior.

As some of you know I have been using for the exterior authentic paint reproductions of 1945 colours from original chipset and formulas. and as you will see with the last photo they stand exactly to original battlefield pictures.

Enjoy!

It has been a large scale build and both fun and frustrating at times but overall an enjoyable one. Not one for a tank beginner but you do need some complex armour builds under your belt before tackling this and the other vehicles in the range. These ones are time consuming and I reckon that it has been on my bench since 2 Febuary and so, averaging out the hours I have spent I reckon on about 1176 hours over 196 days!

It will be a while until I tackle another 1/16 build but I have my eye on their 1/16 Tiger II and their up and coming Panther G's. They are expensive kits, but provide hours of frustration